"I don't get it." Major Beck said, obviously exasperated. "What is Constantino thinking? It's not like he has a chance of winning, all he's doing is pissing me off."
"I don't know, major. I don't know the man anymore."
"Anymore? Care to explain that? You're supposed to tell me these things, remember?"
"He's not the man he was before the attacks."
"None of us are."
"What I mean is – he was actually a really nice guy. I mean, he used to smile. Really smile. A lot. Now…I don't recognize anything about him anymore. The man I knew is completely gone."
"It's hard to imagine him smiling."
"Well, he did. Here, I've got a picture of him before the attacks." She dug around in her purse and pulled out a picture of herself and a teenage girl in a front hallway. "You can see his reflection in the mirror behind us."
"Wow. If you hadn't told me it was him, I wouldn't have recognized him at all – between the beard and the scowl… Who's the girl?"
"That's his daughter. I used to babysit for her when I was in high school."
"I didn't know he had a daughter."
"Yeah. She was his little princess; she could get him to do practically anything."
Beck looked back at the grinning Constantino. Yup, that was the smile of a smitten father.
"I'll just bet she could."
"It was just the two of them – her mother died giving birth to her. I don't know what would have happened to him if it hadn't been for Alice. He was devastated; Jennifer had been his high school sweetheart. But he had a daughter to raise. So he buried his grief in taking care of Alice. They were absolutely adorable together." She smiled in bittersweet memory. "There's a picture somewhere – I wish I had a copy – of daddy's little girl painting her father's toes pink. He's trying to put on a martyred look for the camera, but you can tell he's hiding a smile. She totally ruined his tough-guy image."
"When she applied to college, it damn near broke his heart. He couldn't bear to think his little girl was all grown up. She got into several colleges, but she turned down better offers to go to school nearby, so she could come home on the weekends. Even so, he made sure to get her a cell phone with a ridiculously expensive plan so she could call him every night, which she did. He had to get an extended life battery, they would talk so long."
"When the bombs went off, he called her number over and over again, going through two batteries. He wouldn't accept what he saw in the western sky. Couldn't believe she was gone."
Beck's stoic face faltered as he connected the dots.
"She went school in Denver."
"Yes."
"God."
Heather looked at him, catching him before he turned away. For only the second time, she saw his mask slip, and remembered he didn't know whether his daughter was alive. She took her leave, letting him recover in private.
As she left, she wondered morbidly which was worse, knowing or wondering.
