The Husband Hour(65)

She leaned over the railing, staring at the ocean. He stood next to her quietly, wondering if there was a way to suggest they go for a drink without sounding like, well, like he was asking her out for a drink. There wasn’t.

“I can walk you back to your house,” he offered. After that, he would probably hit Robert’s for a round or two. The place would be packed, and the energy would help him let off enough steam to get to sleep.

“Tell me something,” she said suddenly. “What was it like over there? In Iraq?”

Surprised, he turned to face her, his back pressing on the rail. She didn’t look at him, her eyes fixed on the distance, as if the answers to her questions were out there. “Probably exactly the way you imagine.”

“I don’t want to imagine. I spent enough time trying to imagine. Rory’s letters made it sound like it was a lot of hours patrolling neighborhoods, not much happening. I always felt like he was sugarcoating it for me. He didn’t want me to worry. I feel like I missed the last chapter of his life.”

“Well, every person’s experience over there is different.”

“Did you talk to any of the guys who were over there with him?”

Matt nodded. “I interviewed a few guys from his battalion.”

“Did you talk to Pete Downing?”

“I did.”

“I need to see the interview,” she said.

“We can do that at some point.”

“Now,” she said. “Tonight.”





Chapter Thirty-Four



She stood next to Matt’s desk while he booted up his laptop and she felt herself shaking. Pete Downing had been one of the last people to see Rory alive. Pete Downing’s voice might have been one of the last Rory heard on earth.

Above the desk, dozens of index cards were taped in even rows. On the top left, the card read Opening image. A blue Post-it note covered the wording on the next card, but she saw one that read Theme stated and one with the name of the coach of the LA Kings.

“What’s all of this?” she asked, pointing to a small binder filled with plastic sheets and small squares that looked like the games in Ethan’s Nintendo DS player.

“Those are drives holding all my interviews. I save them to my laptop but I keep the originals just in case.”

Matt dragged a rustic wooden bench from the window to the desk so they could sit side by side.

He hit Play. A face she hadn’t seen in four years. At the bottom, the words PFC Pete Downing, 2/75 Rangers. She braced herself to hear his voice, the voice that had tried valiantly to comfort her in the days following Rory’s death.

Off camera, Matt said, “Can you tell us, in general, the duties of a U.S. Ranger?”

“As a U.S. Ranger, we engage in combat search and rescue, airborne and air-assault operations, special reconnaissance, intelligence and counterintelligence, personnel recovery and hostage rescue, joint special operations, and counterterrorism.”

“What was your first impression of Rory Kincaid?”

Pete Downing smiled.

“I expected Rory to be a typical arrogant jock. Full of himself. But he wasn’t like that at all. He was confident but humble. He kept his head down. He came in as a private, which in civilian terms is basically a nobody. I don’t think he found it easy to take orders. Far more than it was for most of us, this was a challenge for him but he did the job he came there to do.”

“Did he display leadership qualities?”

“Rory had an inner drive and focus,” he said, looking thoughtful. “It gave us all more confidence about what we were doing.”

“Would you describe him as just one of the guys?”

“Yes and no,” Downing said. “There’s a locker-room atmosphere when you’re over there. Rory was kind of above all that.”

“Did that ever make guys resent him?”

“Just the opposite—we looked up to him. And let’s put it this way: I went in for selfish reasons. I wanted money for college. I wanted to feel like I was somebody. But Rory already had money. He already was somebody. He was there because he wanted to be there, in service of something bigger than himself.”

“Can you tell me what happened on December 28, 2012?”

Downing nodded. He sat back in his chair, adjusting his tie. He took a minute before saying, “It was an ordinary day. Routine patrol looking for IEDs. We delivered water to a neighborhood near Route Irish.”

“And Route Irish is?”

“A twelve-kilometer stretch of highway connecting the Green Zone to Baghdad International Airport. It also connects other areas. So, like I said, it was a routine mission. There were two vehicles working in tandem. I was teamed up with Corporal Kincaid for the day, but toward the end, one of our guys in the other group got sick. I was sent to join that group to make sure they had enough hands on deck.”

Lauren knew this part of the story. Pete had said that he hadn’t wanted to leave Rory, that being around Rory always made him feel safe. She wished he hadn’t told her. The irony was painful.

“After ten hours, we had instructions to head back. Corporal Kincaid’s vehicle was a few meters ahead of ours. The light wasn’t great—we rolled out a little later than we should have. We hadn’t been driving more than ten minutes when the IED went off. I don’t remember the moments directly after the explosion. But at some point we got out of our vehicle to help, ah…to see what happened up ahead. I saw right away…Corporal Kincaid on the ground. There was a lot of blood. It was clear that, uh, he had been killed.”