In less than five minutes they were taking off, rising to just below the cloud cover.
It was a two-helicopter mission. They flew together, always in contact, across the black expanse of desert, over Baghdad to Al Anbar province, just past Fallujah.
As they came into Fallujah’s airspace from the north, the first round of machine gun fire sounded. The tap-tap-tap on the fuselage was small-arms fire.
“Raptor eight-nine, taking fire, seven o’clock, two hundred meters,” Jolene said into the comm. The other helicopter responded instantly.
“Raptor four-two taking fire, nine o’clock, banking right. ”
They flew over a small village. A machine gun was set up on a rooftop, shooting at them.
Jolene scanned the area below; her night-vision goggles revealed dozens of greenish-white dots moving through the darkness. The soldiers trapped in the ditch or insurgents looking for them? She reached forward to flip a toggle switch, and everything exploded.
An RPG hit the fuselage so hard she was thrown sideways; her right foot arced up and kicked the instrument panel.
The cockpit filled with smoke. Flames filled the back of the aircraft; she could feel the heat. Jolene called out for her crew, got no response. She clutched the cyclic and tried to keep them in the air, but they were falling—plunging—downward at one hundred and fifty miles an hour.
The power on engine number two went crazy; the instrument panel went dark. Nothing. Not even engine temperature.
She called out to her crew again, told them to brace for impact, and then she tried to Mayday her position, but the smoke was so intense she couldn’t breathe. All she got out was “Mayday—” before they crashed.
* * *
After a long day spent taking depositions of the police officers who interrogated Keith Keller, Michael came home, dead on his feet, and made dinner for his daughters—one of Jolene’s chicken and rice recipes that he found in the overstuffed three-ring binder. Later, when the girls were asleep, he walked out to the empty family room, standing there alone, noticing how quiet the house was.
An unusual emotion rose up in him, so odd that it took him a moment to recognize it. Loneliness.
For so long, he’d felt a kind of simmering anger at being Mr. Mom, felt emasculated by being responsible for his children and the cooking and shopping. He’d blamed Jolene for leaving him adrift on a sea of responsibilities he didn’t want and which he barely knew how to perform. But in the last few weeks, it had changed. He’d changed. He’d found a new side of himself; he loved reading to Lulu before bed, hearing her quirky questions about the stories, watching her small finger point at the pictures. He loved it when Betsy sat by him at night, watching TV and telling him stories from school. He loved how they’d become a team at the grocery store, working together, how a game of Candyland could make them all laugh.
He missed Jolene. How was it he hadn’t foreseen what his life would be like without her?
She was so far away, and every day she was getting shot at, dodging IEDs, changing in ways he couldn’t imagine. And what had he given her to take with her? I don’t love you anymore.
He walked over to the TV, turned it on. Her latest tape was in the machine, as always; the girls watched it endlessly.
He hit Play.
And there she was, Jolene in uniform, smiling at the camera, pointing out landmarks around Balad—here’s the place where we get that good pie …
His wife.
The tape ended, and the last image of her froze on screen. She stood with Tami, both in uniform, their arms slung around each other. Jolene was smiling brightly, but he saw the truth in her eyes. She was scared and lonely, too.
He wanted to talk to her so much it was an ache in his chest.
There was no way to call her, though. All he could do was write her a letter.
The thing he’d never done. He’d started several in the past weeks, but he’d deleted them all before sending. He was so ashamed of how he’d acted before; how could he just drop her a letter now and pretend that everything was different?
He walked through the family room and into his office, where he sat down at the computer and booted it up.
Jolene, he typed, then stopped, deleted that, and began again.
My Jo—
Do you remember when I first called you that? We were at the arboretum, in a rented rowboat, watching baby ducks float through the reeds. You said, “I wonder how they find their mom,” and that made me understand how hurt you’d been by your childhood. It took you a long time to tell me what it had been like, and when you finally told me … that’s when I knew you loved me. I used to look in your eyes and see my own dreams. When was the last time we really looked at each other? I wonder. Anyway, back to the ducks. I said, “They just know. Like I know you’re my Jo. ”
“I want to be yours,” you said.