A couple airmen from my squadron said, “Everyone knows she’s gay and some people have a big problem with it.” They’d seen the first message in Egypt, the one in the dust on my car. Shouldn’t have been a surprise. The car had been parked right where everyone smoked outside the operations center. But I’d been too busy hoping no one had seen the writing to ask if anyone had.

Another roommate said, “She never always locked anything. She’s a slob. Sometimes her CDs are in the house because she never sleeps and she listens to music late at night. All she ever talked about was leaving this base. Do you know how much it sucks here?”

   The lab guy said, “The DNA test on the hair they found on the rag was inconclusive.”

Gary said, “The results I have here say it’s not a match.”

“Well, yeah,” the guy said. “That’s what I said.”

Mom took the stand and told them how many countries I’d lived in and maybe I wasn’t a liar when I said I’ve been there. She said, “When things go really wrong, Lauren gets quiet or tries to make it a joke. If she needed money, she would’ve asked me. She knows she can.”

It was strange watching my mom on the witness stand. She didn’t look at me. But she was defending me. And I wondered then why she hadn’t before, when I was younger, when I needed her to protect me. I flashed through all the times I’d been in trouble, and I couldn’t remember a single time she’d spoken up. But mostly, she wasn’t even there.

* * *

—

I did like that Mom and Dad were going to dinner together every night during the trial. They weren’t fighting.

I’ve never seen The Parent Trap, but I think most kids nurse a fantasy their parents will get back together. I was no different. After Dad, Mom had married my stepdad and my stepdad was an asshole. My dad was nice. But the fun thing about being a child of divorce is you’re half of both parents. And both sides of you are tired of the other’s shit. My dad was forgetful and so laid back he seemed stoned. My mom’s baseline anxiety level is “just saw a spider.” Still, I was glad they’d have each other because I’d decided, if convicted, I wasn’t going to prison.

Even before you get the verdict, the military makes you prepare to be locked up. You have to box up your belongings for storage. You’re given a list of what you’re required to take—five white T-shirts, five black T-shirts, one white towel, five pairs of socks, five white sports bras, one bar of soap, and so on. So after I packed up my room, I borrowed Dad’s rental car and drove to Walmart, where I bought what I needed off the list. I stopped in sporting goods and contemplated the knives. They wouldn’t work—too slow. The base hospital was a five-minute walk from the courtroom.

   I dropped the car at the base hotel, gave Dad the keys and a hug. He wanted me to stay there. Just have a beer at least, he said. “Your mom wants you to call her.” I didn’t stay for a beer and I didn’t call. I knew she’d convince me to sleep in her room.

Back in my dorm room, I wrote them each a note. I didn’t say much. Just told them not to blame themselves. Told them I was sorry. I hid the note behind a painting I left on the wall because my brother painted that and I wanted to look at it some more. Everything else I owned was boxed and labeled for storage. I put on my blues, made sure my ribbon rack was straight, and shoved the gun under my service jacket, under my belt at the small of my back. I checked the mirror. You couldn’t tell. I took it out again and sat down to wait for the morning.

I sat there on my bare mattress all night, and all night I tried to talk myself out of it. It was only ten years. Maybe I wouldn’t get the full ten. I couldn’t do it in front of my mom: How do you make your mom watch you die? But what if they cuffed me right away? My dad would be there, and maybe he or someone else would know and cover her eyes. I’d have to be fast. The sentence was only ten years, and I could take ten years. I’d be thirty-three when I got out. That wasn’t so old. I stared at the painting and wanted to call my brother. I wouldn’t tell him. But if I did, I knew he wouldn’t try to talk me out of it. He’d just talk. And say all the wrong things and all the right things that only my brother can say. I’d hang up the phone, and I wouldn’t want to die more than I wanted to live in a cell. But I didn’t call.

   We sat in the courtroom and waited for the jury to decide my fate—my parents, my lawyers, a few of the airmen who’d testified for me—talking about nothing. The roommate who called me a slob said he was secure enough to admit Ricky Martin was damn sexy. My new sergeant said, “Your mom’s got presence. Like Jackie O, with balls of steel.” I appreciated that they were trying to break the tension, but all I could think of was whether or not I’d be able to do it.

When they said not guilty and my mom started crying, I cried too. And then I started laughing. I knew people were looking at me, the jurors questioning their verdict. Who laughs? Who goes through a trial and then fucking laughs? Maybe people who have grown up in cults laugh. Of course they didn’t know that. But I laughed. Maybe it was just how the tension fell out of me, maybe because I’d get to live because that one time, maybe the only time in my life, my parents stood up for me.

* * *

—