"Thanks, I miss her, too," I said. I didn’t really want to talk about her. I knew he wasn’t really over the fact that she was gone. He smiled up at me and let me go.
Everything was where I had put it a year ago. The walls were whitewashed, and in some places, you could still see the little spots where the tape I had used to hang posters up back in the day had damaged the paint. I had a regular double bed, which wasn't that big, but bigger than the regulation beds we had used at camp. Most things after camp felt like a fucking luxury. I was glad to be back.
The first thing I did was take a shower so I could change out of my uniform. When there was a bunch of us and we were all in uniform, we all blended in, became one unit. Out in the civilian world, a guy in uniform stood out.
Before deploying, Dad had let me keep my clothes here at the house, along with stuff like my television and some gaming consoles, since he had space. The rest of the furniture I had used at my old apartment had all gone into storage.
It didn't feel like I had been gone long enough for this to feel new to me. It had just been a year. Some of the guys I had met were deployed on their second or third tours. All the stuff that seemed so normal, like having a closet and more clothes and belongings than you could carry on you at any one time felt new after not being able to have them while I was gone. It humbled the shit out of you. You couldn't feel like you
weren't exactly the same as the other soldiers when you were in combat. It was a little like football in that way – but with much higher stakes and a million times more stressful.
I didn't know what was for dinner, but the smell coming from the kitchen when I came back downstairs was fantastic. The last thing I had eaten had been on the plane. When Mom had been around, she would do the cooking. Since she was gone, Dad had had to learn how to feed himself. Lucky for him, Tiff still lived at home and knew her way around a kitchen. The two of them were setting the table when I came back downstairs.
She had made individual chicken pot pies with a load of sides. I ate some of everything, and it was delicious. I took their questions as they came. Apparently, they had been paying close attention to the news just in case anything happened. They had been scared to death after the couple of bombing incidents that had made the news here, but that had never really been an everyday thing. I had to ease their anxiety about it.
Dad didn't stay long after dinner. He told us goodnight and headed upstairs. He never stayed up that late, even though it was a weekend. The food disappeared, replaced with coffee. I didn't want any since it was probably going to be a struggle getting back on US time. Tiff made herself a cup of dark coffee that she stirred about four sugars into.
It had always been easy talking to her. As adults, as fucked up as it sounds, losing Mom had made us closer. When it had happened, Tiff was the one person other than me who had really had that bond with her. She was the only person who really understood when they said that they understood.
"So how'd you keep yourself busy this past year?" I asked her.
"School, work, rinse, repeat."
"Two more years and you're out," I said.
"I don't know. I've been thinking about grad school a little lately," she said shrugging.
"Yeah? Why? Trying to stall on joining the real world?"
"Beth was in school till she was like, thirty, and look at her now," she quipped. Bethany was one of our cousins on our mom's side. She had two PhDs and our aunt had let her live at home till she had graduated. Fast forward a couple years and she was one of the youngest tenured professors at the University of Vermont.
"How is she?"
"Fine. We didn't all just sit around and wait a year for you to get back, Rome," Tiffany teased.
"You know what I mean," I said back. A year was a long time, but also, it really wasn't. It was the difference between a minor child and an adult and enough time for the planet to make a trip round the sun, but more things were the same than were different. Dad was still working, she was still at school, and family we had nearby were fine. It was like I hadn't left.
"What about your friends?" I asked her casually.
"My friends? You didn't really know many," she quipped. What I didn't want to say was tell me how Veronica's doing. From what I could tell from her letters and talking to her while I had been gone, they hadn't stopped being best friends in the past year.
"What about that girl Grace?" I asked, grasping for any name I could remember.
"Gracie? She took a leave of absence. She got pregnant." I tried to think of another one of her friend's names. Veronica was always the closest friend that she had had, so I was coming up blank.
"Are you dating anyone?"
"Not really. I don't have a boyfriend if that's what you're asking," she said.
Fuck, she was going to make me do it. I didn't want to come right out and ask her about Veronica, but I had to know how she had been. I had never felt lonely while I was gone. I had gotten letters from my family all the time and even got to talk to them. It still wasn't enough, though. It had been a whole year since I had said a single word to Veronica, and I was just getting how fucking long that was.
Anything could have happened. A year was long enough to meet someone new and start a relationship. It was long enough to get pregnant and have a baby. It was long enough to forget about her, but I hadn't. I hoped secretly that she hadn't, either. If she had, then that would have been my fault – but it wouldn't change the fact that I still cared about her.
"What about Ron?"
"Veronica?" she asked, putting her cup down.
"Yeah. What's she up to these days?" I asked, trying to sound casual.