“Save This Intern For Me, She Needs A Job,” My Uncle Laughed
Part 2
I unfolded my napkin and placed it on my lap carefully, the way you handle a fragile thing when you’re trying not to let your hands shake.
“We were just talking about Robert’s new contract,” my mother said, already smiling toward him. She always smiled toward the loudest man in the room. It was her form of weatherproofing. “Sounds very important.”
Robert leaned back. “Desert Hammer,” he said, savoring the name. “Big consulting job. Advisory board. High-level strategic input.”
My fork stopped halfway to the mashed potatoes.
Desert Hammer.
I knew Desert Hammer. I knew the target packages, the surveillance windows, the revised engagement protocols, the list of assets that would be airborne before sunrise. I had spent most of the previous forty-eight hours inside a SCIF working through contingencies for it.
“That sounds involved,” I said carefully.
Robert laughed into his drink. “Involved. That’s one way to put it. The Pentagon is finally figuring out they need experienced men in the room, not a bunch of laptop jockeys who think war is a spreadsheet.”
My father cut his meat into exact rectangles and didn’t look at me.
I said nothing.
Robert saw that as permission.
“How’s the basement?” he asked. “Still doing data entry?”
“It’s not data entry.”
“Administrative support, then.”
“I’m intelligence.”
“Support,” he said, as if correcting a child’s pronunciation.
“I’m an officer,” I said. “Active duty.”
My mother reached for the wine. “Honey, nobody is insulting you. Support roles matter too.”
I looked at her. “That isn’t what he means.”
“Don’t be defensive,” my father muttered, not lifting his eyes from his plate.
Robert took a sip, then pointed his glass at me. “Tell you what, Lily. Since I’m consulting on Desert Hammer, I’ll be meeting Colonel Davies next week. Solid guy. Ground operations. Real soldier. I’ll put in a word for you.”
My stomach turned cold.
“Maybe he can move you upstairs,” Robert went on. “Out of that basement. Reception desk, outer office, something visible. You’d be surprised what a little exposure can do for a girl.”
The room went quiet in that awful family way, where everybody hears the insult and pretends it’s not bleeding.
I gripped my fork until the edges bit into my palm under the table.
“Thank you,” I said, because if I had said anything else, I would have flipped the damn table.
Robert nodded like a benevolent king. “That’s the spirit.”
Then he smiled into his whiskey, satisfied with himself, and in that moment I understood something hard and clean.
Three weeks later, he was going to say almost the same thing in a crowded ballroom to the wrong man.
And this time, I wasn’t going to save him.
Part 3
That dinner should have surprised me.
It didn’t.
Robert had been telling me what I was not for most of my life.
When I was sixteen, I told him at Thanksgiving that I wanted to fly.
We were in my parents’ den, where the football game was too loud and the house smelled like turkey, cloves, and my mother’s cinnamon candles. Robert was in his recliner with one ankle on the opposite knee, swirling bourbon and holding court. He looked at me over the rim of his glass and laughed like I’d suggested becoming a unicorn.
“Fly what?” he asked. “A Delta commuter?”
“A fighter, hopefully.”
He laughed harder. My father smiled into his drink. Not because the joke was funny. Because aligning himself with Robert was easier than aligning himself with me.
“Lily,” Robert said, “war is ugly work. Mud, sleep deprivation, violence. Men are built for that kind of grind. Women serve differently. Nurse. Logistics. Maybe personnel.”
I remember the sticky feel of cider on my fingers from the glass I was holding. I remember the football announcer shouting in the next room. I remember feeling heat crawl up my neck while Robert kept going.
“You’d do well in an office,” he said. “You’re neat. Organized. And if you’re smart, you’ll find yourself a husband in uniform and stop trying to prove something to people who aren’t asking.”
He said things like that so often they formed a layer over me. Not one insult, but sediment.
By the time I graduated from the Air Force Academy, that layer had calcified.
Graduation day should have been simple. Colorado Springs sky, blue as fresh enamel. White hats lifting into the air. Thunderbirds ripping overhead so low I felt the sound in my ribs. Families crying in the stands. Cameras flashing. Gold bars catching sunlight on brand-new shoulders.
The girl next to me on the field had two brothers holding a homemade sign that said WE LOVE YOU, LT. A guy from my squadron got tackled by his father in a hug so fierce they both almost went down on the concrete. One cadet’s mother was sobbing into a little American flag.
I scanned the crowd for my parents and found them in the shade. My father checking his watch. My mother adjusting the brim of her hat.
That should have told me everything.
