Chapter 1 - Four Hundred Chairs
My brother's hand hit my face hard enough to turn my head.
The ballroom went silent.
Then my mother smiled.
"My son is the real soldier," Patricia Barker announced, smoothing Derek's lapel as though he had just done something admirable.
I tasted blood and kept my hands at my sides.
Twenty-five years ago, she had pushed me out of our house with my clothes in a black trash bag.
Tonight I wore Navy dress blues with a silver star on each shoulder.
Derek, who had never served a day, looked pleased with himself.
"I told you not to come, Caroline," he said.
"You invited the entire family to a veterans' benefit."
"Not the family embarrassment."
Four hundred SEALs, veterans, and serving officers sat at white-clothed tables beneath American flags.
The event was supposed to raise money for injured service members.
My mother had apparently decided it would be more useful as a stage for settling an old score.
She raised her champagne glass.
"She's always liked playing soldier."
Nobody laughed.
Then a chair scraped against the marble.
Another followed.
The sound swept through the ballroom until four hundred people were standing.
Master Chief Elias Ward stepped into the aisle, his jaw tight.
"Admiral Barker," he said, facing me. "Are you injured, ma'am?"
"I'm all right."
"Security, keep that man away from her. Call the police."
Derek backed into a table.
"Admiral?" Mom whispered.
"Yes," I said. "You might have learned that if you'd ever opened one of my letters."
At the rear doors, attorney Samuel Keene started toward us with a dark blue folder beneath his arm.
My father had put that folder in his care before he died.
Patricia recognized it and went pale.
"Samuel," she said. "You promised Frank you'd leave the past alone."
He laid the folder on the table and turned the first page toward her.
May you like
Across the top, in my father's handwriting, were seven words.
PATRICIA KNOWS WHERE THE MONEY REALLY WENT.
