Chapter Seven
12:41 ZULU
BELTWAY BURGERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
"Dad is sooo going to kill us," Penny said darkly as she regarded her mother over the frames of her sunglasses.
Mac stared down in dismay at the rear bumper of the Mercedes. Even from halfway across the parking lot, the damage was clearly visible. The tail light was cracked and the plastic molding broken. A long scratch and a smear of black paint marred the convertible's bright red finish. Damn. Even if it wasn't a holiday weekend, there was no chance of getting it in and out of the body shop in time. Plus Clay was nothing, if not observant. There was no way he wouldn't notice this. She muttered softly under her breath, cursing the unknown idiot who had backed out of the parking spot opposite them and clipped the bumper. Naturally, they had taken one look at the Mercedes emblem on the trunk and promptly run like hell. She couldn't blame them. She sighed and fished the keys from her pocket. These things wouldn't happen if Clay would just buy American.
She punched the small button on the keyless entry and frowned as an odd, electronic sound emanated from the depths of the car. Great. She stared down in disgust at the remote control in her hand. She'd probably just broken that, too. She couldn't wait to get her 'Vette out of the shop.
"Mom," Penny said, raising one eyebrow above the frames of her sunglasses, "the trunk is ringing."
Belatedly, she recognized the muted tones of Clay's cell phone. Fumbling again with the remote, she managed to unlock the trunk. The sound was coming from the black athletic bag Victor had tossed into the trunk when they'd picked the car up from the club earlier that morning. She unzipped the bag and fished around amongst the fencing equipment until at last she found the phone.
Flipping open the protective cover, she punched the button answering the call. There was a moment's hesitation, and then the tiny digital screen winked to life, revealing miniature image of a pleasant, round faced African American woman in her middle forties.
"Hello?" she said tentatively, not recognizing the caller.
The woman looked equally confused. "I'm calling for Mr. Webb?"
"I'm his wife," Mac replied, staring down into the phone.
The woman nodded. "This is Charlene from Violette's Flower Shop. I'm calling about the flower arrangements Mr. Webb ordered. He hasn't picked them up yet, and we were wondering if he'd like them delivered instead."
God –the flowers—she'd forgotten all about them. She almost said yes, but the extreme boredom oozing from Penny's expression and the memory of her stilted conversation with Clay caused her to reconsider. She couldn't quite bring herself to face him right now. –Not after the way they'd left things.
She glanced down at the cracked bumper and quickly calculated the rest of the afternoon. He was scheduled to go for a barrage of tests at two –which wouldn't improve his mood any—and she couldn't see Penny hanging out in a hospital for another few hours without climbing the walls. The flower shop wasn't far from here, and it was a beautiful day. The outing would do both of them good, she decided, and maybe while they were out running around the flowers she and Penny would somehow concoct a way to break the news to Clay about his car without inciting another heart attack.
"No," she said at last to the woman waiting on the phone, "that won't be necessary. We'll be by to pick them up in a few minutes."
She flipped the phone closed and mentally reorganized the rest of their weekend. She'd forgotten all about the blasted flowers. Bobbie and Harriet had taken nearly all of the picnic details out of her hands, and she really hadn't given much thought to the rest of the holiday, but the call from the florist suddenly sent a barrage of forgotten commitments flooding in. The flowers would have to be taken round to the cemeteries, and she still had to find time to go out and pick up Meredith, and eventually the Doctors were going to cut Clay loose and she was going to have to make arrangements to bring him home…
First things first, she decided, shoving the phone into her handbag and looking to Penny. "What say we go get the flowers and run them around? We won't have time to do it tomorrow, and you can get something nice for Dad while you're there."
Penny cocked one eyebrow. "Isn't that a little morbid?"
"Not as long as you don't mix up the flower arrangements and give him the wrong one," Mac said practically.
"Really, Mom!" Penny protested and then frowned slightly. "What about Dad? We told him we'd be right back after lunch."
"Knowing your father, we're probably better off to leave him alone for a while. You know how he is when he isn't feeling good. He'll probably be as grouchy as an old bear. –He'll be so busy picking at the nurses that I doubt he'll even miss us."
Penny shot her mother a knowing look. "You just don't want to tell him about the car."
Mac looked again at the damaged bumper. "You're right."
13:30 ZULU
VIOLETTE'S FLOWER SHOP
ALEXANDRIA, VA
"I'm here to pick up an order for Webb?"
The heavy-set woman with the ebony complexion and tight gray curls studied her for a long moment. "Orchids," she said at last.
"Excuse me?" It was not exactly the response Mac had expected.
"You must be the orchids," the woman said again, easing herself off of her stool and moving slowly towards the long row of coolers that were tightly packed with arrangements of fresh cut flowers. "Mr. Webb only orders 'em twice a year --Valentines Day and your birthday."
Mac looked at her in open astonishment. "How did you know?"
"Violette makes it her business to know all about her best customers," she shrugged. "I always thought it was a little odd he didn't just go with roses like most men usually do. –But then Mr. Webb ain't the usual sort. He's big on the details, that man. He's just the type to pick an exotic flower for an exotic beauty." The woman's dark eyes traveled briefly across her face. "I figure the orchids must be for you."
Mac felt a small twinge of guilt as she regarded the woman. It occurred to her that in some ways, this woman had seen something in her husband that she had missed. She'd never really known why Clay had always brought her orchids. She'd loved them, but she'd never quite figured out the reason he had associated them with her. She had thought perhaps that they might have been the flowers that had bloomed outside the window of their hotel in Ciudad del Este, or perhaps because it had been the particular bloom he had picked for her in his mother's hot house the second time they had kissed. But now she recalled his words on that long ago evening as he had plucked the bloom from one of his mother's prized plants and tucked it behind your ear.
"It suits you," he had said. "It goes with your eyes."
The door jangled softly behind them and the florist turned and smiled as Penny entered the shop. "And this must be Sweet Pea," she said.
Mac's gaze narrowed upon the woman. How in the hell could she know that? Clay rarely bought Penny flowers, and when he did it was usually the pink roses that were her favorite.
"She's grown some since the last time he brought her in though," Violette observed. She smiled broadly at Penny. "Why the last time I saw her, she was no more than knee high an' pickin' out all of my pink posies to take to her granny."
"I remember," Penny said slowly, looking around the shop with interest. "We were getting flowers for grandma's birthday." She looked at the woman curiously. "You gave me a flower from your special garden."
Violette smiled. "That I did. --One of my sweetheart roses. Your daddy never forgot it, either. He still orders sweetheart roses just for you. Normally I don't sell flowers from my private garden, but he's a special customer." The older woman forged her way through the shelves of potted plants and stuffed animals and mylar balloons to the coolers in the back of the shop.
"He dotes on you, your daddy does," she continued, opening a glass door and rummaging through the flower arrangements as she checked the tags. "Always braggin' to me about how big you're gettin' an' how well you're doin' with your music an' horses. –Such a quiet man, but you should just see the way his face lights up when he talks about his Sweet Pea."
Finding the tags that she was looking for, Violette began loading the flowers into Penny's and Mac's outstretched arms, taking an arrangement herself when they could carry no more.
"I'm surprised Mr. Webb didn't come himself," Violette commented as they set the flowers down on the counter. "He almost always comes himself, or has us deliver."
"He would have been here," Mac explained, "But he's in the hospital."
"Oh my, that's too bad!" Violette said. "You'll have to pick out some nice flowers to take to him. –On the house."
"That's
very kind of you," Mac said as the woman began wrapping up the floral
arrangements. "How much do I owe you for these?"
"Oh, it's already paid for."
The woman assured her. "Mr. Webb put it on his credit card when he ordered."
Mac looked at the flowers, and then looked again. "Wait," she said. "There's one too many. There should only be four."
"No," Violette said easily, continuing with her wrapping. "There's five. Mr. Webb always orders five."
Mac stared at the flowers, silently matching each of them to their intended recipient. She supposed it was possible that she was becoming absent minded, but she really didn't think so. For the life of her, she couldn't think who the fifth arrangement was for.
"Could I possibly see the order slip?" She asked. "I really could have sworn that we only ordered four." –Although Clay had been the one to place the order.
The woman shrugged and turned to rummage through a small index box. Flipping to the "W's," she ruffled through several small slips of paper and extracted a sheet which she handed to Mac.
She read through the list. Lilies for Porter, and the usual arrangements they always got for the graves in Arlington …and one more.
She tapped the line with the hurried carbon scrawl. "This one," she said. "I don't recognize this. What is it?"
Violette glanced down and nodded as if in sudden understanding. "Oh, that one." She said. "Forget Me Nots and Yellow Roses. –I should have realized. He always orders that one special. He picks it up himself if he's in town. –Has us deliver it straight to the cemetery if he's not. –We don't usually do that, but he is a special customer."
She shot Mac a questioning glance. "Would you like to have us deliver them instead? I think we could still work it in to our schedule."
Mac shook her head. "No," she said slowly, "I'll take them," she said. "I'm just not exactly sure where they go. You don't happen to have the address do you?"
The florist nodded. "I believe it's in the file here somewhere." Reaching for her computer, she tapped quickly on the keyboard, then grabbed one of her business cards and jotted the delivery address on the back and stapled it to the top of the paper wrap covering the flowers. Then she turned around and hollered towards the back of the shop.
"Leroy!"
A tall, slim young man with a warm brown complexion stuck his head through the back door. "Yes, Granny?"
"Come take these flowers out to the car for the lady, will you?" Violette nodded towards the convertible, parked in front of the shop.
Wiping his hands on his green apron, the young man smiled as he walked up to the counter and gathered up the flowers. "Sure thing, Granny." He said.
Violette nodded in satisfaction and then turned to look at Penny. "Now, how about we pick out some nice flowers for you to take to your daddy?"
"Ok," Penny said, and then looked uncertainly to her mother. "What kind of flowers would he like?" she asked.
Mac was taken aback by the question. Frankly, she had no idea. She'd never bought flowers for Clay before. It was usually the other way around. "I don't know," she said at last, and turned to Violette. "What do you suggest?"
The woman seemed to consider it for a moment. "Classy man like Mr. Webb," she mused, "I would go with roses …but not red ones. They been done to death." She walked to the long row of refrigerated cases that held selections of roses in all sizes and colors and studied it with a critical eye. "White, I think," she said at last, opening the door and drawing out six long-stemmed white roses. "In the language of flowers, red is for passion, but white means purity and truth, something that lasts a whole lot longer. In terms of roses, white also means friendship and true love." Her eyes glanced off of Penny to settle upon Mac. "Something tells me white roses will suit your daddy a whole lot better."
Mac watched as the woman carefully arranged the buds into a slim crystal vase, and it suddenly occurred to her that white roses had one other meaning: secrecy.
"I'm sure you're right," she murmured.
ARLINGTON NATIONAL
CEMETERY
14:22 ZULU
Mac handed the last two flower arrangements off to Penny and then locked the car. "Are you sure you can find them?" She asked again.
"Mom, it's not like I haven't been out here a million times before. Geez! What do you think they do when we go? –Get up and move around?"
Mac sighed. There was Clay's sarcastic side coming out again. She had half a mind to drop Penny back off at the hospital when they were finished here and let him deal with her for the rest of the afternoon. It would serve him right.
Bending down, she picked up the other two pots of flowers. "It's just that Arlington is a big place," she said looking out over the rows and rows of uniform white head stones. "It's easy enough to get turned around."
Adjusting her handbag over her shoulder, she reached inside and fished around for the cell phones. She brought up Clay's first, and then replaced it. Finding her own phone, she handed it to Penny. "If you can't find them, call me on Dad's number." She instructed.
Penny took the phone with a long-suffering sigh and shoved it into the back pocket of her blue jeans. "If you insist," she muttered.
"I do," Mac said firmly. That settled it. Penny was definitely going to spend some more quality time with her father when they were done.
Setting out in search of her own appointed destinations, Mac idly wondered if she had been that bad when she was Penny's age. No, she decided quickly, she had been worse. By the time she had been fourteen, she'd already been well-versed in the contents of her father's liquor cabinet. –Not to mention the back seat of Bobby Reynold's daddy's Lincoln. She only prayed that Penny took after her father enough to avoid reaching that level of rebellion.
She pushed all dismal memories of her past and nagging concerns of Penny's future to the back of her mind and began to count the rows of stones as she passed them. Even after all the years she'd been coming here, it wasn't easy to find the grave among the uniform rows of identical white granite. She used the grid system herself –thirteen rows north from the corner of the crossroads and fifty two stones in from the west side of the road. Just as she was beginning to fear she had miscounted, she spotted a name that she vaguely recognized, and just beyond it, the marker that she sought.
It was not neglected by any means. No grave at Arlington ever was. Beside the stone –just like every other one of the hundreds of thousands of graves—a tiny American flag fluttered in the breeze. She had not been the first visitor here either, she saw, for beside the flag was a small bouquet of flowers and furled within it, a small Russian flag. She smiled. Sergei. Bud had mentioned that he was coming back to town this week. She should have known.
Dropping to her knees, she un-wrapped the flowers she had brought and carefully arranged them in the small plastic stand beside the others. Then she rocked back onto her heels and surveyed her handiwork. Satisfied that it was as aesthetically pleasing to the eye as she could make it, she finally allowed her eyes to fall upon the words chiseled into the stone before her.
"Hello, Harm," she said.
***
"I see that Segei's been here," she said, fingering the small Russian flag. "I suppose he told you what we're up to."
She shook her head. "All these years and I still haven't escaped the Rabb curse. First you drag me halfway around the world to find out what happened to your father, and now Sergei's got me burying Washington in a pile of paperwork trying to find out what happened to you. –Not that I really expect that to get us anywhere, Washington bureaucracy has never been very efficient when it comes to handing out answers."
She sighed and took a seat on the carefully manicured grass. "Did he tell you that he actually wanted them to dig you up? He doesn't believe it's really you under here." She smiled. "He's more paranoid than you are. He thinks it's all some sort of conspiracy. –That they buried an empty casket. Of course the cemetery board denied the exhumation request." She shook her head. "But I wouldn't get too comfortable. He's got Bud filing an appeal."
"Maybe it was a mistake," she said softly. "The sealed casket…not waiting on the burial until he could come back from Russia. I'm sure it would have been horrible, but maybe…maybe if he'd actually seen you, he would have had some closure. Maybe we all would have."
"What really happened to you, Harm?" she wondered softly. "Are we ever going to know the truth?"
She sighed. There were times when she actually wished that the Navy had just made something up, a plane crash, a training accident, something. But they hadn't. There had been nothing, save for the simple statement that Capt. Harmon Rabb Jr. had been killed while carrying out his duties and nothing more. He had been working with Naval Intelligence. They could get away that. It had been several months before the body had been returned. He had been buried with full military honors, but the funeral had been a rushed affair and there had been no time to reach Sergei. Maybe that was why he'd never really accepted Harm's death or the secrecy the military had draped around it. Still, it didn't explain the niggling little feeling she got when she thought about it. Like Harm's brother, she had always had the feeling that something wasn't right, that there was something more to the story, something she should know. Maybe that was why she'd never really accepted Harm's death, either. It certainly had had a lot to do with her reasons for taking the case, even though she'd known Clay wouldn't be happy about it. It had taken her weeks to work up the nerve to finally tell him today.
She sighed. "You know, I dreamed about you last night, when I was at the hospital, waiting for Clay to come out of surgery. It was so good to have you back for a little while –even if you were just a figment of my imagination."
She paused for a moment, remembering the intensity of that strange dream. "There were so many things we never said to each other," she said at last. "I always regretted that we never talked about it …about us …about why we never worked out. I know it was hard for you, when Clay and I got married, but you never gave me a chance to explain it. You just left. –And I let you. I always felt bad that we left things like that."
She reached to her neck for the gold chain with the two rings suspended on it and fingered them for a moment. "I think Clay felt bad, too," she mused. "You were his closest friend, you know. –At least until Victor came along. You two always seemed to be at sword's points over something, but I think he enjoyed the sparring as much as you did."
She shook her head. "I just wish we could have found a way to make things work out between the three of us. I've missed you, Harm. –We both have."
The spring breeze rose gently around her, fluttering the flags and rustling the wrapping paper of the second floral arrangement. She supposed she'd better go. She still had to find out exactly where they went, and Penny would be looking for her. She rose slowly to her feet, somewhat annoyed at the fact that it wasn't as easy a feat as it used to be, and brushed the grass from her blue jeans.
"Well," she said, "I'd better get a move on. I know I said I'd see you Memorial Day, but the way things are going, I'm not sure if we'll make it back out here or not. But you know I'll be thinking about you anyways."
She picked up the second arrangement. "I'll see you around, flyboy," she whispered, and walked off in search of the second grave.
Violette had written out pretty clear directions, and as she paused a moment to get her bearings, Sarah realized that the plot she was looking for really wasn't all that far away. It was still in the Navy section in fact. She frowned as she began to pick her way through the grave stones, wondering who it could be that Clay would be purchasing flowers for. Another colleague, she supposed. Likely some fallen friend in the Agency or the Intelligence community that had been granted the right to be buried at Arlington because of some past Naval service. It could have been anyone, she supposed. He rarely mentioned work if he could help it, and aside from Victor, Kennedy, his assistant Mandy and Catherine Gale, she had almost no idea of who he worked with.
As she drew nearer to the row she was looking for, something nagged at the edges of her memory. This spot looked familiar, though she couldn't quite place it. She had been here before, she was sure, though she couldn't exactly remember when. She had attended several funerals here over the years, many of them for colleagues she had worked with and people she had known, but for the life of her, she couldn't quite place the reference in her memory.
She stopped and glanced again at the card stapled to the top of the wrapping paper. Section 60, Plot 55-16. This was it. She turned and walked down the row, slowly counting off the graves as she passed, the feeling of familiarity growing even stronger.
When she saw the name on the headstone, she suddenly understood.
Oh. Her.
She looked down at the flowers in her hand. For the first time, she noticed that it really wasn't one arrangement, but two: a simple selection of rosebuds, and a separate, smaller bouquet of pale pink flowers. --Forget-me-nots and yellow roses.
She felt something twist inside her heart. Was this what he was hiding? Was this the thing that he was afraid she would discover? He should have known better. He had allowed her the annual pilgrimage to Harm's grave for years, and never said a word. She might not have understood what he had ever seen in the woman in the first place, but she would have understood this.
He had told her years ago, before they were married, about his brief interlude with Lauren Singer and his subsequent discovery about the child that had resulted. At the time, she had wondered if he had been testing her, trying to scare her off. If he was, it hadn't worked. They had never spoken of it again, except once, before Penny was born, when she had had the miscarriage.
She had been so buried in her own misery at the time that she really hadn't thought about Clay. It had only been months later, when she had finally worked up the courage to talk to him about trying again that she had fully realized the extent of his own pain. She found him after supper one night, standing in the darkened bedroom they had been planning to make into a nursery. There was something about the way he stood there, with his shoulders slumped and his hands thrust into the pockets of his trousers that had cracked through her own grief and she had gone up behind him, wrapping her arms about him and pressing her chin into his shoulder.
"Maybe," he had said softly, "this is just God's way of telling me I wasn't meant to be a father. This is the second time, Sarah. I don't know if I can handle losing another child. It hurts too much –all the wondering. Wondering who they might have become, what I could have done differently. Maybe it's better this way. If I don't come home one of these days…." He let the words trail off, and she knew he was remembering his own father as well.
"I don't believe that," she'd said fiercely, "and neither do you. Your mother told me once that the only thing that kept her going when your father died was the fact that she had you. Would you really do that to me, Clay? Would you really want to leave me alone?"
She heard his shuddering breath and she turned him to face her, wrapping him tightly in her embrace. He pressed his face into the hollow between her neck and shoulder and let the sobs take him.
"It's not that it's never meant to be, Clay," she whispered. "It's just not meant to be right now. We've got to believe that."
She'd held him then, while he cried out his grief in that lonely, empty little room, and it was only then that she truly realized just what kind of a father he would make. He had never mentioned it again, and Penny had been the joy that had soothed their pain, but she should have realized he wouldn't have forgotten. Clay was not the sort of man to forget his failures.
Carefully, she un-wrapped the florist's paper and separated the flowers, securing each with their small plastic cones into the ground beside the stone. When she was done, she rose and stared down at the grave. She'd never liked Lauren Singer, but she felt guilty somehow at the realization that she'd given the woman little more than a passing thought in the years that had followed since her death. She didn't really know what Clay had felt for the woman. He'd claimed that it had not been any grand love affair, but merely a casual fling. Still, he must have felt something, or he wouldn't have brought the flowers year after year. She wondered how many other people came to Singer's grave and paused a moment to pay their respects and remember her. Somehow, she had a feeling that there was only one.