Chapter 3: Rhonda
I kept my mouth shut for exactly two days.
On Tuesday, after the bus took the twins and Maddie to school and June went down for her nap, I walked across Patton Loop in my slippers and knocked on Rhonda Tate’s door.
Rhonda has lived next door for three years. Her husband retired as a command sergeant major after thirty years, and she has outlived more battalion commanders than most people have met. She runs the family readiness group like a small country. She once got a broken water heater replaced on a holiday weekend by calling the garrison commander’s wife at home.
She opened the door in her purple cardigan, took one look at my face, and said, “Coffee or something stronger?”
“Coffee.”
“Sit.”
I told her everything at her kitchen table. The text. The closet. The flag case. Twenty-one. I can’t say no to people. The motel off Route 9.
Rhonda didn’t interrupt once. When I finished she pushed her red reading glasses up into her hair.
“Okay, honey. First thing. He lied to you about almost all of that.”
I blinked.
“Not the cheating. The rest.” She held up one finger. “The Army doesn’t kick a wife and five kids out of family housing the day after the soldier messes up. You have time. Usually a lot of it.” A second finger. “There’s a regulation, six-oh-eight-ninety-nine. His commander can order him to pay family support. Not ask. Order. If he doesn’t, he’s disobeying a direct order.” A third finger. “And if he gets kicked out for hurting or threatening his family, there’s something called Transitional Compensation. The government pays the spouse and kids a monthly check for up to three years. Most wives have never heard of it, because the husbands sure aren’t going to mention it.”
I stared at her. “Why doesn’t anybody tell us this?”
“Because the men who need to be scared of it make the rules about who hears it.” She picked up her phone. “Second thing. Did he put any of that threat in writing?”
I pulled out my phone. He’d texted me Monday night from wherever he’d slept.
Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret, Jo. Think about the kids.
Rhonda read it twice. “Screenshot that. Then screenshot it again and email it to yourself. Then we’re calling Captain Ruiz at legal assistance.”
Captain Nadia Ruiz turned out to be about thirty, with a voice like a closing door. On speakerphone she walked me through it. An emergency protective order from the county court, which I could request that same day. A military protective order, which only his commander could issue, but which would bar him from the house and from contacting me. A written statement to his battalion commander with every screenshot, every date.
“Adultery is still a crime under the military code,” she said. “So is threatening a family member. Your husband’s promotion board is going to be the least of his problems.”
“And if he loses everything,” I said, “do the kids lose everything too?”
The line was quiet for a second.
“Not if we do this right,” Ruiz said. “That’s what the support order and Transitional Compensation are for. The Army doesn’t love it when a soldier’s kids end up in a motel. It looks bad. Use that.”
I wrote it all down on a yellow legal pad Rhonda slid across the table. My handwriting was steady. I don’t know how.
I was on the last line when Rhonda stood up and went to her front window. She went very still.
“Jo,” she said. “Come here.”
Across the street, a white pickup truck I knew too well was backed into my driveway. Hitched behind it was an orange-and-white U-Haul trailer, its back door rolled up. My front door was wide open.
Travis came out carrying our living room TV.
Behind him, holding the door for him with her hip, was a girl in a pink hoodie with long bleach-blonde hair.
