Page 113 of If This is Love

“It’s more like…” She sniffled and dabbed below her eyes with the side of her finger. “We all knew something awful happened to him over there. We had a pretty good idea ofapproximatelywhat happened.” She shook her head and met my gaze again. “We didn’t know the half of it. It just makes me sad to get a glimpse of how much hurt a man like him carries. And I just think…” She gave a haphazard shrug. “I think he’s angry at himself for what happened between y’all a couple weeks ago, and I honestly think this is his way of explaining himself. So think about watching it when you get home or something.”

I gave her sad smile. “I absolutely will watch it.” I gestured at the dress. “You want me to help you all the way out of that so I can hang it up for you?”

“Oh no, no, no, don’t worry about that, Ruth,” she said, waving her one free hand while holding up the dress with her other. “I’ve got it.” She shooed me. “Go look for a dress. Maybe try royal purple. Purple really brings out your eyes.”

I squeezed the side of her shoulder, smiling again as I stepped out of the dressing room. I was heading straight for the exit of the hallway and the many racks of gowns, but I stopped mid-stride.

I suddenly had no interest in looking for a dress at all, but I stepped right into the closest fitting room to me. Locking the door, I sat down on the bench and pulled out my phone. I clicked on the link, and there he was.

He was sitting on a porch, and his beard was twice as thick as when I last saw him, and I felt that same strange pull in my chest. The one I felt right before I walked down the aisle toward Michael and also felt on the first day I met Gabe. The one that felt like my heart was lurching forward like it was reaching for him.

I wanted to cry all over again.

“For this mission to be successful, I had to take a step away from it. My team deserves that explanation. So do the administrators. So do the women we’re serving,” Gabe was saying after a brief introduction. “So, here’s my story.”

His shoulders lifted and fell as he took a deep breath, and he did that one-eye squint that made me weak. “During my time in the Corps, I did four deployments. My last one was during a weird time in terms of not only what was going on in Iraq and neighboring countries, but also in the middle of changes in what our objective was over there. So I ended up in an area of Iraq, not really by accident, but more as a result of trying to deal with sh—uhhh… stuffthat was going on that nobody had planned for. A lot of it was just reacting to circumstances we found ourselves in because nobody higher up knew exactly what was going on and they weren’t finding out about it fast enough. For about a half a year, it was like herding cats and blocking sucker punches. And eventually my whole team got ambushed and scattered.

“We’d come across a forward operating base that was mostly abandoned but still had some supplies, and that’s where they got us. Came out of the woodwork like cockroaches.” He paused, rubbing his beard as he stared beyond the camera. “Took out about three-quarters of my men, injured nearly everyone else, and we were just stranded. So those of us who were still able to walk went out in all directions to try to find something.” Gabe hitched both shoulders. “Didn’t find a damn thing, but they kept picking us off any time we strayed from our FOB, and eventually it was just me. I was the only one left. Stranded in the middle of the damn desert with little to no supplies of any kind. The only radio was in sad shape, but fixable if I could figure outhow.”

He waved his hand. “Anyway, it was dire, and I was the only survivor from my whole team of guys. And all I could do was work on this busted-up radio and try to figure out where I was on the map. Eventually, I figured out where I was and saw that there was a village nearby. I went out after dark one night to scope it out, and that was… that was when…”

He paused for an extended moment, rubbing his beard contemplatively and staring far ahead of him.

“That was when I found them,” he finally said. “All these ladies and girls who were as young as nine or ten years old, and it was just…” He rubbed his eyes. “What I found in that village was a friggin’ crime against humanity.” He swallowed again. “They’d turned this village into some kind of twisted prison system. The buildings and homes had been turned into holding cells. And they were all full of women and little girls. They were all emaciated and injured and they all had this look in their eyes like—”

He stopped short, and I could see his silent, yet rapid breathing, but he gave his head a small shake and appeared to come back again.

“A few of them spoke English,” he went on. “They did their best to explain what happened to them. The men had all been murdered. The village functioned like a depot for transporting the women and girls. They were taken away, and others would arrive, and ones who had been gone returned, so on and so forth. They begged me to save them, but there wasn’t anything I could do for them. I was separated from everyone and everything except the abandoned FOB, militants who had picked off every last one of my men, and these ladies pleading for me to save them. I couldn’t make them understand why I was powerless to help them. I couldn’t do anything for them beyond coming by with MREs and first aid supplies that I found at the FOB. These were the most forgotten people I’ve ever seen in my life, and they were suffering. And then one night I came by with MREs, and none of them were hungry. Biggest red flag imaginable.”

“Ruth!” Chloe called my name from somewhere in the dressing room hallway. “Are you in here?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m right here,” I said, my voice a little shaky as I smashed my thumb on the screen to pause the video.

“Did you want to show us the dress?”

“Oh… um, no,” I said, hating myself a little for lying and then redirecting my thoughts to something more positive. Like how Ineededa few more minutes to watch the rest of the video for my own self-care. “I don’t like the fit of this one at all, so I’m going to try again. I’ll meet y’all back out there when I find a good one.”

“Okay, no rush!” she chirped back to me.

I let out a sharp puff of air as I exhaled and immediately hit play on the video.

“They’d been forced to…” He paused, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. “Just basically something happened to them that caused food to repulse them. I can’t speak the words. It was bad enough that it was worse than what else I’m fixing to tell you about them. I’ve never been able to speak about some of this stuff, and I guess some of it, I just never will. I haven’t really talked about this before, but I felt like it was the right thing to do because of who Destination Destiny is trying to serve. These women deserved to be freed from these slimeballs, and I couldn’t even…”

His words slowly dried up, and his eyes washed over with sadness. He stared blankly at the bottom left corner of the camera and simply sat for a long stretch. At least thirty seconds or so, and I drew the phone closer to my face as if I could comfort him through the screen.

Gabe blinked himself back from wherever he’d gone in his mind. “Anyway, after they told me what was done to them, I knew the scumbags holding them hostage had had eyes on me this whole time, just watching and waiting. It felt like I was being hunted, and the terrified, traumatized ladies and girls were just bait. The whole thing was suddenly pointless and completely set up for failure. I was cornered, and I needed to just get out however I could as soon as possible. I needed to get the radio working. Not getting it working just wasn’t an option. So yeah, as much as I hate to admit it, I made the choice in that moment of realization that I couldn’t save these ladies. I would die saving them, and I had family that needed me alive. So I retreated.”

Gabe paused again, methodically rubbing his fingertips up and down his bearded cheek, his eyes looking far away.

“And not even a whole second after I made that decision, an explosion went off right next to me, and I was out. I don’t even know what exploded, I just know it was loud enough that it’s miraculous I’m not deaf now. I came to, and it was light out. Early enough in the day that it was still a little chilly. And something didn’t smell right. I can’t and won’t describe it, but it was bad, and when I managed to sit up, I saw that it was just the smell of carnage. I basically woke up to the aftermath of a slaughter. I stood up, and this kid shouts from behind me, so I turned. And about fifty yards or so from me there was a kid. A teenage boy. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen or something. And he had six little girls lined up next to him. And I was suddenly in a position where I had to make a choice.”

“Oh God, no,” I murmured to the screen, heart aching something fierce—sofierce that between it and everything he was saying, I didn’t even notice tears were spilling out of my eyes until they started dripping off my chin.

Gabe sucked in a breath and exhaled loudly, then continued, “This kid barely spoke English, but he basically communicated that the rest of the girls that I’d been feeding were about to die unless I shot him first. That’s basically what he said. And I didnotwant to kill this kid. He was armed with firearms and explosives, and I would’ve been within my rights to take him out because of the threat he clearly was. But he reminded me too much of my baby brother, and I just froze up. Then this kid looked me square in the eye and said, ‘You have chosen, and you choose to relive this moment for the rest of your days.’” Gabe hitched his shoulders and let them fall. “The blast came. I was on my back again. And however many years later, he wasn’t friggin’ wrong.”

He looked away from the camera and covered his face with his hand for a few seconds.

“So,” he said from behind his palm and then uncovered his face, “I’ve had this guilt hanging over my head for a while. It’s why I wanted to be a part of Destination Destiny. The trouble is that kid’s last words weren’t wrong, and too much of my baggage kept rearing its ugly head. So I had to pull back from being involved, but I’ve been in regular communication with the foreman who took my place, and I’m really happy with the way the facilities are turning out. Specifically, the place of worship for women of the Yazidi faith. We sat down and spoke with a couple of ladies from where I was stationed in Iraq, and they helped us make it as authentic and peaceful as possible. And even though I had to back out before we finished, being part of getting everything off the ground and meeting everyone involved has done some good for me. It all just got to be too much for me, and the sad fact about this is I’m still having a hard time coming to terms with a lot of that, and it just started to hit a little too close to home.”

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