Chapter Five: Ryder
The flight from Mosul to Reagan International took almost twenty-one hours with brief layovers in Istanbul and London. I managed to get Quinn on the sat-phone while I was on the ground in London, but the only thing he could tell me was that Bethany was dead, and I already fucking knew that. He said he’d be waiting for me at baggage claim when the plane landed tomorrow morning around 7 A.M. DC time, and he’d tell me everything then. There was nothing I could do but say okay and hang up the phone.
After flying out of London, I spent most of the next nine hours staring out the window at the ocean 39,000 feet below without really focusing on anything in particular. All I could think about was Bethany and the short time we had spent together. And how much of that time we’d spent apart or fighting because of my job.
I met Bethany McDonald in the summer of 2009 in a dive bar outside of Coronado, California, where I had just completed twenty-four-weeks of SEAL training. She was a bright-eyed, twenty-one-year-old marketing major at UCLA and I was a cynical twenty-six-year-old Naval Academy grad who was ready to take on the world and all the big bad motherfuckers who made it a dangerous place to be. When we met, I was two weeks away from heading to the Middle East on my first SEAL team deployment, so I certainly was not looking to fall in love. That said, I was always looking forward to get laid.
She was incredibly cute and sexy and full of life, wearing a lime green bikini top and cutoff jeans and flip flops. Her skin was baked to a golden brown and she smelled like sweat and coconut oil. Her dark hair was cut short and tucked behind her ears and her eyes were as blue as the ocean at dusk.
I was young and cocky and full of testosterone and so goddamn sure of myself that my first words to her were, “Hey, beautiful, why don’t we go find a place to fuck?”
I know. It was a douchebag move. To my relief, Bethany didn’t punch me in the nose and storm off with her friends. She cracked up laughing and my ego quickly deflated. Rather than telling me to go fuck myself, she told me to cut the bullshit and buy her a drink. We spent the rest of the night laughing and drinking and flirting like two teenagers at a summer dance.
She didn’t leave with me that night or the next, but on the third night we got shitfaced on dollar beer and Jägermeister shots and spent the night naked on the beach, fucking until we couldn’t keep our eyes open.
A few days later I shipped out, but we stayed in touch and a long-distance romance blossomed. In the summer of 2010, we got married in Hawaii while I was on a three-week furlough. Quinn Blackstone was my best man and Bethany’s sister Emily was her maid of honor. We settled in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of DC. Bethany’s family was from an area called Fall’s Church south of Arlington. It was a good move because I had another three years to serve and was going to be gone a lot given the situation in the Middle East. It was nice that Bethany had family nearby, especially after she gave birth to our son Cody in March of 2012.
Our marriage was solid enough to sustain my long tours of duty, at least I thought so at the time. Bethany knew that I was a SEAL. She knew what she was signing up for. She and Cody had their life in Arlington and I was glad to be a part of it when I was home. The rest of the time, I was a SEAL, period, end of story. I went where I was assigned and did what I was ordered to do. The SEALs came first, my family second. Like I said, Bethany knew it going in and rarely complained. Until a year or so ago, when my absence suddenly seemed to become a very big deal.
“Your son doesn’t even know you, Ben,” she snapped as I sat slumped in the recliner trying to watch a ball game despite the psychotic woman who was hovering over me telling me what a shit dad and husband I’d become. “Even when you’re here, you’re not really here. Ben? Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Bethany, I’m listening to you,” I said with a sigh. “It’s impossible not to.” Funny, I’m not afraid of any man and have never run from a fight. But Bethany, who was half my body weight and six inches shorter, could beat me into the ground with just her words. I fucking hated her for it. I’d have rather be in fucking Iraq fighting the Taliban than sitting in our living room listening to her lecture me.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” she asked, her voice cracking, her hands waving in the air.
I turned off the TV and set the remote on the table next to the chair. I forced myself to breathe slowly and did my best to remain calm. Cody was barely three then. He was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa playing with Legos and ignoring us. It was a sad fact, he had already learned to drown out his parents when they were going to war. I didn’t learn that skill until I was in my teens. I looked up at her and held out my hands.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to fucking stay home!” she said, screaming in a whisper, incredulous that I even had to ask.
“You want me to muster out of the SEALs?” I asked, knowing full well the answer but dreading it nonetheless. She had made it crystal clear numerous times lately that she was tired of being a single parent. And four years of being married to a SEAL was all she was willing to take. My enlistment would be up in a couple of months and I could muster out or re-up for another two years, with most of that time spent in Iraq or Afghanistan. I knew what she wanted me to do. I just wanted to hear her say it so I could throw it back in her face later on.
She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “Yes, I want you to muster out of the fucking SEALs and become a part of this family.”
“And do what for a living?” I asked. I had always prided myself on keeping cool when things got tense. It was a skill that had served me well in the field. But at that moment, I could hear the anger creeping into my voice. Bethany heard it, too. It seemed to drive her forward, knowing that she was getting under my skin and pushing my buttons.
“Do whatever you want,” she said. “You have a degree in history, for Christ sake. Teach or write or go back to school and get some other degree.”
“I’m too fucking old to go back to school,” I grumbled.
“Then go to work for Quinn,” she said, huffing at me. “For the life of me, I don’t understand why you didn’t go into business with him when he asked you to. We’d be sitting on easy street now.”
Quinn had mustered out of the SEALs and started his private security business a year earlier and was already making ten times the money I was.
“I know, Bethany, you remind me of that fact every chance you get,” I said, blowing out my cheeks and rolling my eyes at her. “I could not have gone into business with Quinn because I was still active duty, remember?”
“Quinn would have given you time to muster out,” she said. “All you had to do was ask.”
“Bullshit,” I snorted. “Quinn’s not my fucking keeper, Bethany. And neither are you.” I regretted saying it immediately. I was doing a lousy job of pleading my case. It would have helped if I’d known what I really wanted to do with my life. Bethany somehow sensed my indecision. She folded her arms over her chest and pushed her eyebrows up.
“Do you care more about the fucking SEALs than you do your family, Ben? Be honest with me. You owe me that much.”
I probably answered a little too quickly to sound convincing. “No, of course not.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Then choose.”
I stared up at her. “Pardon me?”
“Choose.”
“Choose?”
“Choose. The SEALs or your family.”
I slumped back in the recliner and took a deep breath. Sad to say it now, but I almost told her to go fuck herself. How dare she ask me to choose between the two things I loved the most; the SEALs or my family. Fuck the SEALS were my family. I felt more at home with my SEAL team than I did with her and Cody. My team knew me inside and out. They loved and respected me without judgment or reservation. They understood me and never questioned my motives. They had my back regardless of the situation and would never ask me to choose between the things that I loved the most.
“Well, Ben? What’s it going to be?” I felt the heat from her eyes. Little beads of sweat broke out on my upper lip. She lifted her chin to stare down her nose at me. By this time, Cody had wondered over and was holding out his arms so I’d lift him up to sit with me in the chair. Bethany took it as the opportunity to drive the knife fully into my chest.
“Are you going to choose the SEALs over your little boy?”
“Daddy?” Cody had Bethany’s dark hair and eyes. When he smiled, his eyes closed behind his chubby cheeks and his entire face lit up. He patted my cheeks between his hands and gave me a loud, wet kiss on the chin.
“I choose you,” I said, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him close. I looked up at Bethany and held out a hand. “And I choose you.”
Bethany stared at my hand for a moment, as if she were debating on whether to keep the argument going or to let me off the hook. We both knew the argument wasn’t finished. Bethany wouldn’t accept my promise that easily. Finally, her eyes softened and she took my hand. She told me she loved me, though it sounded forced, like something she thought she was supposed to say rather than how she really felt. I told her that I loved her back just as convincingly.
Two months later, I mustered out of the SEALs and went to work for Quinn as a private security consultant. I still had to travel a lot, but I wasn’t gone from home nearly as much. Things seemed fine for a few months, then things started to change. Bethany seemed to grow distant, cold, uncaring. We didn’t argue anymore, but we didn’t talk much either.
We also stopped fucking, which should have told me something was up because Bethany always loved sex as much as I did. It bothered me at first, especially on those nights when she’d make an excuse not to fuck me and I’d have to jack off in the bathroom or go to sleep with a boner in my boxers. But then the boners magically stopped coming, as if some release valve in my balls had been turned off to keep the pressure from building in my cock. I started to lose interest in her, just as she seemed to have lost interest in me.
Then Quinn asked if I wanted to go to Mosul for three months to replace a guy who had gotten hurt by a roadside IED. The assignment paid twice my normal salary with a ten-grand bonus when I got back. Given the state of things at home, I told him I’d go. When I told Bethany I was leaving for three months, she didn’t bat an eye. She just said, “Do what you have to do, Ben” and let it go at that. Again, I could not see the red flag that was waving right in front of my eyes.
I shipped out for Mosul the following week. While I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, waiting on the car to take me to the airport, Bethany dropped the divorce hammer squarely on top of my head.
I didn’t even bother to argue.
It was over.
We both knew it.
There was nothing left to do but divide up our shit and sign on the dotted line.
That was two months ago.
And now Bethany was dead.
And I had no fucking idea what to do next.