A Spouse's Secret

I can’t believe that it has already been a month since they came to see me. Seeing all of Donovan’s things in this box just reminds me more of him and that day. I remember it like it just happened.

*knock* *knock* *knock*

“Hello.”

“Good morning ma’am. We need to speak with Mrs. Faith Duncan.”

“I am her. What is going on?”

“The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret…”

“No. No no no.”

“...that your husband, Charles was killed in action in the Nawa-I-Barakzayi District of Afghanistan on February 28. He was killed in an ambush during a routine operation The commandant extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss."

The package with all of his personal belongings arrived this morning and I just keep staring at everything inside. His favorite book, a deck of cards, the watch I gave him the Christmas before his last deployment, his journal, and everything else. It all just reminds me that I will never see him again.

When he first deployed, we knew that this was a possibility, so we married right before he left. Still, that was two tours ago and I just put that thought of that happening out of my mind. Why live in fear, you know? Especially when he would finally make it home on leave and tell me all about how he was doing. He would always talk about how they were almost never in any serious danger and that the combat they did see was mostly controlled. Mostly, he talked about his squad and how they were also so close. The last time he came home, he introduced me to one of them, Corporal Johnson I believe, but Don just called him by his first name. I can’t seem to remember what his name was. Maybe he wrote the name down in his journal.

Don’s Journal was a gift from his mother before he went on his first deployment and he always had it with him ever since. He always used it to keep track of everything that he did just to help him stay organized. Since we first started dating, he would always forget the smallest details, so he tried to write stuff down. I remember the first time I went to his house, I saw the calendar he kept on the desk in his room and it was a mess. Every day filled with so many things just to be sure he would not forget. Instead of wanting a planner for a deployment gift, he told his mother that he would rather have the journal because it was smaller.

His little black book was definitely smaller than any planner would have been, but I am honestly surprised he could ever reading anything in here. Every page has started to look like a jumbled mess, but I guess that makes sense given that he has used the same one for almost a decade. Each page is written on over and over again until there is almost no space left on the page.

I think I found the page with his squadmates on it. I found it! His first name was Sam.

Corporal Sam Johnson, United States Marine Corps. Sam was nice when I met him, but he did not really talk much during his time at our house. He ate dinner with me and Donovan, then he and Don spent the night in the backyard looking at the tree that Donovan had planted the morning before. After that, Sam slept on the couch and was gone in the morning before I woke up. Don said that Sam meant to say goodbye, but he had to get back to his family down south.

It is a shame too because I feel like our son Eric would have loved to meet someone who served with his dad. I mean, he met some of them briefly at the funeral, but they pretty much came and went, only staying long enough for the service and to offer their condolences. I assume they would not have been able to stay long given that they were on a short-notice leave in the first place, but given the way Don spoke about all of them and the way Sam spoke about him during his stay, I figured they would have said more to me and Eric. It was not a huge issue because we were probably better off grieving as a family anyway. There is not really a good to help a six-year-old grieve the loss of his father.

Maybe there is something that Don wrote down in his journal that I can share with Eric on his birthday. Some words to remember his father by or something. That is probably easier said than done given how much of a mess his writing is. At least there are some sketches on these pages to help break up the overlapping words, but even the pictures do not make much sense.

Although there is one picture here that stands out from the rest because it looks so familiar. It kinda reminds me of the tree in the backyard, except there is this little spot next to the tree where he left space between the picture and any other words. Throughout this whole little black journal, it may be the only space I have seen. Maybe he was planning on adding something to it, but he never got the chance to do so. I did want to put a little flower garden out there, so maybe he left space for that. I should go outside and check out if the space he left on this drawing would be enough space to put that garden.

It does not look like there is enough space here for a flower garden since the tree roots are starting to grow this way. This one root does not appear to be growing outward like the rest of the roots. The root almost looks like it is hitting something. Maybe I should dig up the ground around it just to make sure the root is not running into to some kind of pipeline.

*ting*

Well, I think I just hit whatever it was. Let’s clear some of this dirt and see if I can see what it was. It looks almost like a tool chest, but why is it buried in our backyard. I got the tool chest out, but there is a lock on it, although given how everything else has gone, maybe there is a combination somewhere in this journal. Sure enough, there is something that looks like a lock combination a few pages away. What was so important that you went through so much effort to hide it from me, Don?

There is money in here. And jewels. And gold. It appears to be about $20,000 in cash, some more money in Middle-Eastern currencies and I do not know how much there is in jewels and gold. But why did Don have all this and why was he hiding it from me? What secret was he keeping?