Home Front

“Say?” Jolene stepped out of the embrace. “After I don’t love you, what is there to say?”

Tami sighed. “Couples fight, Jo. They yell, they say things they don’t mean, they storm off and come back. Granted, Michael said a stupid thing, but he didn’t mean it. You can forgive him. This isn’t the end. ”

Jolene heard the undertone of pain in Tami’s voice, knew her friend was remembering the affair Carl had had ten years ago. “I know about forgiving people and loving them anyway, even after they hurt you. ”

She did know. Jolene had spent a childhood forgiving her parents, hoping that tomorrow or next week or next month they would change. But they hadn’t changed and they hadn’t loved her. She’d started to get better when she accepted that simple truth. She’d stayed whole, become whole, by not needing their love anymore. She knew what Tami was saying; hell, it was what Jolene would have said if the situations were reversed. One sentence couldn’t end a marriage. But she couldn’t hang on alone, either. Hadn’t she learned that from her mom?

“He didn’t mean it. Michael loves you. ”

“I want to believe that,” Jolene said quietly, and it was true; she wanted to believe in Michael and his love for her, but her faith had been shaken. She was afraid to trust him so completely again. If he could just fall out of love with her, what did it all mean?

“I’m sure—”

Before Tami could finish, her phone rang. She went to the kitchen and answered. “Oh. Hi. Yes, sir. ” She turned to Jolene, mouthed Ben Lomand, and then said into the phone, “Really? I see. When, sir? So soon? Oh. Okay, Jolene and I will handle the phone tree. Thank you, sir. ” Tami hung up the phone slowly and turned to face Jolene.

“We’re being deployed. ”

Six

When Jolene and Michael had first seen the house on Liberty Bay, it had been a beautiful sunlit July day. They’d been out driving, enjoying their time together after an afternoon barbecue at his parents’ house. They hadn’t been looking for a house.

But there it was, just sitting at a bend in the road, waiting for them, a for-sale sign stuck haphazardly by the mailbox. A quaint little farmhouse in need of love, a sagging wraparound porch, and three green acres that cascaded down to the black ribbon of a quiet country road. Across the road, there was a small patch of land, an afterthought really, that lay tucked between the road and the sweeping gray crescent of beach.

It was the little bit of beachfront that drew them in. The first thing they did to the property was build a deck above the sand. They built it with their own hands, she and Michael, laughing and talking and dreaming the whole time.

We’ll barbecue out here on the Fourth of July … and show Betsy how to find sand dollars … and eat dinner from paper plates while the sun sets into the water …

It was only a thin strip of grassy land stitched alongside a winding ribbon of asphalt, but it was Jolene’s dream, her slice of paradise. The smell of the sea and the sound of the waves comforted her. She had always come out here to think, to recharge. Especially in those long, barren years between Betsy and Lulu, when Jolene had been so desperate to conceive another child. Here, alone, month after month, she’d cried when her period started. And here was where she’d come to thank God when her prayer had finally been answered.

Now, she sat in one of the Adirondack chairs that flanked a rusted metal fire pit. It was raining, but she hardly noticed. She stared out at the flat gray waters, pockmarked by falling rain, and thought: How will my children handle this? How will I? How will Michael?

How much a world could change in three hours …

They’d always known she could be deployed; at least since September Eleventh they’d known it, and yet she and Michael had never discussed it. How could they? Michael didn’t want to hear about her career in the military. Every time she even brought up the idea of other soldiers deploying, he’d gone off on a rant about the wrongheadedness of sending troops to Iraq.

She knew what he thought, what he saw—the military’s dark side, the mistakes, the way the brass let down soldiers and veterans. That was politics, though. Separate, somehow. For her, it was different. The Guard was her family, too.

Honor. Duty. Loyalty. These were more than words to Jolene; they were part of her. She’d always been two women—a mother and soldier—and this deployment ripped her in half, left a bloody, gaping tear between the two sides of her.

Who would help Betsy through the rocky terrain of adolescence, give her advice about bad boys and mean girls and all the kids in between? Who would walk Lulu into kindergarten and hold her when she woke, sobbing, from a nightmare?

And there was the risk. Jolene was a helicopter pilot. She would tell Michael and the girls that she wasn’t allowed in combat, that she would be far from harm’s way, but she knew it wasn’t true. Helicopters were shot down all the time.

We’ll come home, Tami had said.

Jolene had nodded, smiling, although she knew—they both did—that no such promise could be made. It didn’t matter now anyway. Tomorrow and the future wasn’t something they could control. For now, they had a job to do, a job they’d been trained for. Civilians didn’t understand, maybe they couldn’t, but a soldier stepped up when he or she was needed. Even if she was afraid, even if her children needed her. It was Jolene’s time to give back to the army, her time to serve her country.

She placed a hand over her chest, feeling the slow, even beating of her heart. She closed her eyes, hearing her heartbeat mingle with the whooshing of the waves on the pebbled beach and the exhalations of her breath. Tears stung her eyes, fell down her cheeks, mixing with the rain. She imagined all of it—the good-bye, the missing, the loss. She pictured her daughters crying for her, reaching out for her, unable to really understand her absence.

But she had no choice to make. At that, she felt a kind of peace move through her, an acceptance of the situation and a realization of who she was. She had given her word that if called to serve, she would go.

She hated leaving her children—hated it with a passion that could have crippled her if she gave in to it, but she had no choice. She would go to Iraq for a year, do her job, and come home to her family.

That was what she would tell them … what she would believe.

She was prepared, had always been prepared, for this moment. For more than twenty years, she’d trained for it. A small part of her even wanted to go, to test herself. She wanted to go … she just didn’t want to leave.

She pulled her hand slowly away from her chest, let it fall in her lap. At her feet, a small collection of dried white sand dollars lay in a cloverleaf pattern, a reminder of last summer. She bent down, plucked one up, rubbing the pad of her thumb over the porous surface. Then she stood up.