said a quick prayer—please Mom, be home—and dialed, needing desperately to hear her friendly, if firm, voice.
“Sergeant Beth Milhow,” Julia’s mother said by way of greeting.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Julia? You made it okay? I was getting worried.”
“We had some delays, but we got to New Springs this morning.”
“You must be tired.”
“I am so past tired, I can’t even see straight.” Every time her eyes fluttered shut she could feel herself falling asleep.
“How was Ben on the flight?”
“He was great.” Julia couldn’t quite make that half truth totally believable. “Well, he was as great as could be expected. A minor meltdown somewhere over Denver and a larger one on the bus, but mostly he slept and stared at every new face.”
“How are you?” Her mom’s voice dropped and Julia rubbed her forehead. Her mind was slippery and clouded from too much worry and too little sleep. “I’m—” nervous, tired, freaked out “—all right.”
“Oh, honey, you don’t have to do this. You can come back here and—”
Live in a big empty house all alone, Julia finished her mother’s sentence. You can continue doing everything by yourself.
“I know, Mom,” Julia interrupted. “But I really need to do this.”
Her mom made a skeptical noise and Julia brushed her fingers through Ben’s fine hair that was so much like Mitch’s. She leaned down and kissed the top of his head, smelled the distinctive powdery-fruity scent of her son and hoped she was doing the right thing.
“Mom, they want to get to know Ben. They’ve never even seen him. We just spent two weeks with you, plus you came to visit us in Germany, but they—”
“They never bothered.”
Ben woke up with a whiny cry and rolled toward her. He had fallen asleep during supper and she knew the poor guy was probably hungry. Julia winced and tried to stop Ben from smashing her kneecaps as he crawled over her legs. He was two, but he weighed thirty pounds. She grabbed a Thomas the Tank Engine toy from his diaper bag and wiggled it in front of him. He took the bait, wrapping his little fingers around the toy. Sleepy, but determined to stay awake, Ben ran Thomas up and down her legs like railroad tracks. “Choo choo,” he said and Julia found a smile from somewhere in her weary body. She jiggled her legs under him so he bounced around. He laughed and buried his face against her.
Oh, God, she prayed again, please don’t let this selfish decision hurt Ben.
“They only want to get to know you now because Mitch is dead,” Beth said and Julia flinched, swallowing the taste of copper and bile. It had been five months since the accident and she still felt raw.
“What’s wrong with that?” Julia asked, pushing aside her own doubt. “So they’re two years late? Should I punish them forever?”
“Well, I don’t think you should go running into their open arms. They were nothing but terrible to you.”
“They weren’t terrible,” Julia muttered. “They just weren’t nice.”
But they are here and they are solid and they aren’t going anywhere. They aren’t going to fight in any wars or move every two or three years. Their roots go so deep that maybe Ben and I can stand close and pretend those roots are ours.
“Oh, sweetheart, you are too nice for your own good,” Beth said, her voice soft like a hug. She was prickly and stubborn to the point of blindness, but Julia never doubted that her mother loved her.
“Probably,” Julia laughed.
“So, how are they? Is that woman civil?” Julia smiled at her mother’s loyalty. Ever since Agnes had so singularly rejected Julia, Beth referred to her as “that woman.”
The petty parts of Julia that were still wounded by the things Agnes had said sort of liked it.
“They’ve been really nice to me and nothing but sweet to Ben.”
“But don’t you go forgiving that woman too soon. You are a strong mother, you don’t need their help.”
Julia clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the incredulous laughter. Beth, as usual, had no clue what Julia needed.
Julia was a twenty-four-year-old widow. She had a two-year-old son who only knew his father from photographs. Her own father was dead and her mother, though loving and involved in Julia’s life, was still an active engineer in the army. And when the United States wasn’t at war, Mom was home in Washington, D.C., for only about half the year. For the past three years, Beth had spent eleven months out of twelve in Iraq.
No one had ever truly been there for Julia and Ben. And she needed that to change. Ben needed family, people in his life on a daily basis. Not twice a year for a few weeks.
“Do you have enough money?”
An excellent question, Mother. “I’m fine,” she hedged.
“Okay, I’ll let you get some rest.” Beth’s deep breath echoed down the line. “Remember, sweetheart, you can always come here. I leave to go back on Saturday to help the Brits with their water problems so my house will be empty.”
Another empty army house. Exactly what I am trying to avoid.
“I know, Mom, thanks. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
They hung up and Julia’s spirits bobbed upward. She smiled at her son, who was nearly asleep where he lay against her legs.
“Everything is going to be okay,” she told him and hoped with every last thing in her body that it was true.
THE DREAM CAME as it had for the past five months. She stood at the front door of the small apartment in Germany she and Mitch shared briefly before he went to Iraq. She was dressed in her favorite white skirt and a sweater that Mitch said made her eyes look like the sky. She knew she was opening the door to something special. Excitement danced over her skin and she was happy, the way she’d been for the first few months of her marriage. But when she opened the door there was only fire and smoke and the sound of someone screaming.
She ran into the smoke, sure that someone needed her. Just her, no one else could help. The smoke shifted and on the floor of the hallway sprawled Mitch, bloody and hurt.
“Hey, baby,” he said with a smile she recognized from the days when he was trying to get her in bed.
She dropped to her knees beside him, looking for the source of all that blood, but she couldn’t find it.
“Is this a trick?” she asked, angry.
“No trick,” a voice said behind her and she turned and Jesse, Mitch’s best friend, stood there with a hole in his chest that she could see through. His dark eyes seemed to burn and smolder, the way they had the day she met him. “I can’t stay here,” Jesse said and turned away into the fog. Julia wanted to tell him to wait, to take care of that wound, to stay. But she didn’t.
She remained silent in the middle of a war with her husband.
CHAPTER THREE
JULIA WOKE to the smell of pancakes and coffee and—she took another sniff of the air. Oh, boy. Bacon. It wasn’t so much the food that had her eyes flying open, it was that she didn’t have to make it. All that food waited for her.
She stared at the ceiling and luxuriated in the faded blue sheets. She had slept like a rock on this soft mattress with all the extra pillows. It was heaven.
This was definitely the right place for Ben. She