“Aunt Maragold called me an hour ago screaming that you had used your military connections to have Delphine thrown in prison. She said Delphine is traumatized. She said the family is going to organize.”
“Organize what?”
“I don’t know. A statement, I think. Aunt Maragold used the word intervention.”
I laughed. I could not help it.
“An intervention for me.”
“Marlo, she is telling them that you have been stalking Delphine and that today you finally snapped. She’s saying you had her cuffed in front of her clients and that the catering company fired her on the spot.”
“Was she fired?”
“Yes. Bram called me right before you did. They’re apparently now blaming you for that, too.”
I sat down on my couch and rubbed my forehead. The headache from earlier had gotten worse.
“Corwin, I need you to hear me clearly. I am not going to be quiet about this. Not this time. She threw federal property into the water in front of 11 witnesses and a federal agent. There is video. There is a formal investigation. There is a JAG officer involved. If the family wants to have an intervention for me, they are welcome to try. But I am not going to pretend this did not happen so that Delphine can continue to build her version of reality.”
“I know you do, Marlo. I have been watching her do this to you our entire lives. I have watched Mom and Aunt Maragold and everyone else accept whatever she says about you because it’s easier than actually looking at the evidence. I love our family, but I am not going to stand next to them on this one. I want you to know that.”
I closed my eyes.
“Thank you.”
“What do you need from me?”
“I need you to not defend me publicly yet. Let her build her narrative. Let her make the calls and send the messages. Every single one of them is going to be documented, and it is going to make the eventual truth that much clearer. Don’t argue with her. Don’t argue with Aunt Maragold. Just listen and remember what they say.”
“Understood. Teodoro is making dinner. He said to tell you he loves you, and if you need to come stay with us this weekend, the guest room is ready.”
“Tell him thank you. I might.”
We hung up.
I sat on my couch for a while and watched the last of the afternoon light move across the wall. Then I got up, changed into sweatpants and a navy T-shirt, and started to make myself dinner.
Pasta with butter and pepper because it was what I always made when I did not want to think about food.
While the water boiled, my phone started buzzing.
Text messages.
Aunt Maragold first, a wall of text in all capital letters accusing me of destroying the family. Then my cousin Pru, who I had not spoken to in 8 years, informing me that I had always been jealous of Delphine, and this proved it.
Then my uncle Tavish, who wrote only three words: “Call me now.”
I did not call him.
I did not respond to any of them.
I ate my pasta standing at the kitchen counter, drank a glass of water, and then sat down at my desk to begin the incident report addendum I owed Captain Bramwell in the morning.
At 8:47 that evening, Delphine called me. I let it go to voicemail. She called again at 8:49, and again at 8:52, and again at 8:56.
On the fifth call, she left a message.
I listened to it exactly one time, sitting at my desk, and I recorded it playing on speaker with a second phone because I already knew that having a copy was going to matter.
“Marlo, pick up your phone. Pick up your phone right now. Do you have any idea what you have done to me? Do you have any idea? I lost my job today because of you. I was fingerprinted like a criminal. Bram is furious. The kids are asking questions. Aunt Maragold is threatening to disown me if I don’t fix this. Which means I need you to call whoever you called and undo it.
“I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care what strings you have to pull. You started this and you are going to end it. Because if you don’t, I swear to God, Marlo, I will tell every single person we know exactly what kind of person you really are. I will call the newspapers. I will call your commanders. I will make sure everyone knows what you did to Mom and what you did to me and what you did to this family.
“Call me back tonight. Tonight, Marlo.”
The message ended.
I sat at my desk for a long time.
Then I opened my laptop, transcribed the message word for word, saved the audio file to two separate locations, and sent a copy to Lieutenant Commander Per with a short note explaining what it was.
I did not call her back.
I got into bed at 10:30, lay in the dark for about 20 minutes, and then fell asleep more easily than I expected to.
The last thought I had before I dropped off was that, for the first time in 37 years, I was not going to be the one who made this go away.
The next morning at 0600, I was in my office reviewing the surveillance footage from Pier 12.
The base had four cameras with a view of the location where Delphine had thrown the bag, and Special Agent Ashford had sent me copies of the relevant clips with a note that read, “For your awareness, do not distribute.”
I watched them once through all four angles, and then I watched the clearest angle three more times.
The footage was unambiguous.
You could see me standing with Master Chief Kettleman and Rosalind Vega, my clipboard in my hand, my back partially turned. You could see Delphine approaching from the visitor lot with rapid, purposeful steps.
You could see me set the clipboard down, turn to face her, and lift both hands in the universal gesture of please stop. You could hear faintly my voice telling her that this was a secured area.
You could see her mouth moving as she spoke to me, animated and aggressive.
And you could see me remain still.
You could see her grab the bag. You could see me speak again, this time more sharply. You could see her walk to the edge of the pier.
You could see the bag arc through the air.
And you could see her face when she turned back to look at me afterward.
The smile. The chin up. The waiting.
Anyone who watched that video would understand exactly what had happened. There was no ambiguity, no room for interpretation, no possible alternative version of events.
Delphine had walked onto a secured pier, verbally attacked a uniformed naval officer conducting a federal inspection, and destroyed federal property in the presence of federal witnesses.
I closed the video files, locked my computer, and went to get coffee.
At 08:30, I met with Captain Bramwell and Lieutenant Commander Per in a small conference room. Per had a legal pad in front of him, and Captain Bramwell had a printout of an article that had been published overnight on a local Virginia Beach community news website.
“Marlo, you should see this before we talk about anything else.”
She slid the printout across the table.
The headline read, “Local woman detained by military police after alleged confrontation with sister at Norfolk Naval Base.”
The article was short and mostly speculative, but it contained direct quotes from Delphine.
She was described as a mother of two and small-business employee who had been “traumatized” by an unexpected encounter with her estranged sister, who serves in a leadership role on the base.
She was quoted as saying that she had gone to the pier to try to reconcile after years of family conflict and that her sister had reacted with hostility and had used her military rank to have Delphine detained.
She was quoted as saying that she feared retaliation and was seeking legal counsel.
There was no mention of the bag.
There was no mention of any federal property.
There was no mention of the fact that she had been on a secured pier during a federal inspection.
I read it twice.
“She got it published in less than 14 hours.”
Per nodded.
“She or someone helping her. My guess is a family member with a media contact, or she called the outlet directly. This is not a major publication, but it will get picked up by aggregators, and once it’s in the aggregator ecosystem, it becomes background noise that shapes how larger outlets will approach the story if they pick it up.”
Captain Bramwell folded her hands on the table.
“Marlo, we need to make a decision about how public affairs handles this. If we say nothing, her version becomes the default. If we respond too aggressively, we look like we’re crushing a civilian. My recommendation is that we release a very short factual statement through the base public affairs office confirming the facts of what happened without naming her, and let NCIS confirm through their own channels that an investigation is underway.”
“And me? What do I do?”
“You do nothing. You continue your duties. You do not respond to any media inquiries. You do not respond to your sister. You do not respond to family members. Everything runs through public affairs and legal.”
I nodded slowly.
I could do that. I had spent 19 years learning how to be quiet in front of situations that were much more chaotic than this one.
“There’s one more thing,” Per added. “Your sister’s attorney contacted our office at 07:15 this morning. His name is Roland Vestri. He has requested a meeting to discuss what he called a mutually acceptable resolution.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he wants to know what it will take to make this go away. He is going to propose that his client apologize privately, pay for the equipment, and that we all move on.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him that the decision to pursue federal charges is not yours to make and that his client’s actions occurred in the presence of federal law enforcement, and that any resolution will need to involve the United States Attorney’s Office. I also told him that any private apology would need to be received through the appropriate legal channels and would not affect the investigation.”
“How did he respond?”
“He became less friendly. He implied that his client had significant information about you that could complicate matters if the investigation continued. I told him that if his client had information relevant to a federal investigation, she was welcome to share it with NCIS.”
I looked at Captain Bramwell.
She was watching me carefully.
“Marlo, is there anything in your background that could be leveraged against you? Anything at all? I need to know now, not later.”
I thought about it honestly.
I had lived a very careful life. I had made mistakes, of course. Everyone did. But nothing that could be weaponized.
My service record was clean. My personal life was quiet.
I had been married briefly in my late 20s to another naval officer named Beexley Orand, and we had divorced amicably in 2015 with no children and no drama. I had dated occasionally since then, but had not been in a serious relationship in about 4 years.
I did not drink to excess. I did not gamble. I did not have significant debt. And I had never been the subject of any complaint or investigation.
“There is nothing,” I answered. “The worst thing anyone could dig up about me is that I keep to myself and I do not call my family enough.”
“Good.”
Per made a note.
“Then when the attorney threatens to reveal information, we treat it as noise. If he actually produces anything, we respond to what is produced. We do not chase phantoms.”
“Understood.”
I went back to my office.
The rest of the morning was routine. I finished the incident report addendum, forwarded a copy to Captain Bramwell, and then spent 2 hours on the actual work I was paid to do, which was analyzing the corrosion data from the Pier 12 inspection and preparing recommendations for the maintenance schedule.
At 11:45, my phone rang.
It was Corwin.
“Marlo.”
“Hi.”
“You need to know that Aunt Maragold has organized what she is calling a family meeting for this Saturday at her house in Rowan Oak. She has invited every member of the family she can reach. She wants you to be there. She wants me to be there. She has instructed me to instruct you to be there.”
“She used the word instructed?”
“She used the word instructed.”
“Corwin, I am not driving to Rowan Oak this weekend.”
“I know. I told her that. She then instructed me to inform you that if you do not attend, the family will make decisions about you in your absence.”
I laughed. It was becoming a pattern.
“What decisions could they possibly make about me?”
“She used the phrase formal cutoff.”
“Oh no. Not the formal cutoff.”
Corwin laughed too. It was a tired laugh.
“Marlo, I am telling you this because you should know, not because I think you should go. Teodoro and I are not going either. I told Aunt Maragold that I refused to participate in a meeting whose purpose is to attack my sister for being the victim of a crime.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s something else. Delphine has been calling everyone. Cousins, aunts, people I haven’t spoken to in years. She’s telling them a story that keeps changing. Yesterday she said you had her arrested. Today she is saying you set her up. Tomorrow it will be something else. Pru told me she has stopped believing Delphine, which is significant because Pru has been Delphine’s number one supporter since we were kids.”
