Home Front (44 page)

She got out of bed and grabbed her crutches, hop-swinging into the bathroom. Emerging only ten minutes later, dressed for rehab, with her prosthesis on, she limped out into the kitchen and started breakfast. Pancakes today—like the old days. She got some blueberries out of the freezer and started the batter. Every now and again she caught sight of her wedding ring and it made her smile. Hope felt as close as it ever had.

As she poured the batter in dollops on the hot griddle, she heard Michael come up behind her. He moved in close, leaned over her shoulder. “Pancakes, huh?”

“A peace offering. I could have learned quantum physics in the time they took to make.” She smiled at him, and for a second they were Michael-and-Jo again, and she thought:
We can do it.

“Jo—”

She wanted to know what he was going to say, leaned closer to hear the words, but the phone rang. Michael went to answer it. “Hello?” It was obviously the office; he frowned, sat down, and lowered his voice to say, “When?”

The girls came thundering into the room.

“Mommy’s making pancakes!” Lulu said, her frown turning into a smile when she saw that the pancakes looked ordinary.

Jolene turned slightly, saw Betsy’s narrowed gaze. “The griddle’s too hot,” her daughter said.

“Thank you,” Michael said, hanging up the phone.

Jolene smiled. “Michael, Betsy thinks the griddle is too hot. Will you tell her I was making pancakes before she was born?”

Michael stared at her, unsmiling. “Maybe you should sit down, Jo.”

“Sit down? Why? My leg feels great.”

“Betsy, finish the pancakes,” Michael said.

“Why me?” Betsy whined. “Why do I always have to do everything?”

“Betsy,” he said so sharply Jolene frowned.

“Michael?” she said. “You’re scaring me.”

He took Jolene by the arm and led her through the house, toward the bedroom. When she sat down on the bed, she looked up at him.

“It’s Tami,” he said quietly, sitting beside her. “She died last night.”

Jolene couldn’t breathe. As if from a distance, she saw Michael holding her, soothing her, rubbing his hand up and down her back, but none of it reached her.

For more than twenty years, Tami had been there for her, keeping her strong when she felt weak.
I’ve got your six, flygirl.

And Seth … he would grow up without a mom …

She made a great gasping sound and started to cry.

“It’s okay, Jo,” Michael said, stroking her hair.

“No.” She felt wild suddenly, feral. “It’s not okay. My best friend died and it’s my fault. Mine. She died and then I left her behind…” Her voice broke. “I’m never supposed to leave anyone behind.”

“Jo—”

“I’m sick of people telling me it will be okay. It won’t be okay. It’ll never be okay.”

She couldn’t take this pain. It was consuming her, devouring her. She stumbled to the nightstand and grabbed her sleeping pills. Opening the container, she spilled three into her shaking palm. “A nap will help,” she said, her voice shrill. “I’ll feel better after a little nap.”

It was a lie. She wouldn’t feel better, but she needed to close her eyes and get away from this grief. She couldn’t bear it. Not anymore; she wasn’t strong enough. Her heart might just stop … and would she care?

She swallowed the pills, dry, and sank to the bed, hanging her head, willing them to work.

Michael moved closer, took her in his arms again. She knew he was judging her for taking the pills, thinking that she was pathetic and damaged, but she didn’t care. It was the truth anyway; she’d been snapped in half and her courage was gone.

She looked at him through her tears. “We were supposed to grow old together. We were going to be old women, sitting on our deck in rocking chairs, remembering each other’s lives…”

*   *   *

On the day of Tami’s funeral, Jolene couldn’t get out of bed.

As soon as she woke up, she poured herself a glass of wine. Downing it quickly, she poured and drank another. But there was no help in the bottle today.

She heard the shower start upstairs. Michael was up.

Throwing the covers back, she got out of bed, put on her prosthetic leg, and made her way across the family room slowly; aware of every step, every bump and line and scar on the wood floor. In the past few weeks, she’d made excellent progress with her prosthesis, she was able to wear it almost all the time now, and her movements were getting stronger every day.

At the rag rug, she positioned her fake foot carefully so she wouldn’t slip and then kept going. Up the stairs. Grab, lift, thrust, place, step. Each riser took phenomenal concentration and resolve. By the time she got to the master bedroom, she was sweating.

She shouldn’t be up here. It was off-limits, really, this second floor. No one trusted her to use the stairs. No one trusted her to do much of anything, really. She could hardly blame them.

She limped over to the closet and opened the louvered doors. Her clothes were all still there, neatly aligned.

The first thing she saw were her ACUs, the combat fatigues, with the black beret pinned to the chest. She and Tami had worn that uniform almost every day in Iraq …

Beyond it were her class As—dress uniform: a jacket, knee-length skirt, and white blouse. She pulled it out, stared down at the jacket with its gold detailing, surprised by the emotion that washed over her.

“Jo?” Michael said, coming into the room. He was bare-chested, wearing a towel wrapped low on his hips; his hair was still wet. “You’re crying,” he said.

“Am I?”

He came over, took the uniform from her. “Let me help you get downstairs. Mom should be here by now.”

“I can’t do this.”

His gaze was steady, warm. “You can.” He held on to her arm, steadied her as she moved through the bedroom and went down the stairs, where Mila was waiting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee.

“I came to help you get ready,” she said gently.

Jolene felt as empty as corn husk, hollow, dried-out. She was shaking when her mother-in-law took her by the elbow.

Mila helped her into the shower. When Jolene was done, and wrapped in a big, thick towel, Mila positioned her on the toilet, then brushed and dried her hair. Her residual leg stuck out like a baseball bat, still swollen and decorated with bright-pink stitch marks. Mila wrapped it expertly in the elastic bandage and then covered it with the gel sock.

“A little makeup would be nice today, don’t you think? You’re pale and you’ve lost so much weight…”

Jolene nodded but didn’t really care.

“Sit up straight and close your eyes.”

Jolene closed her eyes when asked, opened them when prompted, and pursed her lips. She couldn’t have cared less how she looked, but neither did she have the strength to protest.

“There. All done. Let’s get you dressed. Here.” Mila knelt in front of her, holding the waistband of the skirt open.

Jolene lifted her left foot and guided it through the opening, gritting her teeth when her mother-in-law slipped the skirt over her stump. Then she stood dutifully and sat again, zipping her skirt before she opened her arms for the blouse, fixing the smart dark neck tab at her collar.

Mila talked the whole time, about gardening and recipes she’d tried and the weather. Anything except the thing they were getting ready for. “Okay. All done. How did I do?”

Jolene lifted the skirt and put her prosthetic limb on. Grabbing the handrail by the toilet, she got to her feet. Turning with care, she faced the mirror on the back of the door.

In her crisp white shirt, dark neck tab, and jacket decorated with honors and trimmed in gold, she was a soldier again.

We’re graduating, flygirl, stand up straight …

Mila took Jolene in her arms, holding her tightly.

Jolene drew back. She couldn’t be touched right now; she was like fine antique china. The smallest pressure in the wrong place and she’d crack. She limped out into the family room, where Betsy and Lulu and Michael were waiting, all of them dressed in black.

When she looked at them, the membrane between what had happened and what could have seemed as fragile as a spider’s web. She was lucky to be here. It could easily have been her funeral that had made them wear black. They were thinking the same thing; she could see it in their eyes.

She managed a smile, wan though it must be, because it was expected of her.

Her family came forward, bookended her. She knew that Michael had already loaded her crutches and wheelchair into the SUV. He also knew how much she wanted to walk on her own today.

Perhaps he thought she wanted to look whole, unharmed, soldierlike. But the truth was that it hurt her to walk still, and she wanted that pain today, welcomed it. It was proof in some sick way that she’d given her best that night, that she had barely survived.

She walked—limped, really; she’d gotten new blisters on her trip to the courthouse—out to the garage.

She climbed awkwardly into the passenger seat of her SUV and forced her prosthesis to bend at the knee. The ugly ankle boot on the clunky foot hit the car’s rubber floor mat and stuck there.

She knew she should say something to her family now. They needed her to put them at ease and let them know she was okay.

But she wasn’t okay and they knew it. They were afraid of her now, afraid she’d blow up or start crying or yelling or maybe even that she’d hit someone.

She didn’t even care. The numbness was back, and this time, she was grateful for it.

Michael started the engine and opened the garage door. It clattered up behind them.

Outside, rain fell in broken threads, strands so slim and pale you only knew it was raining because you could hear it pattering the roof. Michael didn’t even bother to turn on the wipers.

The radio came on. “Purple Rain” blared through the speakers.

Jolene glanced to her left, and for a split second Tami was there, moving side to side, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, singing
pur-ple rain … puur-urr-ple rain …
at the top of her lungs.

Michael leaned forward and clicked off the radio. It wasn’t until he looked at her, laid his hand on her thigh, and squeezed gently that she realized she was crying.

She looked at him, thought,
How am I going to get through this?

Michael squeezed her leg again.

She turned away from him, looked out the window. They were still on the bay road, and the water was calm today, as shiny and silver as a new nickel. By the time they turned onto Front Street, the sky had cleared. A pale sun pushed its way through the layer of cottony gray clouds, limning them with lemony light. In an instant, colors burst to life: the green trees on either side of the road seemed to swallow the sun and glow from within.

In town, there was bumper-to-bumper traffic.

“They all have their lights on,” Michael said.

“But it’s not night,” Lulu said from the backseat.

“It’s for Tami,” Mila said quietly.

Jolene climbed out of the darkness of her own grief and looked around. The hearse was about three cars in front of them, crawling forward. There had to be a hundred cars behind them.

They were going through town now. On either side of the street, people stood in front of the shops, gathered in clusters, waving at the passing hearse.

There were flags everywhere—on posts and poles and streetlamps. Yellow ribbons fluttered in the breeze—from doorknobs and flower boxes and car antennae. A sign in the window of Liberty Bay Books read:
GOODBYE TAMI FLYNN. SAFE JOURNEY HOME.

By the time they made it to the end of town—only a few blocks later—there were hundreds of people waving at the hearse as it passed.

Then the honking started. It sounded like a symphony as the snake of cars turned up toward the cemetery. Once there, on the crest of the hill above Liberty Bay, you could see forever—the Sound, the town, and the jagged, snow-covered Olympic Mountains.

After they parked, Jolene sat there long enough that her family started to worry. They threw questions at her like tiny darts until she said, “I’m fine,” and sighed and got out of the car.

The family merged into the crowd of mourners, many of whom were in uniform.

Behind them, Jolene heard the throaty roar of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

She shouldn’t have turned, but she did. The cars were still streaming in, lights on. There, in the middle of traffic, were about thirty motorcycles, moving in formation; huge flags flapped out behind the riders—Guard, army, American. They created a blur of flying colors. She could see from here that the riders were of all ages and most were in uniforms.

Patriot riders.

Jolene stumbled; Michael caught her, steadied her. Giving him a tight smile, she squared her shoulders and kept walking.

As they rounded the bend, she saw their destination. Perched out on a lip of land that overlooked the Sound was a peaked green tent roof supported by four glinting silver poles. Beneath it was a casket draped in an American flag.

Already there were hundreds of mourners standing around. Behind them stood a row of flags—the Guard, the United States, the army. Last was the Raptor flag.

She wanted to lean into Michael and feel him take her in his arms, but she stood tall, lifted her chin just the slightest amount. This might be the last moment she would ever be Chief Warrant Officer Zarkades, and she’d be damned if she’d disgrace the uniform.

At the side of the casket, she saw Carl and Seth, both dressed in black, looking blank and confused. Beside them was Tami’s weeping mother.

She went up to Seth, put her arms around him. She saw the tears glaze his eyes, and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to cry. She concentrated on each breath, remaining composed by sheer force of will.

And then it was beginning. Michael led her to one of the folding chairs reserved for the family. It hurt to look at Seth and Carl as they took their seats beside her, but she did it, wanting desperately to say
I’m sorry
to each of them. Amazingly, they looked at her with sadness, but not blame. That only made her feel worse.