Page 1 of Families and Other Enemies

CHAPTER ONE

You can pickyour friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your family.

THAT’SONEOFthose interesting universal truths that gets quoted a lot in the Army on overseas assignments. Because everyone misses their family. But it’s not their family who has their back, who will be with them under fire and volunteer to help them scout out the enemy. Friends, comrades-in-arms—in combat, they have greater impact than family. They become more to you than your blood kin.

You get back home, and your family, the people who knew you growing up, are aliens to you because they never experienced what you experienced, likely never fired an automatic weapon, never lobbed a grenade, never took on enemy fire on a cold, dark road in the Afghan mountains. They don’t understand why you flinch when the campfire pops or stay awake all night to avoid confronting nightmares of screams and death and murdered friendships.

Most of the time, they don’t want to know. They want to tell you about the harrowing time they were barreling down a ski slope and broke a ski, or someone backed into them in the Safeway parking lot and their insurance got stuck for it, or they dropped a boulder on Grandpa’s fledgling walnut tree and it lived, anyway. They think they’re sharing the kinds of ordeals a soldier faces in combat. Bless their hearts. They’re sure not listening.

Take me. When I came back to the States after six years in the Army, here and abroad, I had one living relative I hadn’t seen for eight years, and I had no desire to go see Aunt Cora Rae. For one thing...

I hate to start this so soon, but this is where it gets complicated.

My real name is Cecilia Adams. When I was a kid, my parents were killed (you can already see why I’m twitchy about family, right?) and I went to live with my aunt and uncle and my cousin, Kellen. My uncle was a busy, important man, and he left the care of the children to his wife, Cora Rae. Aunt Cora was a good woman who did her Christian duty, but never in all the years I lived with her was I moved to run to her and hug her in joy or affection. To be fair, I never saw Kellen hug her like that, either, and Kellen was her very own daughter. So I had mixed feelings about Aunt Cora.

I graduated from high school, got a car and drove all by myself across the United States to Maine where I met and married a man twice my age.

Here’s the thing. I was young, and I was stupid. I made a mistake. But no matter how young a person is, no matter how many protestations a person makes about “I didn’t know” and “How was I to guess?” that same person still has to live with the consequences. Forever.

My husband was an abuser. My cousin, Kellen, came to rescue me—and my husband would kill me and himself before he’d let that happen. And because my cousin and I resembled each other and he was a crazy bastard, he accidentally killed her instead of me. Thank God he was just as successful in killing himself and that mostly got me out of a bad marriage. Mostly.

Naturally, I confessed all to the cops and the media...

Kidding! No, I didn’t.

See that part earlier about young, stupid and mistakes.

I took Kellen’s identification and pretended to be her. Got away with it, too, all the way through living in her apartment, living in the street, living with a really good guy, getting shot in the head (don’t ask), dealing with a serious case of amnesia (bullet in the brain, duh, can’t remember a year of my life, have some quirks about how I remember stuff, how I catalog people, etc.) and enlisting in the military.

For all intents and purposes, Cecilia died by her husband’s hand, and I am Kellen Adams. I am Kellen Adams, the soldier, the captain. I am Kellen Adams, the assistant resort manager. I am Kellen Adams, the woman who damn near got killed twice capturing a smuggler and paying for past sins.

All that’s nothing compared to what’s happening now. I have a family I never suspected, a child I never knew, and—don’t tell anyone—I’m afraid.

I am not fit for this duty.

I am not prepared for this duty.

So I’m going back to my roots.

I’m going to go visit Aunt Cora.

It’s time.

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