Chapter 55
What Are You Looking At?
The reception hall centered around a wedding cake designed to look like the cruise ship the couple would honeymoon on.
Someone had to tell me it was a cake.
It was beautiful.
This was one of those receptions where everyone had assigned seats and little place cards telling them where they belonged.
I had never been to one of those before.
Robert stayed with me until we found our table. He put his coat over the back of his chair and immediately spotted someone he needed to speak with.
“I’ll be right back.”
Of course he would.
Everyone was speaking with someone.
Everyone but me.
I was sitting.
Alone.
At a table for eight.
I had considered bringing a book.
I hadn’t.
That was poor planning.
With nothing else to do, I watched people.
The room seemed divided into groups of uniforms, suits, and satin.
The uniforms stayed mostly together. I had no idea who held the highest rank. After ten years as
a military wife, I still had never bothered to learn all the symbols.
They seemed to know.
There was saluting when saluting was required, nodding when nodding was enough, and everybody knew where he belonged.
Military being military again.
The satin dresses were gathered fairly close to me. Mrs. O’Riley was among them.
Several of the women were looking around the room, pointing occasionally, commenting to one another.
The suits were the group I knew the least about—
until two of them started walking toward me.
I recognized one immediately.
“Alec!”
He smiled.
“Mrs. Jackson, let me introduce Oscar Robel. He is my bodyguard.”
I held out my hand.
“Hello, Mr. Robel. I’m pleased to meet you.”
He shook it and nodded.
Then he got formal.
“Mr. Rivera would like to come over and have a word with you. He did not wish to put you in an awkward situation. Since this is a mixed gathering with varying ranks, I was sent to ask permission first.”
Permission?
“I’ll talk to a parent anywhere. Tell him I’d be thrilled to meet him.”
Oscar gave a slight bow and indicated that Alec should come with him.
As they walked away, I heard Alec.
“I told you she’d say yes! I don’t know why you even had to ask!”
There was something almost offended in his voice.
Like the entire precaution had been ridiculous.
To Alec, apparently, there was no question.
I was Mrs. Jackson.
His teacher.
Family.
Of course I would say yes.
I smiled as I watched them go.
Then I noticed the women.
They were looking in my direction again.
The group was smaller now than when I had first sat down.
A few minutes later, Mr. Rivera entered the room.
He started walking toward me.
I stood.
And suddenly I was aware of everybody.
The suits.
The uniforms.
Especially the uniforms.
I met Mr. Rivera halfway across the floor.
So help me God, if anybody in this room calls that man anything but Mr. Rivera, I may hurt them.
I knew what people called him.
From the military’s reaction, I had a pretty good idea where they stood.
I wasn’t confused about who he was.
I simply knew something else too.
He was Mr. Rivera.
He was Alec’s dad.
And Alec was going to college instead of becoming what everybody had already decided he had to become.
That mattered to me.
I held out my hand.
Mr. Rivera did not shake it.
He treated me like a lady instead of a teacher.
He turned my hand over, kissed the back of it, and stepped briefly into my space.
Alec was there to make the introduction official.
I smiled at his father.
“It’s always a pleasure to meet my students’ parents. Professor Alec has been a great help to his classmates with his insights.”
“I’m happy you had time to speak with me.”
“Any time, sir. Alec has been an excellent student.”
“Your guidance to my son has been appreciated.”
“Thank you.”
He glanced around the room.
“I must be brief here. I would not want to…”
I cannot remember his exact words.
I remember what they meant.
He did not want his presence beside me to give anyone an excuse to question my reputation or misunderstand my association with him.
That surprised me.
Of all the people in that room, he was the one worried about putting me in an awkward position.
I gave him a questioning look.
He nodded once.
“Goodbye.”
“A pleasure to meet you.”
Then he walked away.
That was when I noticed the military.
Several men near the doorway shifted almost immediately.
Mr. Rivera passed into the adjoining room.
They followed.
Not beside him.
Behind him.
Watching.
Closely.
He knew they were watching him.
There was no possible way he didn’t.
It did not appear to change a single step he took.
He had entered the reception.
He had sent Oscar ahead because he chose to be careful about approaching me.
He had crossed the room when I said yes.
He had spoken to me.
Then he walked wherever he wanted to walk.
The military watched him go and quietly rearranged themselves around his movements.
I stood there for another second.
On the destroyer, I had tried to explain why I accepted his offer of protection.
This is his country.
To tell a powerful man no in his own country just seemed like a really bad decision to me at the
time.
Now I wasn’t explaining it.
I was looking at it.
For me, in Panama, with my children there and knowing what I knew then—yes had been the right answer.
I went back to my chair.
The women were still staring.
Mrs. O’Riley separated from the satin group and came toward me.
She stopped beside my chair. She couldn’t really sit down. Her place card wasn’t at our table.
“Lee Ann, you’re over here by yourself?”
“Not really. Robert will be back in a minute.”
She glanced toward the women she had just left.
“The women in my group noticed who you were speaking with.”
“Oh, really?”
I looked toward the doorway.
“Alec’s dad?”
I turned back to her.
“How would they possibly know a local student’s father?”
That was strange.
“Do you not know who he is?”
There it was.
Don’t you dare.
I looked directly at her.
“Alec’s dad. Is there anything else you feel you need to tell me?”
She looked at me for a moment.
“No, dear.”
Good.
There wasn’t.
“I see your husband is headed back this way.”
Robert approached the table.
Mrs. O’Riley greeted him before he even reached his chair.
“Don’t run off on your wife again. No one should be alone on a night like this.”
He sat down.
A little while later, Robert nodded across the room.
“The general’s here.”
I followed his eyes.
Sure enough.
My general.
The same general I had waited half the day to see on the destroyer.
The same one who had eventually summoned me from underneath a stolen dish towel and
introduced me to absolutely no one before explaining that I was standing on the equivalent of
fifty thousand sticks of dynamite.
I looked at him.
Then back at Robert.
“Are you going to say hello?”
“If he wants to talk to me, he knows where I’m at.”
It turns out, he didn’t want to talk to me.
Dinner was served.
I tried octopus for the first time.
It was peppery.
I loved it.
I had been absolutely certain I wouldn’t.
In the car on the way home, Robert asked if I had seen “the drug lord.”
“Nope.”
He looked over at me.
“I didn’t see a drug lord at the reception.”
And I hadn’t.
I had seen Mr. Rivera.
Alec’s dad.
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