want to go somewhere,” she told Helen. “My leave was approved. Just because Gerard-Pierre decided not to go, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a Christmas holiday, right?”
“Right. Where do you want to go?”
Home.
The pang was strong enough to cut through her anger. She wanted to go home, to a place where she was part of something. To a place where she belonged.
It didn’t exist.
“I want to come back to the United States,” she said, the words surprising her even as she spoke them.
It would feel familiar. There’d be all the foods and the stores and the street signs she’d grown up with. She’d be surrounded by American accents and oversize vehicles. She wanted to eat in a McDonald’s that did not serve gazpacho or koffiekoeken, in a KFC that served tea on ice without asking, because they didn’t even sell hot tea.
Her friend laughed. “The grass is always greener on the other side of the pond, then. You want to come to the United States, and I’m dying to go to Europe.”
There was a pause, and then, despite the satellite’s relay delay, the old roomies spoke in unison. “We should swap places.”
India seized on the idea. “We really could do that. We could swap houses.”
“Now?” Helen asked.
“Yes. You could spend Christmas here.”
“My reflex is to say ‘No, I couldn’t,’ but Tom and I just got extra days off. Minutes ago.”
India looked at the bra on her floor. A lot had happened in the past few minutes.
“It’s like fate,” Helen said, half-serious.
India pressed her point, trying not to sound frantic. “It would be perfect for you. My place could be your home base for your honeymoon. From here, you could catch trains to Paris or Rome. You could take a ferry to England. You could drive to Amsterdam or Luxembourg.”
“Stop, stop. I’m sold. I’ve been sold since you first pointed that phone out your window last year.”
Thank God. India really needed to get out of here. What she wanted was...
Well, it wasn’t here. What she wanted was time away, time to herself to decide what she wanted.
Helen was apologetic. “It’s great for me, but what would you get? An unfinished house and nobody to talk to except our goofy dog.”
“Do I have to meet the dog’s family?”
“No.”
“Sounds like heaven.”
* * *
This is going to be hell.
Aiden brooded at the brown, barren view. He’d been through worse, of course. Combat tours, with their eternal stretches of boredom flavored by the underlying knowledge that monotony could explode into a life-or-death situation at any second of any hour. There’d been the extreme sleep deprivation for months at Ranger School. The steady, prolonged pressure of four years at West Point. Those had each been their own sort of hell, but he’d made it through each one because he’d had a sense of purpose during them.
He also hadn’t been a father during any of them.
He wasn’t feeling particular purposeful this week. Nobody in the battalion seemed to be. As the staff arrived one by one, Aiden glanced at the array of expressions: resignation, anger, glumness. Plain old bad moods—and this was the senior leadership. The barracks full of eighteen-and nineteen-year-old privates must be a real barrel of laughs. Dragging an unmotivated unit through an unnecessary exercise? Yes, that counted as a kind of hell, when it took his children away from him.
He’d survive it, of course. He could survive anything, and he’d learned that not overseas or in a Georgia swamp or in the granite-walled environs of a military academy. He’d learned that in a hospital, by his wife’s bedside. He could survive anything, even if he didn’t want to, even if it was grossly unfair of the universe to expect him to take another breath.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the brown flatness, and missed the unsullied joy of his daughters. They gave him breath. They gave him purpose. They gave him happiness. They were gone until Christmas Eve. He rubbed the two pennies between his fingers.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” The battalion commander entered the boardroom with energy, clapping his hands together and rubbing them in anticipation. It was entirely too much cheer for the start of a three-hour meeting.
Aiden turned away from the window and took his seat.
“The preparations for this exercise have been executed in an outstanding manner,” the battalion commander said, then he turned to Aiden. “Major Nord, well done.”
“Thank you, sir.”
It was an unexpected way to open a meeting, but Aiden supposed he couldn’t ask for better than that. The commander went around the table, congratulating each staff officer and each of the four company commanders, including Tom Cross, Aiden’s new neighbor. Captain Cross and his wife, Captain Helen Pallas, had bought the acreage adjacent to Aiden’s. Their new house was not quite complete. They’d moved in about a month ago, anyway.
“Which brings me to the highlight of this meeting.”
Aiden exchanged a look with the executive officer, who raised his brow and shrugged. Neither of them had been informed there was going to be a highlight of this meeting.
“The powers-that-be have completed their review of the plans and preparatory work we’ve submitted. They are certain that we have prepared for every contingency.”
A few of the officers and senior NCOs gave appropriately restrained, indoor hoo-ahs in response.
“In fact, they are so certain we’ll ace this exercise, they have decided not to hold the actual exercise.”
Silence.
The lieutenant colonel seemed to enjoy it. “Please, ladies and gentlemen, try to control yourselves. I know you were looking forward to ninety-six hours of no sleep and delicious MREs, but you’re going to have to find a way to cope with a training holiday instead.”
A training holiday? Time off without having it counted against his annual leave? Time off when he’d been expecting to work around the clock for days? Time off?
The stunned silence held. It was like they’d all just witnessed a Christmas miracle.
Aiden didn’t trust it. “The entire exercise, sir? The brigade as well as the battalion?” If the brigade was still a go, then he would still work. The brigade S-3 would want input from the battalion S-3.
“The whole enchilada. I don’t think it takes a genius to realize that, in addition to reviewing our plans, someone higher up also reviewed the amount of fuel the exercise would require and the amount of fuel budget they had left for the year. They don’t have a burning need to deploy hundreds of vehicles across Central Texas’s highways this week, after all.”
All around the table, faces were starting to smile.
The commander was openly laughing. “Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of their spouses reviewed the calendar with them, too. This level of exercise being conducted this close to Christmas while all the kids are out of school was guaranteed to piss off some very important spouses—or entire organizations of spouses.”
No kidding.
Aiden’s surprise was wearing off. Anger was taking its place. Couldn’t they have foreseen the blow to morale among the military families? Couldn’t they have counted their damn money and their damn fuel and canceled the whole damn enchilada sooner? Before he’d promised his sister