Seeing Red(11)

“How do you know that?”

“Because every ATF agent studies the Pegasus Hotel bombing. It’s textbook. All together there were six bombs, set to detonate simultaneously, but they staggered by several seconds.”

“It was like one huge blast to me.”

“What do you remember most clearly?”

“The fear. I couldn’t hear anything. I was unable to see for the smoke and dust. I couldn’t breathe without choking. I was screaming for my mother but couldn’t find her. Things were falling all around me. Crashing. I was too young to be afraid of death. The terror of being lost is my most vivid memory.”

“For a kid, that makes sense.”

“My mother was alive when firemen found her, but her chest had been crushed. She had extensive internal injuries and died in the hospital within an hour. My father survived, but his head and spinal injuries were so severe, he was paralyzed from the neck down. He lived hooked up to a respirator in a permanent care facility for the rest of his life.”

“Jesus.” Trapper looked away again before coming back to her. “None of the casualties were named Bailey.”

“Elizabeth and James Cunningham.”

“So how’d you wind up with a different name?”

“My injuries were comparatively minor, but I spent two nights in the hospital. Daddy was in ICU and on life support, so I was released from the hospital into the care of my aunt, my mother’s sister, and her husband, who’d been notified as next of kin and had flown to Dallas immediately.

“I’ve been told that there was a frenzy, especially among the press, to identify the little girl in the photo, which had already been reproduced by every news agency in the world.

“My aunt and uncle foresaw additional trauma for me if my identity became known, so they insisted to the hospital staff and the authorities that my name not be released. They wanted to protect me from the onslaught of media attention that The Major, you, and your mother were already being subjected to.

“My aunt whisked me off to Virginia, where they lived. For months after, my uncle commuted back and forth, overseeing Daddy’s care here in Dallas until he could be relocated to a place near their home.

“My uncle settled my family’s affairs in Kansas City, sold everything to help offset the expense of Daddy’s care. There was a memorial service held for my mother, but Daddy wasn’t well enough to attend. Because of his infirmity, and predictably short life span, he urged my aunt and uncle to legally adopt me and change my name to theirs. They had no other children. They reared me as their own.”

“What was going on inside your head?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were you messed up by all the upheaval?”

“I was too young to fully grasp the magnitude of the tragedy.

All I knew was that we’d been through something terrible. Mommy had gone to heaven and Daddy was very sick, and we didn’t live in our house any more. In Kansas I’d had a pet parakeet. I never knew what became of it. I missed my swing set until my uncle installed one for me in their backyard.

“Basically, I was a happy, normal child. But whenever I was taken to visit Daddy, he would sob inconsolably. Nothing unsettles a child more than seeing an adult cry. That was the worst of it. And the nightmares.”

“You had nightmares?”

“Yes. They subsided over time, but early on they were horrible, harsh reminders of the bombing, although I didn’t know to attach that word to it. I dreamed about smoke and choking and seeing blood. My mother was there, saying my name over and over. I would wake up screaming, telling my aunt and uncle that they were wrong, that she hadn’t died. She was alive. I could see her, hear her, feel her reaching for me and tightly squeezing my hand until …”

Trapper remained silent and still.

She swallowed. “Until her hand let go of mine. She used it to wave at a man running past us. She was crying, yelling at him to stop. Please. Help. He stopped and picked me up.”

“The Major.”

“I remember being hysterical. Fighting him. Trying to get back to my mother. I remember him clutching me against his chest and telling me that everything would be all right.”

“That was a lie, though, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but he lied out of kindness.”

Trapper didn’t say anything for a moment, then asked her when she had put two and two together. “When did you realize that your nightmare was actually a memory of the ‘something terrible’?”

“Not for years.”

He gave her a sharp look.

“I can tell you don’t believe that, but it’s true. No one around me ever referenced the bombing. I was a child. I watched Sesame Street, not 60 Minutes. The Oklahoma City bombing came a few years later, and I remember the grown-ups in my life being terribly upset, but it was irrelevant to me.”

“You never matched the date of the Pegasus bombing with the day your mother died?”

“That’s precisely how I eventually became aware. I was in middle school, about twelve or thirteen. On an anniversary of the bombing, one of my teachers mentioned it. When I got home from school, my aunt was sitting in the living room, looking at a picture of herself and my mother together. I asked her why she was crying. ‘I always get sad on this date,’ she said. ‘It’s the day your mother died.’ Suddenly it clicked. I realized why I had such vivid nightmares of smoke and fire, of my mother letting go of me and being carried away from her.