No answer.

The door to my father’s office cracks open—his way of letting me know that he is listening.

“Hello?”

A sigh that’s really more of a grunt comes in response. I know the voice, but he rarely speaks to me.

“Hey, Nikki,” I lie. I lean against the wall and wind the spiral phone cord around my finger as if I’m settling in to talk to my old friend. My father’s footsteps recede as he falls back to his desk. I grip the phone tighter.

“Talk to me, Blake,” I beg in a whisper. “I know it’s you.” We hadn’t always liked each other, but we’d had Carey in common. Me, his girlfriend; and Blake Kelly, his best friend who was more like a brother. We’d always kept the peace because Carey demanded that kind of loyalty. Despite everything that happened, that shouldn’t have changed.

No answer.

“You heard, didn’t you? Are you with his parents?” It made sense. The Breens have turned to Blake for comfort since Carey received his orders. I’m guessing he’s calling to tell me about Carey so I’m not blindsided at school Monday.

“Do they blame me?” I don’t want to know, but the question scrapes out of me. Do you blame me?

Click.

“It’s not my fault,” I whisper, but Blake’s gone.

*   *   *

There are some things nice girls don’t do in a town like Sweet-haven, North Carolina. Six years ago, before my mother walked out on us with my father’s brother, she told me, “First chance you get, girl, run like hell. And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t end up a soldier’s wife.” A smudge of bitterness clung to the smoke from her Virginia Slims Menthol. Her Avon’s “Light My Fire” red lips pursed around the filter one last time before she crushed the stained cigarette butt into the glass ashtray she hid whenever my father came home on leave. Short black curls spiraled in defiant abandon when she shook her head. “I wish I’d never seen An Officer and a Gentleman. Damn Richard Gere and his dress whites.”

At eleven, I had no idea what my mother meant, but I understood one thing: My mother wouldn’t pretend to be a nice girl forever.

With her tanned skin and snow-white sundress, my mother reminded me of actresses in the old movies she liked to watch. I had told her so, and she had caressed my cheek, the warmth of her fingers lingering for hours after. I loved my mom best when my father was gone. When his battalion deployed their fighting would cease, and the temperature in our house increased by ten degrees.

The summer I turned eleven, though, she dumped me at my grandmother’s, dropped a kiss on my forehead, and told me to “be a good girl.” She waved good-bye from the passenger seat of Uncle Eddy’s Buick. It wasn’t until my father returned a month later that I realized she wasn’t coming back. And I could only blame myself.

After all, I’d told him the one thing sure to tear our family apart. I’d told my father that Uncle Eddy had slept in my mother’s bed.

Located just west of Camp Lejeune, Sweethaven had a good number of sons (and some daughters) who’d enlisted straight out of high school. Many families could claim a Devil Dog in every generation, and all could agree: Cheating spouses were the scum of the earth.

My father returned from Iraq, and I trailed him unnoticed through our house. Tight-lipped and dry-eyed, he studied his uniforms, marching in solitary formation in the empty closet. My mother had committed one last sacrilegious act before escaping. His once pristine blue dress uniforms sported gaping holes from her best sewing shears.

My father’s hand shook when he touched a brass button clinging to a jacket lapel by a single thread. I understood then the golden rule my mother had broken. You didn’t disrespect the uniform. Ever. Not in a family that could trace five generations of soldiers who had served their country. Not in a town that could claim its forefathers had thumbed their noses at the British during the American Revolution and had lost sons to each war since.

My mother’s name was not mentioned in our house after that day. And I—lovingly named Sophie Topper Quinn after my mother and my father’s half-brother, Captain Edward Topper—became Quinn at my father’s insistence. Quinn, the girl who would be better than her mother.

My father’s epic ability to freeze people out had begun with my mother. Not that she’d ever tried to come back or see us again, but he’d managed to erase her from everything except my memories. He stripped her belongings from our house, barring the few things I hid in the attic. Their wedding photos disappeared one day while I was at school, along with every other photo of her.

Later, I wondered if I really remembered her the way she looked, or if she had become a screwed-up Debra Winger/Elizabeth Taylor collage. Other times, I caught my father watching me with cold, dead eyes, and I prayed he was remembering her, that my resemblance to her made him think of her.

Because I didn’t want to believe my father hated me that much.

Especially when all of Sweethaven thought I’d become her too: the town slut cheating on her Marine.

Chapter Two

I can’t sit still, and I can’t stand to watch the news like I do every day. Men are dying and Carey’s missing, but the reporters go on and on about which country has won gold medals in the Winter Olympics.

After I finish crying, I do exactly what my father has forbidden me to do. I stuff my backpack with my camera equipment, slip on my hiking boots and winter coat, and throw my long black hair into a ponytail. I hit the front door at a run.