breath.
“Seriously, it’s time for you to go back,” Parker repeated as Garrett sat across the table from her not saying anything.
He gently set his fork down next to his plate and looked at her face, studying it to see if she was serious.
“I still have another two weeks before I need to go back, don’t worry.”
Parker sighed in exasperation.
“I’m not worried about your time off. I’m worried about you. You’re going insane sitting around here day in and day out.”
Garrett shook his head and tried to laugh it off, but Parker knew him too well.
“You need to move on too, Garrett,” she told him softly. “I’m not the only one who lost someone. I know your work is therapy to you. It clears your head and you love doing it. I’m not going to let you put your life on hold any more for me. I’m going to be okay. It’s time for you to go.”
As much as it pained Garrett to leave Parker, he knew she was right. Neither one of them could move on if they were sitting around her house lost in memories.
Two days later, Garrett went back to work.
An hour into his day and he was still busy going through the emails he missed while he’d been out when a Navy messenger came up to his desk and set down a bin full of mail.
Garrett looked up from what he’d been doing with a confused look on his face.
“That can’t all be mine. I’ve only been out for a few weeks.”
Garrett stood up and pulled the bin toward him and glanced inside.
“Actually, sir, some of it is yours and the rest is Lieutenant JG Roberts’. The receptionist thought you’d know what to do with his things.”
Garrett thanked the man and started leafing through the envelopes. Most of it was interoffice Navy mail: forms, letters, and other paperwork that went back and forth between Navy offices on a daily basis. Garrett piled those things off to the side so he could look at them later and see who they should be sent to or which ones he could file himself.
He flipped quickly through the mail, nothing urgent catching his eye until a white envelope stuck out like a sore thumb in the middle of all the manila-colored interoffice ones. Garrett pulled that out of the stack and was confused when he saw it was a cell phone bill for Milo from T-Mobile. Garrett knew for a fact that Milo had Verizon, just like he and Parker did because they all shared the same Family Share plan.
After a quick phone call to Parker to confirm that Milo did indeed still have the same phone and plan before he left, Garrett tore into the envelope. He didn’t recognize the cell phone number listed at the top of the bill and briefly wondered if maybe the Navy had given Milo a phone for work-related purposes. That didn’t make any sense, though, since Garrett, Milo’s superior, would have had first-hand knowledge of this information and would have been required to sign off on the expense.
Garrett scanned through the bill, noting that every phone call Milo made or received was to the same phone number with an 809 area code. After a quick Google search, Garrett found out that area code belonged to the Dominican Republic. According to this bill, Milo had been receiving or making at least twenty phone calls every single day the month before he left on his mission.
Garrett double-checked the date on the bill, wondering why it was just now being delivered since it was dated four months ago.
He picked up the phone at his desk and called customer service. After fifteen minutes on hold, and being passed around to countless people, he finally found someone who could help him.
“I’m just trying to figure out if this account was set up as a business account,” Garrett explained to the operator.
He heard the sound of typing keys through the line and waited.
“It looks like that account was opened by a third party and it is classified as personal.”
Garrett had no idea why Milo would ever need a second personal phone.
“Can you