Conduct Unbecoming

He stared at her.

"You're going to sign the divorce papers," she said. "Today. And then, when all the paperwork is done, you're going to marry me."

"What...?"

"Let me finish." Her voice was level. Calm. "I know what you've been building toward. I've known for a long time. I know about the consultants. I know about the Senate seat. I know about Marsh's timeline. Your father is even thinking of the White House." She looked at him steadily. "Progressive appeal, with the uniform to also play the vet and patriot card. I've heard you use those words." She paused. "You wanted a wife in uniform. But what you're going to have instead is me."

He looked at her.

"I'm not in uniform," she said. "But I'm not nothing. I'm bilingual, I'm presentable, I know the military world from the inside. And I'm..." She stopped. Smiled slightly. "You've told me what I look like. What cameras do to me. I know what I am and what that's worth to a man running for office." She picked up the phone again and held it. "Your father and Marsh find out about this through me in a managed conversation, or they find out through the photographs landing at the Washington Post. Your choice."

Graham looked at the phone in her hand. He looked at his mistress sitting on his bed in the Arlington townhouse he had bought with a different woman in mind, looking at him with the calm certainty of someone who had made her ultimate play and knew he had no counter.

He thought about fighting it. He was a man who found angles. It was one of the things he was genuinely good at.

He looked at her and understood that there was no angle here. She had his photographs, his timeline, and the patience of a woman who had followed him across an ocean, waited for an opportunity and took it.

He thought about his father's voice on the phone if those photographs arrived in his inbox without warning.

"You're smarter than I gave you credit for," he said finally.

"Yes," Brenda said. "I am. And don't worry, you're a good lay. So you'll still get to fuck me all you want." She held out his phone. "Call your lawyer."

After a long moment, he took the phone from her and called his lawyer. His lawyer woke early too.

________________

The commissary at Camp Humphreys was busy on a Tuesday afternoon, which was when Brenda Palmer preferred to do her shopping. The weekend crowds were worse - families, children, noise.

She set a box of crackers in her cart and moved on.

The lunch table by the window was where she and the other Colonel's wives met on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. It had been their arrangement for two of the three years she and Graham had been in Korea, and it suited her. The women were pleasant enough, educated enough, politically aware enough to make conversation worthwhile.

All of them exclaimed that she was extraordinarily beautiful and were sincere about it because they never let her speak alone with their husbands.

Three of them were on their second or third overseas posting. One had arrived from Fort Campbell six weeks before and was still finding her feet.

Brenda arrived nearly last, as she usually did, and settled into her chair and signaled the server and listened to the tail end of a conversation about the PX's new hours.

"Is the pasta good here?" the new one asked. Her name was Jennifer Albright and she had the slightly overwhelmed look of someone who had not yet learned to read a SOFA agreement.

"It's fine," said Carol Weiss, who had been in Korea longest and had strong opinions about everything. "But order the bibimbap. You're in Korea."

Jennifer laughed and looked at her menu and then looked up and out the window toward the commissary entrance. "Who is that?"

Brenda did not look up from her own menu. Jennifer was always asking that question.

"Which one?" said Carol, who was always answering.

"The pregnant one in the camouflage. There. With her...husband?"

Brenda looked up.

"Those kids are so adorable," Jennifer noted, voice softening.

She saw them immediately.

Kay Miller - Colonel Kayleigh Alvarez Miller, she corrected herself, noting the eagle on her chest, visible even at this distance - was in OCPs, her pregnancy obvious and apparently not slowing her in any way. She was saying something to her daughter, a girl of about six with her mother's eyes, who was pulling at her sleeve and pointing at something in the refrigerated section. The boy was older by a year or two, in charge of the shopping cart, looking at everything with an expression so like his father that it made Brenda's chest do something she chose not to examine any further.

Nathan was in civilian clothes. Dark jacket, open collar, the kind of clothes that fit him well because everything fit him well. He had his hand on his wife's back as they came through the entrance and then he bent and said something in her ear that made her laugh - a real unguarded laugh - and kissed her while she was still laughing.

She furled her lip at him and he simply kissed her again while their son acted disgusted.

"Oh that's sweet," Jennifer said.

"That," said Carol, with the authority of being around long enough to know everything worth knowing, "is Colonel Kay Miller. Air Force. One of their top cyberwarfare people. She's working with General Bannatyne's shop over at Osan - something classified, nobody says exactly what, but apparently she's the one they call when the problem is serious.

"Her younger brother just got posted here," Selena Allen whispered, as if it were a secret. "LT in the Army."

"And the... husband?" Jennifer asked.

"Was Army Aviation. Maintenance Test Pilot. Chief Warrant Officer - Four or Five... Something. But he was enlisted before. Civilian now. He's a VP with the folks that make most of the helicopters on the base." Carol gestured vaguely. "He's the one bringing in the new next-gen combat rotary systems. Works directly with General Haskell.

"Major General Haskell," said Patricia Yoon, who was precise about ranks.

"Major General Haskell," Carol amended. "Apparently they go back a long way."

Jennifer frowned. "I thought officers couldn't be in relationships with enlisted?"

"Warrant Officers are okay," Carol informed her. "They're kind of in-between."

"Anyway, I heard he makes a lot of money," said Patricia, tone factual. "They live in the new development on the eastern side between here and Osan. The really nice one."

"How much?" Jennifer asked.

Patricia looked at her. "A lot."

"I heard two-fifty," said Carol. "At least."

"Good lord," said Jennifer. She looked out toward the commissary again. "Well. He's also very attractive. In that... you know, super competent way." She laughed slightly. "Like he could fix anything. Or fly it."

The other women laughed.

Brenda smiled. Tightly.

She picked up her water glass and drank from it, set it back down and looked blankly at the menu.

The first time she had seen Nathan and his wife in Korea had been at a dinner held to welcome the South Korean Army's new Chief of Staff seven months before.

Kay had come in her mess uniform, long skirt and silver braiding with the eagle gleaming on her shoulders. Nathan had come in a suit, black, white shirt and a blue tie to match his wife's uniform.

He'd kissed her hair absently as they came in and they had both been called over by Bannatyne, Haskell and two other men and a woman with stars on their shoulders.

Graham had gone stiff beside her and his lips had pressed together as he saw his ex-wife, an O-6 now, like him. She had just felt a weight in her chest as she saw her ex-husband, and she had felt sad.

If General Bannatyne was aware that he was reenacting an introduction of the same four people introduced to each other in Germany eleven years before, this time with partners swapped, he gave no indication. But LTG Mark Haskell's statuesque wife, the former Lt Col Diane Haskell, had openly smirked beside him and shared a look with Col Kayleigh Miller.

Nathan, for his part, had held out his hand and said, calmly. "We've met actually, General. In Ramstein. How're you, Colonel? And it's lovely seeing you again, Mrs. Palmer."

Graham had returned the sentiment, teeth only slightly gritted, and also greeted a brightly smiling 'Colonel Miller,' congratulating her on her recent promotion.

She asked after his father, who was ailing but was still offering his take on matters of defense and national security from thinktank perches.

Kayleigh didn't ask after his uncle.

Walter Marsh had been caught in a scandal seven years before - involving money, young women and a young man, erupting in mid-September and not settling until well after November. His loss was the kind that didn't just end a career but tainted everyone and everything connected to it. Graham's well-known association with Marsh on Capitol Hill had proven to be a liability he couldn't quite extricate himself from.

So he was still an O-6. Still in uniform, now in Korea, still building what he called a 'foundation' for the next chapter. He talked more modestly now, about the House now instead of the Senate. He talked about running as a Republican, repositioning, finding the right district and the right moment and the right consultants.

He still thought the plan was intact and only the timeline had shifted. She was skeptical. But then, she had doubted another man's dreams once, and chosen him instead.

Her eyes found Kayleigh Miller and her pregnant belly again. A soldier was saluting her and she returned the courtesy with a nod because she had no cover. Her children threw salutes at her too and she laughed.

So did her husband, who joined them.

Brenda remembered getting a prescription and keeping the pills in the car. Pretending to be upset when the second line failed to appear. Because she was spreading her legs for another man and had decided she'd rather carry his children instead. Writing it and leaving it on the bed.

The still burning knowledge that he had likely read her letter with relief.

This time, the third time around, the surrogate had just gotten past the first trimester and she was grateful. Even Graham seemed intrigued now, whether genuinely for his posterity or purely for the family values appeal, she didn't care.

Carol was saying something about the new PX manager and Jennifer was asking a question about the shuttle schedule when the Millers came past the window table on their way to the checkout lanes.

The children were ahead, the girl skipping, the boy pretending he wasn't interested in whatever his sister was recounting but clearly listening as he pushed the shopping cart. Kay was saying something to Nathan and he was listening with the full attention that Brenda remembered and again she felt very sad.

Kay glanced toward the window table as they passed. She saw the women and smiled pleasantly at them. The other women smiled back, and she kept walking.

Nathan also looked at the table.

When his eyes found hers, she was sure he held them for exactly one beat longer than he held anyone else's, and she saw in that beat nothing she could name - not cruelty, not triumph, not contempt. Recognition, perhaps. Nothing else.

The weight slammed into her again.

Then he looked away.

He reached out and took his wife's hand as they walked on toward the checkout counters, and she glanced at him sideways. He said something, and she smiled - wholly, completely - and leaned into his shoulder as they walked.

The children were already at the checkout, the girl pointing to a lollipop. The boy was staring hard at a comic as the counter clerk processed a large carton of cat food.

"Brenda?" Carol called.

It brought her back to the table, to the women looking at her with some amusement. "Sorry? Got distracted."

"With what?" Selena asked, gesturing with her eyes, teasing. "Or who?"

They all laughed and Brenda pretended to as well.

Somehow, it hadn't yet come out that she had once been married to Nathan Miller - or that his wife had once been married to her husband.

She hadn't hidden it, just not mentioned it because there was no reason or occasion to do so. But she was amazed that bit of knowledge had not yet made it to Carol Weiss's ear. She expected it would.

And if she kept staring after the Millers, it would come sooner rather than later.

"So? Bibimbap?" asked Carol.

"Sure," Brenda said. "That sounds good."

When her eyes went to the counter, the Millers were gone. But she knew, just outside, a happy little girl was skipping.