“She was so lucky to have you as her mother,” Ari said as Mrs. Sanchez slid the collection from the envelope and passed over the small bundle.
“You are just as sweet as your brother.” She leaned close, pointing to the first photograph. “That’s my daughter.”
It had been taken on a military base with Army vehicles in the background. “She was beautiful.” The woman wore fatigues but no helmet, her dark hair short and thick.
Mrs. Sanchez smiled fondly. “She was such a pretty child, with lovely long, curly hair she inherited from her father. She loved seeing foreign places. My husband and I weren’t big travelers, so I’m not sure where Karmen got that bug from.”
The next photo was of a group of ten soldiers in desert fatigues, helmets, and guns, all the paraphernalia making them almost indistinguishable.
“There’s Karmen.” Mrs. Sanchez pointed.
“I thought she was a medic.”
“She still had to carry a gun when she went out in the field with the men.” Mrs. Sanchez blinked rapidly, until finally she smiled again. “Those men depended on her, and she wanted to be right out there giving them aid.”
Ari picked out Zach Smith in the photo next. And then, she finally recognized Gideon standing next to Karmen. She’d remembered him as the boy he’d been, the older brother. But this was a man, broader in the chest, with hard life experience in his eyes.
She held out the photo for Matt to see. “That’s my brother.” Her eyes stung with tears.
Mrs. Sanchez touched her hand. “My daughter sent us photos, of course, but there was something extra special about hearing about her from a comrade who knew her over there. Your brother told us how many lives she saved and said she was a brave soldier. It’s exactly what Karmen would have wanted the men and women she served with to say about her.”
“I’m sure she was one of the best,” Ari said softly.
She shifted to the next picture, this one of five soldiers in full gear. Ari picked out Karmen and Gideon immediately. Her heart stilled all over again.
“Your brother said that was his team, even if Karmen wasn’t actually under his command, and sometimes they were assigned other medics.”
God. His team—they were all gone except Gideon. One of the men looked a little older—probably the married one with children. And the other two, despite their gear, didn’t look much older than Gideon had been when he left. All of them gone.
The packet of photos trembled in Ari’s hand as she moved to the next one. The group was larger this time, maybe fifteen or so, and the backdrop was unidentifiable—the inside of a tent perhaps, she couldn’t be sure. Dressed in fatigues minus the gear and helmets, they all wore big smiles, laughing, arms thrown across each other’s shoulders. Once again, Karmen stood next to Gideon, his arm around her just as it was around the man next to him.
But he was turned slightly toward Karmen, looking down at her. Ari felt a hitch below her ribs, knowing without a doubt that Gideon had been in love with her. And when she’d died along with the rest of his team, he would have believed it was his fault.
It wasn’t true, of course. It was war.
But the woman he’d loved was still dead.
Ari gripped Matt’s hand more tightly, and when she looked into his eyes, she knew he’d seen the same thing in the picture. Thank God he was here with her and she didn’t have to do this alone.
More than ever, she needed to find her brother, to show him he wasn’t alone either.
Though Mrs. Sanchez obviously missed her daughter with all her heart, she managed to keep herself together where a lesser woman would have fallen apart. She showed them the wall of pictures along the upper hallway—Karmen as a baby, a young girl, a teenager, a prom queen, a soldier. She was obviously an only child, though in many of the photos she was surrounded by cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. There were pictures of her in dress uniform with her parents. She had her mother’s face and her father’s smile. She’d been a beautiful young woman full of promise, and she had given all that promise for her country.
“She never complained about the dust and dirt.” Mrs. Sanchez smiled, her eyes far away with memory. “She’d been such a girly-girl. Always the perfect party dress, the perfect hair, the perfect makeup. But Gideon said she was perfectly happy to be one of the guys.”
“I’m so glad he was able to share his stories with you.”
Ari barely held back tears. Only by reminding herself that she was on the same path her brother had walked, and that she might find him around the next corner, was she able to keep herself together.