Jolene strapped herself into the right seat and began the preflight checklist. The helicopter doors were closed. Within moments, they were taking off amid a swirl of beige sand.
Below, the soldiers began to disperse.
On the flight to the Baghdad airport the crew was quiet, as they always were on hero missions. The deaths weighed heavily on their minds. The war had begun to heat up in the past few months. It had begun to be normal to be shot at, to be hit. Jolene heard the ping! of machine gun fire hitting a helicopter in her sleep and often woke up screaming. Last week, a bullet had gone through the window beside her head, shattering it, and bounced off her helmet. She’d felt the slightest thwack to her head and kept flying. Only later did she begin to have nightmares about it, to imagine her head exploding, her body coming back to her children in a black bag that was twelve inches too short.
By the time they made it back to Balad, Jolene was beyond exhausted. She hadn’t slept well in weeks, and it was beginning to take a toll on her. She couldn’t remember the last time there hadn’t been a middle-of-the-night mortar attack. She slept through the shelling but woke to the sound of the blaring alarm.
After the end of the mission, the maintenance crew swarmed to check out the helicopter. Jolene and her team walked away. On this dark night, there was no camaraderie, no “let’s go to the DFAC for pie.” Each of them, like Jolene, was thinking how thin a piece of luck separated them from the bodies they’d transported today.
“You okay, Tami?” Jolene said as they reached their trailer.
Tami stopped. “No. Not really.”
They walked into the trailer. Tami flipped a light switch; on came the fluorescent bulb on the ceiling. Instantly, the dark little space was illuminated. There were family photographs everywhere—and a movie poster of Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean on the wall.
Tami sat down on her bed. It sagged in the middle; dust puffed up from the army-green bedding. The alarm sounded.
Jolene heard footsteps running past her trailer. She sat down opposite Tami.
Somewhere, something exploded; the lights in the trailer flickered and remained on.
When the alarm stopped and the world stilled, Tami went on as if nothing had happened: “Carl says Seth is having a hard time. Kids are making fun of him because of us. It makes me want to kick some preteen ass.”
“Michael just says the girls are fine.”
Tami looked up. “It’s not like you’re telling him the truth, either.”
“We’re hardly talking. He hasn’t sent me a single e-mail.” Jolene bent over, began unlacing her boots.
“You are getting a care package once a week. Who’s buying all that stuff and mailing it?”
“My guess? Mila. And the girls.”
“Have you written him?”
Jolene sighed. “You know I haven’t. What would I say?”
“Maybe he’s thinking the same thing.”
“I’m not the one who said I wanted a separation.”
“Are you really going to play chicken with your marriage from here?”
“I didn’t start it.”
“Who cares? Look at what we did today.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s how fast it happens, Jo. Dead. Alive.” She snapped again. “Dead. This is the time to say what needs to be said, not to play games. Your parents were losers who scarred you. I get it, I really do. But you have to find the cojones to talk to your husband or you guys are going to lose everything.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Tam. Your husband loves you.”
“It’s not easy, Jolene. None of this is easy, you know that. Michael loves you,” Tami said. “I know it.”
“No. I don’t think he does.”
“Do you love him?”
There it was, the question she’d spent months avoiding. Leave it to Tami to throw it out like the first pitch in a baseball game. “I don’t know how to stop loving him,” she answered quietly, surprising herself. “It’s in my blood. But…”
“But what? Isn’t that your answer?”
“No.” Jolene sighed. Really, she didn’t want to think about this, or talk about it. “Love is only part of it. Like forgiving is only part. Even if I could forgive him, how would I forget? He stopped loving me, Tam. Just stopped. He looked me in the eyes and said he didn’t love me anymore. How can I trust him again? How can I believe in our marriage, in forever together, if our love has some expiration date?”