When he didn’t say anything, I did the coy thing I’d seen girls at school pull on male teachers, dropping my chin a smidge and looking up at the General through lashes coated with mascara. “If you’d like, I can go back upstairs and change.”

As if awakening from a trance, the General blinked and gave his head a quick shake. “No, don’t,” he sputtered. “You’re a… What I mean is what you have on is a…”

“Fine?” I chirped.

“Yes.”

“Good, ‘cause I wasn’t sure if this would prove to be a little too dressy for a trip to Micky D’s.”

Finally realizing I was yanking his chain, the General grunted. “We need to be going,” he muttered brusquely.

Having been so caught up in my own little mind games, it wasn’t until that moment it dawn upon me the General was up to something. “Do we have reservations or something?” I asked calmly.

“Hmm, something like that,” he replied as he regarded me out of the corner of his eye while sporting a devious little smirk, the kind that causes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

‘Oh shit.’

My efforts to wean any useful information out of the General during our drive into Old Town Alexandria was frustrated as he wrestled the initiative from me by asking how my first day at school had gone. Besides knowing full well the odds of finding out what he had up his sleeve were nil, I was eager to tell him about Katie, especially the way Mr. Halverson had embarrassed the poor girl. “I soooo wanted to crawl under my desk and hide when he was building up to his introduction. I was sure he was going to tell everyone about me,” I informed the General.

“Would it had been all that bad if he had?” the General countered.

“Well duh, Captain Obvious! What do you think?”

“I think you’re playing a dangerous game,” the General countered. “You know as well as I do people are going to find out about you sooner rather than later. When they do, I expect some are going to feel they’ve been lied to. While I expect most will understand why you didn’t tell them right off, those who don’t could very well turn on you in an effort to extract some revenge.”

One of the General’s most annoying habit was his knack for being right. And though I knew what he said needed to be said, I still felt miffed over his timing. Folding my arms tightly across my chest, I took to pouting, another useful girly expression I was still working to prefect. “Way to go, Dad. Nothing like raining on my parade."

He chuckled. “Hey, what are fathers for?”

The II Porto Ristorante in Old Town is a top notch Italian restaurant with tons of ambiance. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enjoy it for very long as the General and I were led to a table already occupied by a young couple. I had no need to ask or even guess who they were. The high and tight buzz cut of the male component of the pair as well as the way he all but popped up out of his chair and stood at attention as if he’d just heard the opening strains of ‘Hail to the Chief’ when he saw us approaching told me he was the General’s new dog robber.

Aide de camps are not always selected for their smarts, at least from what I have observed. Rather, their pedigree is often determines their suitability. As best I could tell, the General’s criteria for selecting his last aide was;

One - He was a member of the West Point Protective Society, a derisive term often used by non-West Point officers and me when I felt like annoying the General and my older brother Steve, who Craig and I had taken to calling ‘The Captain’ due to the way he had lorded over us as we had been growing up.

Two - He was airborne ranger, complete with scrape marks on his knuckles from dragging them on the ground and a perchance for grunting hooah at the most inopportune times.

Three - He had managed to complete a tour in the Sandbox as a company commander without embarrassing himself or his battalion commander.

And four - He was neither a smart ass like Craig and I or a kiss ass like Steve.

It seemed brains and the ability to use them for purposes other than keeping his head from collapsing in on itself were a plus, but not mandatory.

As the senor officer present, the General began by introducing me. “Rachel, this is Captain Brandon Pepper, my aide. Captain Pepper, this is my daughter, Rachel.”

Having suspected during the drive into Old Town the General was up to something, I not only succeeded in dealing with the situation in a calm, nonchalant manner, I was able to use the opportunity to extract a bit of revenge for the way he’d set me up. Flashing a broad, toothy smile, I tilted my head to one side as I offered Captain Pepper my hand. “I am sooo pleased to meet you,” I cooed sweetly. “It’s always such a thrill to meet the people Daddy works with.” Naturally I ignored the dirty look the General gave me as Cee Pee, the nickname I quickly settled on for Captain Pepper turned to introduce his wife, a demure blond named Debbie who, I was quick to discover, was a native of Savannah, Georgia and damned proud of it.

As much as I hate the way the politically correct Gestapo enjoy purging the English language of some it its most colorful and useful terms, I will admit there are a few words and phrases I’d like to see added to that list. Chief amongst them is the phrase, ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ one Debbie greeted me with as she placed her limp, dead fish hand in mine.

Now, before I go any further, please don’t go getting me wrong. Debbie Pepper was without doubt a dear, sweet lady, the kind who I could not help but imagine had been a cheerleader in high school, volunteered every Thursday afternoon at the local Red Cross, fed stray cats and went from collecting Barbies to Hummels. She was pretty, too.
Unfortunately, when she saw me dressed as I was and on my best behavior, despite knowing I was currently betwixt and between genders, she automatically assumed I would find what she found interesting and enjoyable just as exciting. As if!

Once the introductions were complete, our orders had been placed and menus collected, there followed a brief but very awkward silence as Cee Pee and Dee Pee took to nervously eyeing each other and the General in an effort to see who would take the lead in filling the void with appropriate and acceptable chit chat. I could only assume the General had made it clear to his new aide shop talk during occasions such as this was vorboten. It was a general rule the General lived by, no pun intended. Most military parents who were committed to maintaining an enjoyable domestic life apart from their official duties did their best to leave the day’s troubles and tribulations in the office when it came time to pull pitch and head for the barn. Being a single parent, the General was even more wed to this concept.

Adding to the stress both Captain Pepper and his wife were under was the appreciation they were being tested. Unlike most professions, military spouses are considered to be an important element of an officer’s overall suitability to be an officer. In addition to running the officer’s household and ensuring the officer’s children did nothing that would adversely reflect upon him and, by extension, the unit he is assigned, when forward deployed the officer’s spouse was expected to look after the welfare of their subordinates’ families. While a wife who does not measure up to the high standards some commanders place upon them seldom impairs an officer’s ability to close with and destroy the enemy by the use of fire, maneuver and shock effect, she could easily prove to be an embarrassment to her husband and sound the death knell of his career if she showed up at the annual military ball sporting tats of fire breathing dragons up and down her arm, pink spiky hair and a vocabulary that would make a trucker blush.

Then there was me, sweet, innocent little ‘ole me. At the moment I was enjoying the show, behaving myself as I surreptitiously watched Cee Pee squirm and Debbie glance from one person to the next while the General eyed them both as if he were studying a pair of lab rats frantically scurrying about a maze. When Debbie realized her husband, who like most airborne rangers possessed all the social graces of a socially awkward Neanderthal, wasn’t going to step up to the plate and take a swing at opening an acceptable line of discourse, she took the initiative.

I will give the woman credit for knowing some of the more common opening gambits needed to be avoid, questions like, ‘Rachel, what do you do for fun,’ or ‘Tell me all about yourself.’ To my surprise, she started by asking me if I enjoyed riding. Whether she was better informed than I had given her credit for or if she just happened to hit upon something I did enjoy didn’t matter. It allowed me to gracefully play the part the General expected me to in this little social experiment of his.

“Yes, I do, Mrs. Pepper,” I replied smoothly. “My grandmother in Wyoming owns several horses I ride every chance I get when I’m staying with her.”

“How lovely,” Debbie cooed, pleased with herself at having managed to save her husband and finding something we the girls had in common. “Do you compete?”

“I’ve done some barrel racing,” I replied, not realizing her idea of suitable forms of equestrian completion was poles apart from mine.

“Have you ever competed in hunter-jumper events?” she asked, betraying more about herself as she did so than I suspect she imagined.

Rather than responding with something more akin to what I ordinarily would have responded to such a question, I simply shook my head. “No ma’am.”

Upon hearing this, Debbie regaled me with a warm, home grown southern smile. “I’d wish you’d call me Debbie, Sweetie,” she declared. “Why, I expect we could almost be sisters.”

Instinctively I glanced over at the General out of the corner of my eye. When I saw him eyeing me with his Darth Vader glare, I once more set aside the first response was on the tip of my tongue and instead informed Debbie doing so was out of the question, though I did manage to sneak in a quick jab. “Oh, no ma’am, I couldn’t. Daddy would never stand for such familiarity or unladylike behavior from me when dealing with my elders.”

Having been blessed with a vivid imagination, I could almost feel the General’s invisible hands closing about my throat. The temptation to pretend I was gagging as Craig and I often did at times like this was dismissed. I expect I was already sailing precariously close to the wind as it was.

“I see your father is very much like mine,” Debbie continued while glancing over at the General and giving him a wink. ‘Oh! She’s good,’ I thought to myself. As it turned out, she was too good by half.

When the General said nothing after we left the restaurant and headed home, I knew I had nothing to worry about. Had he been displeased with my behavior he’d have laid into me the moment we were alone in the car. So I felt no trepidation when I asked it was that was bothering him.

At first he didn’t answer, which told me he was still mulling whatever was troubling him over in his mind. It was the look he gave me out of the corner of his eye while we were stopped at a red light that clued me in there was something he wasn’t quite ready to share with me, something, I suspected, I wasn’t going to be thrilled to hear. But before he got around to sharing his thoughts with me, my next opportunity to excel in a seemingly endless parade of challenges needed to be dealt with.