Chapter 10: The Last Word
On Samuel’s first birthday I hosted a small gathering—Mrs. Rivera, two colleagues from the command, and a cousin who had driven six hours to meet him. The house was warm. The cake was slightly lopsided. Samuel smeared frosting across his own cheek and laughed at the sensation.
My phone stayed face-down on the counter. There were no messages from Mark. There was no need for any.
He had forced me out into the night while I was in labor and called me dead weight. He had walked into my hospital room with another woman and a wedding ring, believing the story was already over. He had not known about the trust. He had not known about the rank. He had not known that the executive officer he hoped would impress me answered to the patient in the bed.
In the end the costliest mistake of his life was not the affair or the eviction or the public cruelty.
It was the assumption that the woman he married was only what he had bothered to see.
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I was Colonel Anna Whitmore.
I was the mother of a living son.
I was the beneficiary of a trust he would never touch.
And I was finished being underestimated.
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