Chapter 9 - The Long Walk to the Pier
The wind coming off the Elizabeth River at Pier 7 was cold enough to freeze the breath in their throats.
It was three weeks later, a gray Sunday afternoon when the naval base was largely dormant, settled into the quiet routine of weekend duty watches. The gray hulls of three guided-missile destroyers lay moored along the concrete pier, their radar arrays standing stark against the low winter sky, their halyards slapping rhythmically against aluminum masts in the rising gale.
Elise and Judith walked together.
Judith had her arm linked through Elise’s. She was wearing flat walking shoes and a thick wool scarf that Mark had bought her for her birthday three years ago—a scarf she had never worn until today.
They walked slowly, their boots clicking against the expansion joints of the concrete pier. Mark walked thirty paces behind them, his hands jammed deep into his overcoat pockets, giving them the space they had needed for nearly a decade.
They stopped at Berth Three.
This was where the *Carver* had tied up whenever she returned from deployment. The berth was empty now, the green harbor water slapping against the black rubber bumpers with a heavy, sucking sound.
Judith looked out across the water toward the mouth of the bay, where the gray sea met the gray clouds in an unbroken horizon.
“I used to stand right here,” Judith said, her voice steady now, carrying over the slap of the water. “When the ships came back. When Andrew was on the *Cole*, when he was on the *Stout*. I’d stand here with a little American flag on a stick until my fingers were blue, waiting to see his white hat come down the brow.”
She squeezed Elise’s arm.
“I was so angry at you,” Judith said softly. “Not because I thought you were lying about your job. But because you were alive. Every time I looked at you, I saw everything Andrew didn't get to have. I saw thirty years of life. I saw promotions. I saw children that will never be born. I saw Mark being happy... and it felt like a betrayal of the dead.”
Elise looked down into the dark water.
“Survival is a very selfish thing, Judith,” Elise said. “When you’re in a compartment like that, and the water is coming up, there’s a second—just a fraction of a second—where you realize that only one person is fitting through the hatch before the bulkhead collapses. And you don't think about honor. You don't think about ribbons. You just think about taking one more breath of clean air.”
She turned her head to look at the older woman.
“I felt guilty for that breath every day for eight years,” Elise said. “Every time I put this uniform on, I wondered if I should have traded places with him. If I should have stayed on that pry bar until the water hit the deckhead.”
Judith turned to face her fully on the pier. The wind caught her silver hair, whipping it across her lined, weathered face.
“No,” Judith said, her voice firmer than Elise had ever heard it. “No, Elise. Andrew made his choice. My boy was a sailor. He made his choice to save the woman who had the key to the door. If you had died down there with him, his sacrifice would have been pointless. It would have just been two corpses instead of one.”
She reached up, her hands cold against Elise’s cheeks, her touch gentle, maternal, and completely devoid of the sharp bitterness that had poisoned their family for so long.
“You lived for both of you,” Judith said. “And I’m sorry it took me eight years to see the grace in that.”
Elise closed her eyes against the cold salt wind. For the first time since the missile hit Compartment Delta eight years ago, the iron band that had constricted her chest seemed to loosen. The ghost of Andrew Mercer, which had stood between her and the world like an invisible, suffocating wall, was no longer a shadow of guilt.
He was just a boy from Norfolk who had loved his mother, loved his ship, and done his duty until the water took the light.
Behind them, Mark stopped. He watched the two women stand together against the backdrop of the gray warships, their silhouettes dark against the winter sky, their coats pressed together against the rising wind.
May you like
He took his hands out of his pockets and let out a long breath that turned to white steam in the cold air.
***
