The Husband Hour
Jamie Brenner
This book is dedicated to all the brave men and women who serve this country and to the families who support them.
Chapter One
The warm winters still surprised her, every day a gift. But that particular morning, the heat was a problem. She didn’t want to wear a short-sleeved dress.
It seemed the entire city of Los Angeles had turned out, like it was the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards. The Staples Center arena was filled to capacity, with hundreds more left standing outside. Lauren looked out at a sea of silver-and-black hockey jerseys, military uniforms, and American flags, all the colors blurring together like a spinning pinwheel.
She had spent dozens of days and nights in that arena cheering on her husband playing ice hockey for the LA Kings. But today, she wasn’t part of the crowd. She was separate, up front and on display, sitting by the podium dressed in black and hiding behind dark glasses.
Surrounded by thousands of people, Lauren felt completely alone.
An hour into her husband’s memorial service, she was dizzy with nerves and exhaustion. Grief was an odd thing. It made you numb but exquisitely sensitive at the same time. She had to admire the emotion’s versatility; it now owned her completely.
She scanned the front row of the stands to find her parents. It was strange; for the first time in years she truly wanted her mother, and yet there was nothing her mother could say or do to make her feel better. She had almost told her parents not to come, and she certainly didn’t want to see her sister.
“This nonsense has gone on long enough,” her mother had said over the phone. “You just lost your husband. You need your family around you. Of course your sister will be there.”
But she wasn’t.
Now, under the glare of television lights set up for ESPN’s live broadcast of the memorial service, her parents looked lost. Lauren tried to catch her mother’s eye, but she was focused on the jumbotron showing the president’s tribute to Rory: “Our fallen soldier, a true American hero.” Her mother’s expression seemed to say, How did we get here?
Lauren hoped she didn’t have the same expression on her face. Not when the world was watching. Not when photos of her would appear everywhere. Would they see what she was thinking? That this felt like theater, a circus, a show that had nothing to do with her husband? That she was just playing her part, a role she hadn’t auditioned for and didn’t want?
Grieving widow. Just twenty-four years old. Such a tragedy. Such a loss.
And then the part of the show when a man she’d never met before handed her a folded American flag. She reached for it mechanically and placed it in her lap. She knew these ceremonies, the symbolism of the flag, were meant to give her comfort. But going through the motions just made her feel like a fake. It was useless; her world would never again have meaning.
Sitting there, she tried to deflect the waves of sympathy, thinking, This is my fault. If you only knew; this is my fault.
Just when she thought the moment couldn’t get any worse, it did. She started to cry, under the scrutiny of millions of eyes on her, the flash of cameras capturing every sob. It was unbearable to have something so private—losing her husband—play out so publicly.
Just get through today, she told herself. After today, all the attention would fade. The world would move on. And she could disappear.
As a war correspondent, Matt Brio had landed in some uncomfortable and even dangerous situations all around the globe: Tsunami-ravaged Thailand. Baghdad. Syria. For a few crazy years, he had worked in unimaginable conditions. He should have been prepared for anything, and yet landing in sunny LA after flying in from freezing New York somehow still managed to throw him off his game.
Drenched in sweat outside the Staples Center, thinking he would happily trade his Canon XF100 for a bottle of water, he willed himself to focus and panned the video-camera lens across the throngs of people outside. About a yard away from him, a grown man wearing an LA Kings number 89 jersey held his young son’s hand and sobbed. Matt wanted to get the man on camera and ask, “What did Rory Kincaid mean to you?” but he didn’t have time. The real story was inside.
The question was, could Matt actually get inside? He wouldn’t know until he tried flashing his long-expired press pass, a relic from his days working in journalism.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he ignored it. No doubt it was someone from two time zones away wondering why the hell he’d canceled the scheduled shoot for the documentary he was in the middle of directing. But if there was one thing Matt had learned, it was that it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, and that went for both missing the shoot today and for crashing the memorial service.
Matt made his way to security and handed his press pass to the guard. If he’d thought the whole thing through better, he might have been able to wrangle a legitimate pass from an old colleague. But nothing about this day had been thought through. The flight to LA, the decision to show up at the service, all impulses. His entire career had started with an impulse, so why stop now?
But this wasn’t a career move. What drew him to the stadium on that hot and inconvenient day, the magnetic pull that he could no more ignore than he could stop breathing, was personal.
The guard waved him inside, either missing the expiration date on his pass or simply not caring. The service was half over, anyway. Matt followed a second security guy’s direction to the gate and escalator that would lead to the press box.