Home Front

Beside her, Michael made a sound. Jolene ignored him.

“No, Bets,” she said quietly. “You and Lulu are the air in my lungs. The blood in my veins. Without you, my heart stops. But I have to do this. Lots of working women have to leave their kids sometimes—”

“Ha!” Betsy screamed. “I’m not stupid. Do those moms get shot at on their business trips?”

“You’ll come home, right, Mommy?” Lulu asked, biting her lower lip.

“Of course I will,” Jolene said. “Don’t I always? And in November I’ll be home for two weeks. Maybe we could even go to Disneyland. Would you like that?”

“I hate you,” Betsy said and ran out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

Mila got slowly to her feet. She started to walk toward Jolene, then stopped dead, as if she couldn’t make her legs work quite right. “How long will you be gone?” she asked. Her voice wobbled with the effort to appear strong.

“One year,” Michael answered.

Lulu frowned. “How long is a year? Is that like next week?”

Jolene turned to her husband. “Maybe you should talk to Betsy. ”

“Me? What the hell am I supposed to say to her?”

That single question brought it all crashing down on Jolene and scared her as much as everything else combined. How would he be a single father? Would his children be able to count on him in a way that Jolene no longer could?

Jolene stood up. She tried to put Lulu down, but the child clung like a barnacle. So she said nothing to Michael or Mila, just walked out of the living room and down the hallway to the guest bedroom, carrying Lulu. It wasn’t ideal, trying to talk to the girls together, but nothing was ideal about this situation.

She knocked on the door.

“Go away,” Betsy yelled.

“I am,” Jolene answered. “That’s why we need to talk now. ” She waited a moment, collected herself, and then went into the room, which was papered in a wild 1970s foil paper and decorated with a collection of whitewashed furniture.

Betsy sat on one of the wicker twin beds with her knees drawn up. She looked royally pissed off.

“Can I sit down?” Jolene asked.

Betsy nodded mulishly and scooted sideways. Jolene and Lulu sat down beside her. Jolene wanted to jump into the ice-cold water of the conversation, but she knew Betsy needed to find a way through this, so she waited quietly, stroking Lulu’s hair.

Finally Betsy said, “Moms aren’t supposed to leave their children. ”

“No,” Jolene said, feeling the sharp point of those words sink deep into her. “They aren’t. And I’m sorry, baby. I really am. ”

“What if you said you wouldn’t go?”

“They’d court-martial me and put me in jail. ”

“At least you’d be alive. ”

Jolene looked at her daughter. There it was, the fear that lay beneath the adolescent fury. “It’s my job as a mom to keep you safe and be with you and help you grow up. ”

“That’s what I’m saying. ”

“But it’s also my job to show you what kind of person to be, to teach you by example. What lesson would I teach you if I ran from a commitment I made? If I was cowardly or dishonorable? When you make a promise in this life, you keep it, even if it scares you or hurts you or makes you sad. I made a promise a long time ago, and now it’s time to keep that promise, even if it breaks my heart to leave you and Lulu, and it does … break my heart. ”

Jolene willed her tears away. Nothing in her life had ever hurt like this, not even hearing Michael say he didn’t love her anymore. But she had to keep going, had to make her daughter understand. “You’ve grown up safe and loved, so you can’t know how it feels to be truly alone in the world. When I joined the army, I had nothing. Nothing. No one. I was all alone in the world. And now my friends need me—Tami, Smitty, Jamie. The rest of the Raptors. I have to be there for them. And the country needs me. I know you’re young for all this, but I believe in keeping America safe. I really do. I have to keep my promise. Can you understand that?”

Tears sprang into Betsy’s eyes. Her lower lip trembled mutinously. “I need you,” she said in a quiet voice.

“I know,” Jolene said, “and I need you, baby. So much…” Her voice caught again; she had to clear her throat to keep going. “But we’ll talk on the phone and e-mail, and maybe we’ll even write good old-fashioned letters. I’ll be home before you know it. ”