“Thank you very much for your approval.”
“It’s what you called me for, isn’t it?”
India was startled into silence. Maybe it was.
“I should go,” Helen said. “We’re starting a monster-sized training exercise tomorrow. I won’t see daylight for a while. Show me the view before I hang up. Pretty please. Make me jealous.”
This was the traditional way they ended their calls. Helen was crazy for all things European. Ironically, her friend was also one of the few soldiers whom the army had never stationed in Germany—not yet, at least—so she used India to get a little peek at Europe now and then.
India held her phone up as she walked toward her window, a rectangle cut out of stone walls that were almost two feet thick. The square beyond was a mix of old and new, eighteenth-century spires soaring into the sky with the flashing green cross of a modern pharmacy sign below. It was a great view. If India squinted to block out the modern traffic that rolled over the old grey stones, she could imagine herself living in a past century, looking out this same window.
Undoubtedly, other women had looked out this same window in past centuries. Other women would do so for a century after India left, too. She was just a brief visitor, one who would leave nothing behind. Buildings lasted. People disappeared. She was just passing through.
India stood by the two-foot-deep stone casing and felt small.
“Bye now,” Helen said. “Fun talking to you.”
“Wait. I just—I just—” India’s heart was beating a little too fast. She felt so insubstantial. Insignificant. But everyone was just passing through, weren’t they? Everyone looked out their window and felt a little...untethered.
Not her friend. Helen was part of something.
“I want to see your view for a change.”
“Mine? A boring army base in Central Texas? It’s just brown in December.” But Helen obligingly turned her phone so that India could see out of Helen’s second-story, modern office window. The view of brown grass and miles of flat land was anything but boring to India. Soldiers in camouflage and absurdly comfortable-looking combat boots were walking on the sidewalk below. A civilian pickup truck drove by on the smooth asphalt road. Then another pickup truck. Another. Texans sure drove a lot of pickup trucks.
India felt herself beginning to smile. She’d forgotten just how big American trucks were compared to European vehicles. She hadn’t been home—or rather, back to her native country—in four years.
Helen turned her phone back around. “It’s pretty sad compared to a medieval town square, isn’t it? I swear, India, I’m going to show up on your doorstep with Tom one of these days and surprise you.”
“I’d love it, but I don’t know where you’d sleep. My place isn’t even big enough for two people.” Not that Gerard-Pierre had let that stop him from moving more than a few of his things here. He kept clothes here, toiletries. Books. A laptop. He liked to work at her high-top table and enjoy her view of the old city square. He liked her television. Since her job meant she always needed to go to sleep before he did, he’d stay out on the couch and watch shows. More often than not, he’d fall asleep on her couch. In the mornings, she had to tiptoe out of her own apartment with her pumps in her hand, so she wouldn’t wake the man who found her apartment more convenient than his own.
She looked at the note again. It had been written on her notepaper. It had been taped to the door with her tape. The tape dispenser had been left on her high-top.
Her man was a mooch.
“Actually, if you wanted to visit, you and your husband could take the bedroom. It won’t hold a queen-size bed, but I do have a full in there. I could sleep on the couch.”
Because Gerard-Pierre will no longer be sleeping on it.
“I couldn’t put you out like that.”
“Three would be a crowd for a honeymoon, wouldn’t it? But the offer stands.”
“It’s sweet of you, but we won’t put you out anytime soon. To actually take a honeymoon, we’d have to be done with the contractors in the house, and we’d have to find someone to watch the dog for a couple of weeks, and—hang on.” Helen tapped on a keyboard. “Got an urgent message from the brigade CO. Let me read this real quick.”
India marched the three whole steps from the window to the sofa. Gerard-Pierre’s red sweater was thrown over the arm. Feeling like she was reclaiming her home, she whipped it off the sofa. It left red lint on the creamy-beige upholstery. A bit of teal peeked out from between the cushions, too, Gerard-Pierre’s shirt or scarf or something. He favored flamboyantly fashionable French scarves with his winter wear.
She yanked on it. The cloth turned out to be a strap. The strap turned out to be part of a lacy, teal bra. It was darling and daring and so very French.
It wasn’t hers.
She sank down onto the beige cushions, a little dazed. A little nauseous.
Helen’s voice penetrated her thoughts. “Oh. My. God.”
“I know, right?” India said, but her voice sounded funny. “Talk about three’s a crowd...”
“This is the single best message I’ve ever read in the United States Army. That monster training exercise? Canceled. They decided the planning phase was a success and canceled the execution. We’re standing down. A training holiday has been granted instead. Wait until Tom gets the word. Hang on—he won’t get the word if I don’t pass this memo down to battalion.”
India stared at the lacy bra. Gerard-Pierre was cheating on her. They hadn’t had sex in months, but he’d had sex. In her apartment.
“India? Hello? Can you still hear me?”
“Fine.” Why would he put so much effort into it? He wasn’t very exciting in bed. He’d take a fine glass of wine over a round of sex.
“Are you okay?”
He’d wanted her to cancel her holiday vacation so he could present her to his parents as his accomplished, multilingual girlfriend. And then what had been his plan? To take up with his side piece again in January? To keep cheating until he got caught?
Of course.
Then, when his infidelity caused their breakup, India would have known there was another family out there wondering why she’d decided to break up with their son after they’d had such a nice visit. Hadn’t she liked them? Had they scared her off in some way?
The shock was quickly being replaced by anger.
There was an even worse scenario possible. Tom loves my parents, Helen had said. What if India had spent Christmas with Gerard-Pierre’s family and loved them? She would have lost them when she lost her cheating boyfriend.
She clenched the bra in her fist. This was why Major India Woods, US Army, was thirty-two and single. She didn’t do families. She didn’t do complicated. She didn’t do any of this.
“You’re looking awfully serious,” Helen said.
“I...” She dropped the bra on the floor. The truth was too humiliating. She lied. “I reread that note while you were sending your message. There was more to it. I’m really, really ticked off.”
She was ticked off at herself. This was her home, an impermanent rental unit, but the only home she had, and she hadn’t protected it. She’d let someone use her home, she’d let someone use her and now—
India stood up. She didn’t want to sit on the couch. She didn’t want Gerard-Pierre’s stuff to be in her apartment. Most of all, she didn’t want to be here when Gerard-Pierre came over tonight. He didn’t deserve an audience for his excuses or his accusations—and that was all