Chapter 4 - The Decision Neither Man Wanted To Own
Pierce asked Adam to leave the facility.
Adam refused.
I expected shouting.
Instead Adam said:
“If Rachel wants me gone, I go.”
Pierce looked at me.
I hated that too.
Both men still trying to put the decision into somebody else’s hands.
“You’re both staying for ten minutes.”
Adam almost smiled.
Pierce did not.
We sat in an empty classroom beside the gym.
No trainees.
No Mercer.
No audience.
I put my phone on the table.
“Ten minutes.”
Adam frowned.
“Why?”
“Because if this turns into nine years of biography, I’m leaving.”
Pierce looked at Adam.
“Sounds like you.”
Adam laughed bitterly.
“You haven’t known me in nine years.”
“Start.”
I pointed at Pierce.
He did.
Adam Pierce had been twenty-nine when they stopped speaking.
A senior instructor.
Good record.
Selected for an advanced certification course that could have changed the rest of his career.
His mother—Ellen Pierce—was sick.
Not dying.
At least that was what everyone believed when the course started.
Three weeks in, she got worse.
Adam called his father.
Not his commander.
His father.
“I told you I needed to come home.”
Pierce nodded.
“Yes.”
“You said submit the request.”
“Yes.”
“You could have made one phone call.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Pierce looked directly at him.
“Because I wanted the decision to be yours.”
Adam laughed.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“Your favorite sentence.”
I asked:
“What decision?”
Adam looked at me.
“If Nolan called my command, I was the Senior Chief’s son whose father pulled strings.”
Pierce said:
“You were my son either way.”
“That was easy for you.”
“You asked me to use my rank.”
“I asked my father to help me get home.”
“You asked me to make the choice so you wouldn’t have to ask your own chain.”
Adam stood.
I stopped him.
“Sit.”
He looked at me.
Then did.
Pierce continued.
“I told him if he submitted the request, I would support it.”
Adam stared at the table.
“I didn’t.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
“Because the course mattered.”
There it was.
Adam had wanted to go home.
He had also wanted the certification.
He did not want to be the man who chose career while his mother was sick.
So he asked Nolan to create the decision for him.
Pierce refused.
Pierce had his own reason.
“Why didn’t you just call as his father?”
I asked.
He looked down.
“Because Ellen had spent twenty-nine years accusing me of fixing every hard thing for him.”
Adam’s eyes lifted.
Pierce continued.
“She said if Adam wanted to come home, he needed to come home because he chose her. Not because I made the military choose for him.”
Adam looked furious.
“Do not put this on Mom.”
“I’m not.”
“You always do that.”
“I told you I would support your request.”
“You knew I couldn’t ask without wondering whether I had just thrown away the course.”
“Yes.”
“You were my father.”
“Yes.”
“You were supposed to tell me which thing mattered more.”
Pierce’s answer came quietly.
“I didn’t know.”
That shut Adam up.
Not because it satisfied him.
Because it was the first time his father had apparently said it.
Pierce continued.
“I thought we had months.”
They had five days.
Ellen suffered a sudden complication.
Adam made it home fourteen hours after she died.
He had finished the course.
Passed.
Top three.
He never collected the certificate.
Two days after the funeral, he walked into the same kind of training gym where I had met Mercer.
Pierce was there.
Adam threw his instructor gloves onto the mat.
Told his father:
“You wanted me to choose. Congratulations.”
Then resigned from the instructor track.
Changed his professional name to his mother’s maiden name.
Vale.
“What did you do?”
I asked Pierce.
“I let him leave.”
Adam laughed.
“You did more than that.”
Pierce’s jaw tightened.
“What?”
I asked.
Adam looked at me.
“He told me if I walked away because I was angry, I shouldn’t expect him to use his name to bring me back.”
Pierce nodded.
“I said it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was angry too.”
“About Mom?”
“About being asked to take responsibility for a decision you wouldn’t make.”
Adam’s face hardened.
“You just lost your wife.”
“And I was watching my son make her death entirely about whether I had failed him.”
That landed hard enough that I looked away.
Adam did not.
Good.
Pierce continued.
“I should never have said it.”
“No.”
“I meant it for about thirty seconds.”
“You let it stand for nine years.”
Pierce had no answer.
I looked at Adam.
“And you?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you call him?”
His mouth tightened.
“He told me not to come back.”
“That’s not what he said.”
Adam stared.
I continued.
“He told you not to expect his name to bring you back.”
“He was my father.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And you changed your name.”
Silence.
Adam looked down.
There.
Not just Nolan pushing him away.
Adam making sure there was less road back.
I asked:
“Did you want him to chase you?”
Adam’s face changed.
That was answer enough.
Pierce looked at him.
For the first time, he seemed to understand something new.
Adam laughed without humor.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re suddenly allowed to feel better.”
Pierce looked down.
Good.
Adam continued.
“Yes.”
He looked at me.
“I wanted him to come after me.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because then it wouldn’t count.”
There it was.
Two adults.
One wanted the other to choose family without being asked.
The other wanted his father to bring him back without being invited.
Both waited for the decision to come from someone else because then neither had to live with what choosing meant.
Ellen died while they were waiting.
The relationship died slower.
I looked at both of them.
“And today?”
Neither spoke.
“Adam, you wanted to face him.”
“Yes.”
“But you used my technique to make him start it.”
“Yes.”
“Pierce, you wanted to know whether Adam was turning my training into a performance.”
“Yes.”
“So you told Mercer to test me without telling me.”
“Yes.”
I leaned back.
“Congratulations.”
Pierce frowned.
“For what?”
“You’re still doing the exact same thing.”
May you like
Nine years later, neither man had learned how to walk directly into the decision he wanted.
They just found new people to carry it.
