“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.