The Last Hour

  I closed my eyes and took a breath. Then I said, “Doctor Moore, I’m going to insist that you get your report rolling. I know you’re my boss. But you can’t just leave me dangling out here for months with no resolution. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

  “That doesn’t apply to the sciences. I’ll tell you what, Carrie. Doctor Thompson. If you’d like, I can make this whole thing go away.”

  I froze. What the hell?”

  Very slowly, I said, “And how, exactly, would that happen?”

  “I think you know the answer to that. You’re sleeping with that soldier. You slept with your thesis advisor.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Excuse me just a moment,” I said. I took out my phone, and dialed Lori’s number. Moore jerked back in his seat, his face growing red.

  She answered immediately. “Lori,” I said. “Can you come in here?”

  “Um ... okay ... be right there,” she replied.

  I don’t think she paused to breathe because about four seconds later she opened Doctor Moore’s door.

  “Hello,” she said. She nodded toward Moore. “Doctor Moore.”

  “Lori, I was just explaining to Doctor Moore that I didn’t feel it was right to just let the investigation wait until Rice is finished with theirs. That I need to be back to work soon. And he agreed. Isn’t that good news?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “Isn’t that right, Doctor Moore? Or was there something else you said that I misunderstood?”

  He looked frozen in place. Bastard. Finally he said, “Yes. Yes, we’re going to move immediately. My apologies for the delay.”

  “Lori, he also asked to have you on the investigation committee, I was hoping you didn’t mind. I know it will pull away from your research.”

  “I’d be happy to,” she said. She was eyeing Doctor Moore now, and I think she understood what was going on.

  “Well, then,” I said. “I suppose I’ll be going. Hopefully this can all be resolved very soon.”

  I walked out. The second the door closed behind me, I gasped for air, and wandered down the hall, stopping in front of Lori’s office. About five minutes later, she showed up.

  Concern on her face, she said, “He tried to put the squeeze on you, didn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, you handled it perfectly. I’m glad you called me. I’ve already dealt with that once. With him. He should know better. I had a few choice words for him after you left.”

  I nodded and said, “Thanks, Lori.”

  “Hey, no problem. Just ... be careful, okay? I’ve been following the news and I’m worried about you.”

  I smiled and took her hand. “Don’t worry. We’re going to be fine.”

  It’s a secret (Ray)

  Dylan wasn’t kidding about a wedding being something like a military operation. I’d never actually been to one where I paid any attention, but this time I didn’t have much choice, because the moment Carrie and I arrived in New York, Alex handed me a lengthy task list with a tight deadline.

  Alex is a highly-strung person anyway. Upon our arrival three days before the wedding, she was running a million miles an hour, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, and giving orders to everyone in sight. Dylan looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and just did what he was told like a good private in the Army. I quickly opted for Dylan’s strategy, because Carrie swooped in to help Alex and they were starting to scare me.

  Just getting to New York was a production. Nearly six weeks in advance I asked Dick Elmore to request permission for me to go, because the wedding was being held outside the 50-mile radius of Washington, DC I was allowed. Elmore had to go to Colonel Schwartz, who had to go General Buelles, and then General Buelles called me in for an interview.

  I’m not an easily intimidated person, but I’m also a sergeant in the Army, and a Major General is the closest thing to God a US Army Sergeant has in the day-to-day world. Buelles asked me a lot of inappropriately personal questions, and finally approved my leave request, on the condition that I wear an ankle monitor and carry a GPS, so they could locate me at all times. It was humiliating, but got the job done.

  By the end of the first day in New York, I was exhausted. I’d finished Alex’s shopping list, double checked the University Chapel (although I was certain she’d be checking it again), and visited all three hotels where guests would be coming to stay. It was six o’clock, and I was wiped by the time we got back to the suite Carrie had rented. A suite, because Julia and Crank were flying in from LA on Friday and would be sharing space with us. In the meantime, it was a space quite big enough for Alex and Carrie to carry out their plans with Dylan and me as their manual laborers.

  Not that I was complaining. Because when I got back to the hotel, I dropped myself into one of the big comfortable chairs, popped open a beer, put my feet up and watched Carrie and Alex, who were smiling and laughing with each other.

  “Get over here, soldier,” Carrie said without looking up from whatever the hell it was they were doing. I grinned and walked over to her, then leaned in close and kissed her on her neck. I felt her shiver, and she said something like, “Mmm,” and tilted her head.

  “Oh, go get a room,” Alex said.

  I gave Alex a wicked grin and spread my hands out. We had gotten a room. But I slid into the seat next to Carrie and said, “So what exactly are we doing?”

  Carrie handed me some incomprehensibly folded rose-colored silk and said, “Hold this.” So I did, and then she came at me with a plastic hot glue gun and squirted burning liquid, which promptly sank through the silk and into the tips of my fingers.

  “Holy shit, that’s like napalm,” I muttered, just as the door to the suite opened and Dylan came in.

  Alex snickered, and Carrie said, “You’re tough, you’ll get through it somehow.”

  “Hurts like hell,” I said.

  Dylan walked over and kissed Alex, then said, “I see they’ve given you the tough job.”

  “You try getting flowers melted into your fingers, bud.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Alex said. She handed Dylan another one of the flowers. “Hold still.”

  “You waited to start on this until you knew we were coming, didn’t you?” Dylan asked.

  Alex nodded, biting her lower lip as she did it.

  “Ow! Damn!” Dylan said as she applied the hot glue.

  “So, Alex,” Carrie said, leaning forward. “I know you’ve got Ray slated to be a chauffeur tomorrow as people get in town…”

  This was news to me, but I was a private in this army, and Carrie and Alex were the generals.

  “But ... I need to borrow him in the afternoon.”

  Something was off about how she said it. Carrie’s normally so honest, dissembling didn’t really become her. I narrowed my eyes, and my suspicion was verified when Alex said in a completely fake voice, “Oh, sure, no problem.”

  “What are you two up to?” I asked.

  Carrie just gave me a smug smile and handed me another flower. “Hold still,” she said.

  Damn it.

  I suppose with a family the size of Carrie’s you would expect anything like a wedding to be a production. But I didn’t realize just how big a production until I saw the airport schedule. Yes. The schedule. Alex had drawn up a chart, with each incoming flight charted, the names of the victims, and who was shacking up with whom. Down the side of the chart, she’d written contingency plans for everything from a late flight to another terrorist attack on New York.

  I wasn’t even driving everyone, because I would have had to rent a very large bus. I’d been relegated to picking up several cousins, uncles and aunts, and other people who I had no idea who they were. And those were only the ones on Carrie’s father’s side of the family. Her grandmother was flying in from Spain with Andrea and several other relatives who I’m pretty sure neither Carrie nor Alex had ever heard of. Crank and Julia chartered a flight for that bunch, because it worked
out to be both less expensive and more convenient to do it that way than to fly a dozen people over individually.

  Blissfully, after my fourth trip to JFK, I made the last one: bringing two doddering and extremely rich aunts to the hotel. One of them insisted on giving me a tip, even after I explained I wasn’t a hired driver. When I got upstairs, Carrie immediately grabbed hold of me.

  “Come on,” she said, grabbing my hand. “Time to go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a secret. But we’re late.”

  So I followed her out of the hotel, down the street, and down into the bowels of the subway system. As soon as we boarded, I asked again, “Come on. What’s going on?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  I rolled my eyes, and we snuggled together until we got to our stop, which was all the way at the other end of Manhattan at the Brooklyn Bridge Station. She tugged me along as we got up to the street, and I saw the building we were approaching. Carrie checked her watch about five times during the walk. Whatever we were doing, she was nervous about making it there on time.

  So I followed her through the front doors, and through security, which took a while, and then down the halls until she stopped in front of the City Clerk’s office. She turned back to me, and took a deep breath, and suddenly I realized what was about to happen.

  “Ray…” she said, just as I opened my mouth and said, “Carrie…”

  She smiled, then said, “Ray ... do you want to know why we’re here?”

  Well, that was the proof there. Carrie didn’t normally beat around the bush. She was nervous as hell.

  I nodded. My own heart was thumping.

  “This is when you ask me to marry you.” As she said the words, her eyes were wide, and I could see her hands shaking. Mine were too.

  I had to say what I had to say, but I needed to do it in a way that wasn’t going to hurt her. Very slowly, I said, “Carrie ... I want to ... more than anything in the world. But what about the trial?”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  I swallowed. “If I go to prison, you will.”

  She leaned forward and grabbed the sides of my face. And looking me in the eye from maybe two inches away, she said, “Listen to me, Ray Sherman. If you go away to jail for a day or a year or a decade, I’ll still love you. So you better just get used to it.”

  “I thought you ... you wanted the perfect wedding?”

  She blinked, and her eyes went watery, and she said, “If you’re there, and I’m there, then it will be perfect.”

  Okay, she got me with that … it made my eyes water. So, I did the only thing I could do. I got down one knee, took her hand, and said, “Carrie Thompson, will you marry me?”

  She nodded her head rapidly and whispered, “Yes. Yes.”

  And then I was standing and she was in my arms and everything was ... perfect.

  Except, of course, that the State of New York has a twenty-four hour wait before you can actually do the deed. So we went on into the City Clerk’s office, filled out our paperwork, paid our money, and we were officially engaged. I didn’t have a ring to give her, so on the way back to the hotel from the City Clerk’s office, we stopped at a pawn shop two blocks down, and I bought her a silver band with a quarter carat stone which I’m pretty sure was not a diamond, but she loved it anyway.

  And really, wasn’t that all that mattered?

  Why can’t I just wear shorts and a t-shirt? (Carrie)

  I looked up at the clock. It was 1:30 in the afternoon, and I was shaking like a newborn rabbit.

  “Are you absolutely sure you don’t mind? I feel like we’re jumping in front of your day.” I asked Alexandra for probably the fiftieth time.

  “Be quiet, Carrie. Of course I don’t mind. You have no idea how happy I am.”

  “Mother and Dad are going to kill me when they find out,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “When has that ever stopped you?”

  I shrugged, as much as I could anyway, because she was behind me, tightening my dress to the point where I couldn’t even breathe.

  Yes. Ray and Dylan were meeting us at the City Clerk’s office, which had undergone major renovations in the last few years. Alexandra had somehow cleared two hours of her schedule that morning, and the two of us had rushed to the nearest wedding dress boutique, and I’d spent an obscene amount of money to have a dress altered on the spot.

  “Turn around,” she said.

  “I can’t look,” I replied. “Eloping is supposed to be easier. Why can’t I just wear shorts and a t-shirt?”

  She took me by the shoulders and turned me toward the mirror. I caught my breath, and she said, “Because ten years from now you’re going to look back at this day and it’s going to mean everything.”

  It was a strapless dress with a sweetheart neckline; the satin bodice fitted down to just past my hips and a gorgeous organza skirt filled out the bottom. Alexandra had attached a tiny bouquet of white flowers above my right breast, and matching, smaller ones on my wrist. My hair was tied up in a complicated French braid that Ray was going to get very frustrated with later on when he tried to take it out.

  I sniffed. It already meant everything.

  I took a breath and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  She bounced on her feet in excitement and said, “I wish we could have just done a double wedding.”

  “No. Tomorrow is all yours! Don’t even tell anyone. I’ll send out an email on Monday.”

  Alexandra’s eyes widened. “You’re going to tell everybody by email?”

  “I guess I could post the pictures on Facebook and let them figure it out?”

  Her phone beeped, and she pulled it out of her purse. “Come on. They’re here.”

  I checked my makeup one last time, then said, “Okay.” I don’t think she could hear me, because I was suddenly as scared as I’ve ever been in my life. Alexandra took my hand, then opened the dressing room door, and led me down the hall.

  It was, of course, the City Clerk’s offices, but it couldn’t have been any grander if it was the biggest cathedral in Europe. Because standing at the end of the hall, waiting for me, was Ray. I walked, slowly, feeling as if I were floating, until I was face to face with him. His eyes widened as I approached.

  He wore his dress uniform, dark blue, almost black. A blue knitted rope circled under his right shoulder and through the epaulet, and beneath that, over his pocket, were two rectangular ribbons. On his collar were two gold disks, one with the legend U.S., and the other with the symbol of two crossed rifles. I recognized that, the crossed infantry rifles were on half of his t-shirts. Both gold disks were mounted on blue disks behind them.

  On his left breast he wore one of the two decorations I recognized, the one he prized above all others: the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, a silver rifle mounted on a blue field with a circled wreath behind it. Below that, his medals: the Purple Heart ribbon, and next to that a bunch of others I didn’t know. I’d ask him later. The bright yellow Sergeant’s chevrons marked both arms. He wore white gloves.

  I swallowed. I’d never seen Ray in his dress uniform. It was almost overpowering. I just wanted to touch him. Right now. I reached out, with both hands, and took his. He was smiling, and I was too.

  A sweet lady from the city clerk’s office asked, “Would you like to get a couple of pictures before we get started?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Alexandra gave a camera to the woman, who shot half a dozen pictures of the four of us, Dylan standing next to Ray, Alexandra beside me. Then she handed the camera back, and said, “Let’s get started then.”

  I didn’t hear her next words, because my eyes were fixed on Ray. He was looking at me, his eyes wide and a soft smile on his lips, just barely revealing his teeth. I licked my lips, and, unconsciously I think, he did the same. I felt like I was swimming in his eyes.

  I did catch it when the lady from the clerk’s office said, “Well then. Sergeant
Raymond Calhoun Sherman, do you take Carrie Anne Adelina Thompson to be your lawful wedded wife?”

  “I do,” he said, his voice tender.

  “Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and protect her, forsaking all others and holding only unto her?”

  “I do,” he said. And now he was smiling, a broad, happy smile, and his eyes were still fixed on mine.

  My heart was thumping so loud they probably heard me three blocks away as she said, “Carrie Anne Adelina Thompson, do you take Raymond Calhoun Sherman as your lawful wedded husband?”

  I couldn’t stop myself. Tears, big fat happy, wonderful tears, started rolling down my face. I was such a geek sometimes. “I do,” I said. My cheeks felt like rubber, I was smiling so widely.

  “Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and protect him, forsaking all others and holding only unto him?”

  I nodded, probably flinging little tears all over his uniform, and said, “Yes, I do.”

  “Are you ready to say the vows you’ve written?”

  We both nodded.

  “Raymond, go ahead.”

  He took a breath, and said, slowly, “Carrie, before these witnesses, I vow to love you and care for you as long as we both shall live. I take you, with all your strengths and weaknesses, as I offer my own strengths and weaknesses to you. I … will turn to you when I’m in need ... and will give help when you need it. I choose you as my partner, as the person with whom I’ll spend my life.”

  And then he slipped a ring on my finger, next to the engagement ring he’d bought only yesterday.

  By this time I couldn’t breathe, because tears were freely running down my face and my nose was getting clogged up. I sniffed, and then said, “Ray. Before these witnesses I vow to love you and care for you as long as we both live. I take you with all your strengths and weaknesses, and offer you my own. I will turn to you in need, and offer help when you need it. You’re my partner, the person with whom I choose to spend my life.”

  I took his hand and pushed the ring onto his finger.