“One day, we’re walking to the beach and Deefur starts growling. It wasn’t the kind of growl he does when he’s playing, but the hair-raising growl and he wasn’t even a year old yet, I don’t think. A man was coming toward us and apparently Deefur didn’t like that so we followed his intuition and crossed the street. That’s when Penny noticed we were being followed. She had seen the same car a few blocks over and thought it was weird and that this hadn’t been the first time. She said the car really didn’t fit in on the base, but couldn’t pinpoint why. We chose to go home instead of the beach, which was probably for the best because Claire wasn’t feeling that well. We walked back to your house and I made sure her and Claire were inside before I drove off. I kept watching in my rearview mirror for the car, but never saw it.” Ryley looks at Evan and smiles, while he brings their hands up so he can place a kiss on hers.
“That night I called Penny to see if she wanted to go to mall the next day to buy some baby stuff, but she didn’t answer. Thinking back, I should’ve gone over there because it was late, like after nine, and she never had Claire out that late. But I thought maybe you had called her and I didn’t want to interrupt her knowing how much those calls meant to us.” Pausing, Ryley wipes away a tear, which has fallen down her cheek. I hate that I’m asking her to relive this time in her life, but I’m hoping she has a clue as to what happened to my wife.
“It was the next day that everything went to hell. Between the Chaplin coming to my door and my parents, I never called Penny and she never phoned me either. I … I didn’t think anything of it because we were grieving and I knew we’d grieve together, eventually. I never questioned that she wouldn’t be there for me. Frannie was the one who told me she had left. It was only a day or so after we got the news, I think. She said she had gone over to check on her and Claire, being that River was the team leader and all she felt it was her duty as his wife to make sure we were all okay. Now that I think about it, it should’ve been Penny or I checking on her since her and River had just gotten married, but I was wreck. I couldn’t eat or sleep and being pregnant didn’t help. Plus, my parents weren’t letting me out of their sight.
“Before Evan’s funeral, I had to meet my mom on base for some paperwork, so decided to go for a walk and I ended up in front of your house. There was absolutely no life in the house whatsoever. I could see Claire’s swing in the backyard just blowing in the wind like she was on it, but yet she wasn’t. Your neighbor came out and said that Penny had packed up and left in the middle of the night, which I just couldn’t believe. I wish I had asked her when she left exactly, but I assumed it was when she had been told that you died. I tried to call her, but her phone had been disconnected.
“The house—” She stops and shakes her head. “Oh, the house looked nothing like the home you and Penny had created. I tried the door, hoping that the neighbor was wrong, but as soon as I stepped in I knew Penny had left. I could tell a few of the pictures were gone, their frames lay haphazardly on the floor, but all your furniture was still there. It looked like a few of Claire’s toys and clothes were gone, as well as some of Penny’s things. I had told your neighbor that I would be back to finish cleaning it out, thinking I’d put everything in our garage until she came back, but when Nate and I went back over with boxes, the house had been emptied and a new family was about to move in. It hadn’t been a day or so after the funerals. The Navy wasted no time getting your stuff out of there.
“Some weeks later I had voiced my concerns to Nate about Penny and Claire and how I found it odd that we buried you, but she wasn’t there. My mom also looked into a few things and noticed that your pension and death benefit hadn’t been touched, which I also found odd. I mean, why leave if you don’t take the money? That’s when I went down to the police station and tried to file the report, but they told me wives disappear all the time and more so when married to SEALs because the guys are never home. The officer wouldn’t listen when I said Penny wouldn’t do that and she loved you wholeheartedly. I brought up the guy who we saw that Deefur didn’t like and the car, but he dismissed my claims saying that I’d probably been seeing things because of my mental state after losing Evan, even though I argued it had happened before.”
Ryley takes a few more tissues out of the box and dabs her eyes, smearing her make-up in the process. I look to Evan for some guidance, who nods, encouraging me to continue.
“Did you ever see the car again, the one that had been following you? Do you remember what it looked like?”
Taking a deep breath, Ryley shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I did. There were a lot of cars on my block after we got the news. At the time, I thought it was the press, but there was only one article about you guys dying. No one ever brought it up again. And thinking back now—I was probably followed more times than I know. Shit was weird. The street was busier. The phone would ring, but it’d be dead air or hang-ups. I told Nate that I thought the phone calls were you,” she pauses and looks at Evan, “trying to tell me you were alive, but he said you were gone and I needed to accept that.”
“Of course he did,” Evan mutters, earning a stern look from Ryley. Evan knows that Nate holds a special place in Ryley’s heart, and she hates when he badmouths his brother.
“Were you trying to call?” she asks sternly.
“No.”