Home Front

She smiled at him, but he saw past her can-do attitude and was startled by the sadness in her eyes. He saw what it cost her to fall, to trip, to need help with the simplest things. She frowned. “You have a black eye. ”

“Very Jack Sparrow, don’t you think?”

“Did I do that?”

“Not on purpose, Jo. ”

“I’m sorry. ”

“I know. Don’t worry about it. ”

“Right,” she said tiredly.

He saw how fragile she was, how scared by the idea that she had hurt him—and that she didn’t remember doing it. He wanted to talk to her about the nightmares, but she’d just put up one of her walls, and how could he scale it? He had no idea what she’d been through in Iraq. What would he even ask?

The girls came running down the stairs. At the sight of Jolene, they stopped so fast Betsy shoved Lulu forward.

“Girls,” Jolene said, looking as sad as he’d ever seen her. “I’m sorry about last night. It was just a nightmare. ”

“A nightmare that gave Dad a black eye,” Betsy said tightly. “What’s wrong with you?”

Jolene sighed. “I’ll be fine. Honest. I just need to try again. ”

“I’m hungry,” Lulu said. “Daddy, are you going to make us breakfast this morning?”

Michael saw Jolene’s reaction to that. She looked disappointed; her shoulders slumped. She turned and limped away, walking resolutely toward the mirror again.

“Okay,” Michael said, “let’s get breakfast going. ” He ushered the girls into the kitchen, made them breakfast, and then followed them upstairs, where they got ready for school. “Tell your mom good-bye,” he said as they headed for the door.

“Bye, Mom,” they said dutifully together. They didn’t look at Jolene, and she kept walking toward the mirror, gauging her gait. Michael walked them both to the end of the driveway and stayed until the buses came to take them away. Then he returned to the house. When he approached Jolene, he saw the sadness in her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, touching her arm.

“Don’t be nice to me this morning,” she said. “I can’t take it. ”

And there it was: the reminder of how far apart they’d drifted. She didn’t want to be comforted by him, even now when she was terrified and depressed and her heart was breaking.

“Come on, Jo, it’s time to leave for rehab” was what he ended up saying. It was all he could think of.

On the ferry, she didn’t want to leave the car. So they sat there in silence until Michael looked at her. “It must have been terrible over there,” he said tentatively, feeling like a fraud. He had no idea, and both of them knew it.

“Terrible? Yeah. ”

“Were you scared all the time?”

She stared out the car window. “Not all the time. I don’t want to talk about this, Michael. It doesn’t matter now. ”

“You’re home, Jo,” he said.

She nodded but didn’t look at him. Neither did she speak again on the drive through Seattle. She just stared out the car window and shrugged in answer to his questions.

When he dropped her off, he said, “Jo? We need to really talk about all this, you know. ”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know. ” She sounded exhausted by the very idea of it.

He watched her limp into the rehab center and then he drove away. Instead of going straight to his office, he turned onto Aurora and drove to Cornflower’s office.

There, he walked up to the desk, saw the girl with the hardware all over her face and the purple hair. “I know I didn’t call. But I’d like to see Chris, if that’s possible. I’m Michael Zarkades. ”