She imagined them in detail, completely; the family, her family, gathered on the sofa, with the letter bringing them together. Betsy would read it aloud.
The base was bombed four times today and we just got here.
Jolene imagined their reaction to that … and knew what her letters home had to be.
My loves, she wrote, missing them so sharply it was difficult to go on. She drew in a deep breath.
It was a long flight over here, and I have to admit that I’m tired. Betsy, you wouldn’t believe how flat it is, and how everything is the same color, like dying wheat. And man is it hot. I think I was sweating before I even got off the plane.
Tami and I are roommates in a little trailer. It’s kind of how I imagine college would be. So we need photos and posters to make it homey. Can you help us out? I’ll send pics when I can …
Jolene wrote everything she could think of to say. When she ran out of steam, she closed the laptop and put it in her locker. That was when she noticed the pink journal Betsy had given her for her birthday. Reaching out, she brought it to her lap and opened it. She’d intended to give this journal back to Betsy when she got home, but after less than twenty-four hours, she knew that wouldn’t happen. She needed a place where she could be honest because from now on, she was Chief Zarkades, and she couldn’t show fear or hesitation any more than she could tell her family the truth.
She opened the diary and wrote.
MAY 2005
This journal was supposed to be for you, Betsy. I intended to write down all my feelings over here, so that when I come home, I could give it to you, say here, this is everything I thought while we were apart. I thought I’d give you all the advice you would need, that I’d be wise and helpful. The perfect mother, even from a world away.
But the truth is that being your mother is breaking my heart. I have to figure out how to be strong, how to put my love for you and Lulu aside. If I can’t, I won’t be any good to anyone.
Here, between these pages you gave me, I’ll have to talk to myself. Hopefully writing about my fear will lessen it. Maybe someday I’ll give it to you, when you’re old enough not to judge me too harshly.
The base was attacked four times today. By the fourth time, when the alarm sounded, Tami and I just looked at each other and shrugged and stayed in our trailer. I kept putting away my clothes, but I could hear the whistling of missiles and mortar fire exploding, and I thought will I have a chance to say good-bye to my girls? and then it was over.
Over.
It’s a word that seems to crop up more and more in my life lately. Like my marriage.
Over.
I feel so alone over here, without Michael. Sometimes I pretend that he’s still waiting for me back home. That he still loves me.
Then I wake up to the sound of bombs. I’ve been in-country a day and here’s what I think: I’m going to die over here.
Why didn’t I think that before?
*
Michael left the office at about noon and drove north of the city. He pulled up to the street and checked the address he’d been given. He peered through his car’s side window, frowning. Yes, this was the place.
The psychiatrist’s office did not inspire confidence. It was housed in a run-down midcentury house on a bad stretch of Aurora Avenue. Traffic streamed past it, honking.
Michael parked between a rusted pickup truck and a shiny green electric car. Following a cracked, weed-patterned sidewalk to a slightly sagging front porch, he stopped at the front door and knocked.
The door was opened almost immediately by a lanky older man with shoulder-length gray hair and an elongated, wrinkled face. In a blue plaid suit, at least two decades out of date, and lime green shirt, he looked like a cross between Ichabod Crane and a low-rent British rocker. He was probably seventy years old, but there was something strangely youthful about him.
Michael hoped this wasn’t the doctor. Juries liked their experts to look like experts.
“You must be Michael Zarkades,” the man said, extending his hand. “Christian Cornflower. Most of my patients call me Doctor C. Come in.”
The doctor stepped back. In the front room, a young woman with purple hair and a silver nose ring sat at a whitewashed antique desk, her fingers clacking on a keyboard while she talked on the phone. Nodding at her as he passed, the doctor led Michael through an office that was full of comfortable, overstuffed chairs and old-fashioned oak tables. Rose-patterned paper covered the walls, which were further decorated with needlepoint samplers sporting pithy sayings like today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Finally, they came to what probably used to be the home’s master bedroom. A big window framed the limbs of a beautiful old apple tree, decked out in bright green leaves and dotted with tiny new fruit. The walls here were 1970s wood paneling, decorated with more samplers and framed diplomas from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Berkeley.