Chapter 4 - The Family Summons
I woke at dawn to the smell of frying bacon and dark roast coffee.
For a moment, I didn't know where I was. The ceiling was white-painted beadboard, and the window looked out over a gray, storm-tossed line of sand dunes and the churning waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Nathan’s guest room was sparse, immaculate, and utterly quiet.
On the wooden dresser sat my service dress blue uniform, freshly pressed and hanging from a cedar hanger.
Beside it lay the Navy Cross in its velvet box.
I got out of bed slowly, my back stiff and pulling against the sterile gauze. I took a lukewarm shower, carefully washing around the bandages, then stepped in front of the mirror.
The scars looked angry in the morning light—bright pink and jagged. But for the first time in five years, looking at them didn't make me want to hide under a winter coat. They weren't the marks of a failure who couldn't handle the Fleet. They were the receipt for twenty-one lives.
I dressed methodically. White shirt, black necktie tied in a square knot, the heavy navy-blue wool jacket. When I pinned the ribbons to my left breast, I placed the Navy Cross at the top of the stack, centered above the National Defense Service Medal and the Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.
When I walked out into the kitchen, Nathan was standing by the stove wearing civilian clothes: dark jeans and a navy henley that stretched tight across his broad shoulders. He paused with a spatula in his hand, his eyes scanning me from my polished dress shoes to the collar pins on my shirt.
He didn't say “you look nice.”
He snapped to attention, brought his right hand to his brow, and held a crisp, silent salute.
I smiled, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. “At ease, Commander.”
Nathan dropped his hand, a rare, genuine grin breaking across his rugged face. “Breakfast is ready, hero. Sit down. We have two hours before the U.S. Attorney’s briefing, but we just got an unexpected visitor at the gate.”
My smile vanished. “Who?”
“Not Trent,” Nathan said, his tone cooling instantly. “Your mother.”
A knot tied itself in my gut. Margaret Alden had spent thirty-five years playing the role of the dutiful Navy wife. She organized charity bake sales, attended ship commissionings wearing white gloves, and smiled placidly while my father made every single decision in her life. During my nine months in the burn unit, she had visited twice—both times looking as though she were afraid the smell of burnt skin might stain her pastel cashmere sweaters.
“Did you let her through?” I asked.
“She’s sitting in her Mercedes outside my security gate,” Nathan said, pouring coffee into a thick ceramic mug and setting it in front of me. “The gate guard called five minutes ago. She claims she has documents for you. Personal documents.”
“I don’t want to see her, Nathan.”
“Then she sits in the rain,” Nathan said without hesitation. “Say the word, and I’ll have base security escort her off the peninsula.”
I looked down at the steaming black coffee. “No. Let her come in. If my father sent her, I want to know what weapon he’s trying to use next.”
Ten minutes later, the front doorbell chimed. Nathan answered it, stepping back into the living room with his arms crossed and his eyes flat.
Margaret Alden walked into the foyer, looking as though she had aged ten years overnight. Her hair, normally styled in a rigid, lacquered coif, was damp from the mist outside. She wore a beige trench coat over a high-necked sweater, clutching an alligator-skin handbag to her chest like a breastplate.
She stopped dead when she saw me standing by the dining table in full service dress blues. Her eyes caught the bronze cross pinned to my jacket, and she flinched as if she had been slapped.
“Maya,” she breathed.
“Mother.”
Margaret swallowed hard, her manicured fingers digging into the leather of her purse. “Your father didn't come home last night. He was held at the federal building until three this morning. When he finally got back to the house, he... he broke the grandfather clock in the foyer with his cane.”
I felt nothing. No pity, no regret. Just an empty, cold clarity. “He’s lucky he’s not sitting in a federal holding cell with Trent.”
“Trent is your brother-in-law!” Margaret’s voice hitched, a sudden flash of indignant panic breaking through her fragile composure. “Marin is three months pregnant, Maya! Did you know that? Your sister is carrying your father’s first grandchild, and you are letting that... that ruthless woman Carrow tear her life apart!”
“Trent sold defective safety valves to the United States Navy, Mother,” I said, my voice terrifyingly calm. “He put sailors’ lives at risk so he could buy that four-million-dollar house in Virginia Beach and that yacht he keeps docked at the marina.”
“Everyone cuts corners in defense contracts!” Margaret cried, taking a step forward. “Hugh said it was an administrative dispute! The Navy was pressuring suppliers to meet dry-dock deadlines! Trent was just trying to keep his workers employed!”
“He cooked me,” I said.
The words dropped between us like lead weights.
Margaret froze.
I reached up with both hands, unbuttoned the top four buttons of my dress blouse, and pulled the collar wide, exposing the thick, white cords of scar tissue climbing out from my chest and over my shoulder.
“Look at it, Mother,” I commanded. “You didn't look at it in the hospital. You looked at the ceiling. Look at what Trent Vance’s corner-cutting did to your daughter.”
Margaret’s face crumpled. She looked away, a sob tearing from her throat. “Stop it... please, Maya, stop...”
“No,” I said, buttoning the shirt back up with steady fingers. “You came here to ask me to drop the charges. You came here to ask me to lie for Trent so Marin doesn't have to sell her luxury cars and move out of her gated neighborhood. What did Hugh tell you to say?”
Margaret pulled a thick, legal-sized envelope from her purse. Her hands were trembling violently.
“He... he told me to give you this,” she whispered. “It’s the deed to the beach cottage in Nags Head. The one your grandfather left the family. And a certified check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Hugh’s private investment account.”
She set the envelope on the edge of the dining table.
“He said... if you sign an affidavit stating you operated the emergency valve outside of technical specifications, the company’s insurance will settle the civil suits. Trent won't go to prison. And the money is yours. You can leave Virginia. You can buy that bakery in Maine you always talked about.”
A bribe.
A two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar payoff to take the blame for the fire that ended my career and nearly killed twenty-one of my shipmates.
Nathan took one step forward from the archway, his hand dropping toward his hip where his badge hung, but I held up a hand to stop him.
I walked over to the dining table. I picked up the envelope, looked at my father’s precise, military handwriting on the front, and tore it in half.
Then I tore it in quarters.
I walked over to the kitchen sink, dropped the pieces into the stainless steel basin, picked up the spray nozzle, and turned on the tap until the paper was reduced to a soggy, pulpy mess.
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“Tell Hugh that Admiral Carrow was right,” I said, turning back to face my mother. “He shouldn't have worried about the Alden name. Because after today, the only Alden anyone in this country will ever respect is me.”
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