He understood the question before I asked it.
“I told her I’m staying.”
That surprised me more than the scene at the entrance had.
Frank exhaled.
“I’ve spent years asking you to ignore things because confronting her was uncomfortable for me.”
I said nothing.
“I thought I was keeping the peace.”
“You were keeping her peace.”
He nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
There are apologies that ask for immediate forgiveness, and there are apologies that finally tell the truth.
His was the second kind.
“I should have stopped it years ago,” he said.
I believed he meant it.
That did not erase the years.
But it mattered.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“That depends on what she does now.”
Helen did not leave immediately.
She sat through another portion of the program, stiff-backed and silent.
Every few minutes I caught her looking toward the front of the room.
Then, near the end of the evening, she approached me again.
There was no audience this time except Frank, who stood a few feet away.
Helen had lost the rigid posture she carried when she grabbed the MP.
“I owe you an apology,” she said.
I waited.
She looked irritated by the silence, then seemed to understand that I was not going to rescue her from it.
“I should not have accused you of wearing a uniform that wasn’t yours.”
“No.”
“And I should not have asked that officer to arrest you.”
“No.”
She swallowed.
“I was wrong.”
It was probably the hardest sentence Helen had spoken all night.
But it still was not enough.
“About tonight?” I asked.
She frowned.
I held her gaze.
“Or about me?”
That stopped her.
Frank stayed quiet.
Helen looked around the ballroom again.
The people.
The uniforms.
The brass.
The tables.
The entire world she had spent years treating as an elaborate backdrop to a job she considered insignificant.
Then she looked at my shoulder boards.
“When Frank told me about your work,” she said slowly, “I thought he was making it sound more important than it was.”
There it was.
Ugly, but true.
“Why?” I asked.
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“I don’t know.”
I did not believe that was the whole answer, but it was closer than anything she had given me before.
“I think,” she continued, “I decided very early what kind of person you were.
