Chapter 9
Gwen sat in the green minivan staring at the light over Leo’s door.
The bulb was yellow, making his doorway standout from every other on the street in an odd display of color.
Another person would have thought nothing of that light, but it bothered Gwen like an ice cube that doesn’t float to the top of the glass.
Something isn’t right inside that house.
She considered knocking back on that door and attempting to talk her way past Leo, but her gut told her to stay put—at least for now. She tapped her foot with uncharacteristic nervous energy and waited, whether for Julie to return or for the decision to go in after her, she didn’t know.
Her mind wandered over her beloved niece.
Gwen was fiercely protective of the woman she had become, and knew Julie’s heart was fragile where her father was concerned.
John McDowell had never worked especially hard to spare his daughter pain, and it was with great effort that Gwen had kept her dislike of the man a secret from Julie.
She remembered with lucidity the teenager she had taken in when John abandoned his daughter. Gwen had been on her own emotional journey after David’s death, unsure at the time if she could provide the girl with what she would need to heal.
Julie had been devastated, grief for her mother still oozing and raw, before her father left her as well. In his wake, a formal investigation followed that soon focused exclusively on her as a potential colluder, or at the very least, a threat to national security.
Gwen stood steadfast by her side, fending off Navy investigators and media reporters like wolves at the door, working to help Julie keep from shutting down emotionally.
Teaching her to trust her own instincts, rely on herself again.
Together they spent hours just talking, often walking through the Vermont hills that surrounded the farmhouse.
On one of their walks, a year after Julie’s arrival, they came across a mother deer and her fawns grazing in an open meadow. Gwen’s big yellow dog was grazing in the grass alongside them.
“Well, would you look at that,” said Gwen. “It looks like Zeke has made some new friends.”
The women watched the scene in silence for some moments.
“It’s like us,” said Julie. “You’re the deer, and I’m the dog.”
Gwen tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
Julie looked at the ground and frowned. “You took me in like I belonged with you.”
Gwen had thought she might weep for this brave girl who felt so alone. “You do belong with me, sweetheart.” She put her arm around Julie’s shoulders. “We’re family.”
The memory brought a tight smile to her lips as she stared at Leo’s brownstone. John McDowell was also Julie’s family.
He hadn’t always been so selfish. Gwen remembered when he first married her sister, he had been charming and strong. He loved Mary. It was her death that had changed him, made him angry and bitter.
Why did you bring us here, John?
Gwen bowed her head before the divine, praying for guidance and the safety of those she loved.
When she raised it again, the yellow light over Leo’s door had begun to flicker irregularly.
She drew her lips into a pucker and curled her fingers around the steering wheel.
Slowly and deliberately, she filled her lungs completely with air and focused all her energy on her niece.
The gun was the first thing Julie saw, her eyes drawn to its shiny metal butt sticking out of the holster.
John McDowell stood before his daughter in a dirty T-shirt and green sweatpants, the weapon held by leather straps that were meant to be concealed beneath a jacket.
“Dad?” Her voice was ragged, her throat constricted.
“Julie-girl,” he said, his arms open wide to receive her.
It was a scene she had imagined so many times before, it felt surreal when she finally ran the few steps into his arms. “I thought you were dead,” she choked on a sob.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Julie released him, stepping back and wiping away the tears that wet her face. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” she said. “It’s so good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” His tone was placating, as if he had simply left the room for a few minutes, rather than disappearing for ten years.
Julie took a good look at her father. His hair, once a salt-and-pepper black and gray, was now completely black, like it was when she was little. The youthful color contrasted with the deeply set lines around his mouth and the sagging of the skin under his dark-colored eyes.
She took in his clothing, her brow furrowing at his bare feet.
Where are his shoes? He’s always so meticulous about his shoes.
He was at once both comfortingly familiar and unsettlingly strange.
Julie ran a trembling hand through her hair as she looked at the room around them.
It was set up like a small studio apartment, its dirt floor covered with a braided rug.
A sagging couch was draped in tired pink fabric, next to a bed with striped yellow and brown sheets.
A power strip hung in mid-air, suspended from an orange electrical cord reaching down from the ceiling above. Julie’s eyes followed the lines to a small refrigerator and a computer on a makeshift desk.
The overall feel was one of a bomb shelter or tomb, the earthen walls enhancing the sense of being buried alive. Julie shivered and wished for a window or door.
“How long have you been living here?”
“I don’t know. A few months.”
She tried to imagine anyone choosing to stay in this place a single moment longer than necessary. “Where did you live before that?”
“What?” He squinted at her.
“Where did you live before that?”
He began to pace between the desk and the couch. “What difference does that make?”
“It’s okay, Dad. Never mind.” Julie rubbed her eyebrow. “Your message said you could prove your innocence, but you needed my help.”
A smile graced his face, brightening his features as he brought his chin up. “I do need your help, Julie-girl.”
“Anything, Dad.”
He blinked repeatedly. Julie saw little dots of sweat collecting on his forehead.
“You have to believe me.”
The urge to run out of the basement and away from her father appeared suddenly, frightening in its intensity.
She could see herself darting around him to make it to the stairs, clay walls under her fingertips as she raced up the steps, reaching the front door before Leo could even stand up from the couch and Wheel of Fortune.
Can opener.
“What is it?” she asked instead.
“Do you remember when your mother told you she had cancer?”
“Yes.” She took a step backwards, increasing the distance between them. Her father stepped forward.
“You asked me that day, ‘Why did she get sick?’ Do you remember that?”
“I remember being upset,” Julie swallowed against the dryness in her throat, an image of her beautiful mother forming in her mind.
“You asked me why she got sick. And I didn’t tell you the truth.” He was standing so close to her, she could smell his sweat.
“It was a rare form of cancer.” Julie said, mechanically repeating the words she’d been told.
“Yes. A rare form of cancer that you only contract if you’re exposed to ionizing radiation.”
“Ionizing radiation?”
“Yes.”
“Where would she be exposed to that?”
“At Camp Harold.” He stepped away from her, cool air rushing in to fill the space he had occupied.
Julie’s mother had been a Navy structural engineer, working at the same base as her father. The two had married on the base. Her mother had died on the base.
“When she was diagnosed, that goddamned Navy doctor said it was just one of those things that happens. Bullshit. I looked into it. It’s caused by ionizing radiation from TENORM in the concrete on the worksite.
They knew it was there.” His body contorted in rage.
His nostrils flared with each breath and his clenched arms shook. “They knew all along.”
He turned to the fridge and grabbed a beer, opening it and drinking it down in one long gulp before pitching it into a tall white garbage can. The sound of it hitting other empties punctuated the silence before he opened the fridge and found a replacement.
“You want to know why your mother’s body is rotting in the ground? The U.S. Navy killed her, sure as I’m standing in front of you.”
Julie recoiled from the image he painted. “One or two people made a bad decision…”
“Not one or two,” he said derisively. “It ran all the way up the chain of fucking command, right to the Pentagon. Nobody said diddly! That’s what killed your mother. The U.S. Navy, and the absolute authority it holds over the people enslaved by it.”
He stood shock-still, staring at one of the electrical cords hanging from the ceiling. “They killed the only person I have ever loved.”
I love you, Daddy.
The words rang out in her head, unbidden.
“But I got those fucking bastards.”
She watched him suckle at the can of beer as a light humming began to sing in her ears. Then it clicked.
He really is a traitor.
“The Dermody.” She wasn’t asking for confirmation. She knew it now. For ten long years she had suffered for him, believing this man was an innocent victim. Eighty-eight men had perished when that ship went down.
John McDowell had killed them all.
A cold sensation trickled down from the top of her head to her abdomen. Julie stole a peek at the stairway, now seeming so much farther away. It was too late to make excuses and leave unquestioned; the opportunity for safety had passed untaken.
Her father was waiting. Julie said a silent prayer. Please get me out of here. Help me get back to Hank. I think I love him. I shouldn’t have doubted him.
Julie heard the drip of water nearby. She listened as she counted the drops, one, two, three. Her lungs filled with air, calming her, and she knew what she had to do.
“Thank you, Dad.”
“For what?”
She reached out to him. “For taking good care of mom,” she said, squeezing his arm. “For getting the people that did this to her.”