Fool Me Once(3)

You can take better care of your kids, Maya thought, but her normal anger with him was gone now, leaked away like a raft with a pinhole.

“We’re fine, thanks.”

Eddie went silent, as if he too could read her mind, which in this case he probably could.

“Sorry I missed your last game,” Maya said to Alexa, “but I’ll be there tomorrow.”

All three of them suddenly looked uneasy.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Eddie said.

“It’s okay. It’ll be a nice distraction.”

Eddie nodded, gathered up Daniel and Alexa, and headed to the car. Alexa looked back at her as she walked away. Maya gave her the reassuring smile. Nothing has changed, the smile said. I will still always be there for you, just as I promised your mother.

Maya watched Claire’s family get into the car. Daniel, the outgoing fourteen-year-old, took the front seat. Alexa, who was only twelve, sat alone in the back. Since her mother’s death, she seemed to always be wincing as though preparing for the next blow. Eddie waved, gave Maya a tired smile, and slipped into the driver’s seat.

Maya waited, watching the car drive slowly away. When it did, she noticed NYPD homicide detective Roger Kierce standing in the distance, leaning against a tree. Even today. Even now. She was tempted to walk over and confront him, demand some answers, but Judith took her hand again.

“I’d like you and Lily to come back to Farnwood with us.”

The Burketts always referred to their house by its name. That probably should have been clue one of what would become of her if she married into such a family.

“Thank you,” Maya said, “but I think Lily needs to be home.”

“She needs to be with family. You both do.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I mean it. Lily will always be our granddaughter. And you’ll always be our daughter.”

Judith gave her hand an extra squeeze to emphasize the sentiment. It was sweet of Judith to say, like something she was reading off a teleprompter at one of her charity galas, but it was also untrue—at least the part about Maya. No one who married a Burkett was anything but a tolerated outsider.

“Another time,” Maya said. “I’m sure you understand.”

Judith nodded and gave her a perfunctory hug. So did Joe’s brother and sister. She watched their devastated faces as they stumbled toward the stretch limos that would take them to the Burkett estate.

Her former platoon mates were still there. She met Shane’s eyes and gave him a small nod. They got it. They didn’t so much “fall out” as quietly fade away, being sure not to disturb anything in their wake. Most of them were still enlisted. After what happened near the Syrian-Iraqi border, Maya had been “encouraged” to take an honorable discharge. Seeing no other real option, she did. So now, instead of commanding or at least teaching the new recruits, retired Captain Maya Stern, for a short time the face of the new Army, gave flying lessons at Teterboro Airport in northern New Jersey. Some days it was okay. Most days she missed the service more than she’d have ever imagined.

Maya finally stood alone by the mound of dirt that would soon cover her husband.

“Ah, Joe,” she said out loud.

She tried to feel a presence. She had tried this before, in countless mourning situations, seeing if she could sense any sort of life force after death, but there was always nothing. Some believed that there had to be at least a small life force—that energy and motion never die completely, that the soul is eternal, that you can’t destroy matter permanently, all that. Perhaps that was true, but the more of the dead Maya hung around, the more it felt as though nothing, absolutely nothing, was left behind.

She stayed by the gravesite until Eileen came back from the playground with Lily.

“Ready?” Eileen asked.

Maya took another look at the hole in the ground. She wanted to say something profound to Joe, something that might give them both—ugh—closure, but no words came to her.

Eileen drove them home. Lily fell asleep in a car seat that looked like something designed by NASA. Maya sat in the front passenger seat and stared out the window. When they got to the house—Joe had actually wanted to name it too, but Maya had put her foot down—Maya somehow managed to release the complicated strapping mechanism and eased Lily out of the backseat. She cradled Lily’s head so as not to wake her.

“Thanks for the ride,” Maya whispered.

Eileen turned off the car. “Do you mind if I come in for a second?”

“We’ll be fine.”

“No doubt.” Eileen unbuckled her seat belt. “But I’ve been meaning to give you something. It’ll just take two minutes.”


*

Maya held it in her hand. “A digital picture frame?”

Eileen was a strawberry blonde with freckles and a wide smile. She had the kind of face that lit up a room when she entered, which made it a great mask for the torment beneath.

“No, it’s a nanny cam disguised as a digital picture frame.”

“Say again?”

“Now that you’re working full-time, you’ve got to keep a better eye on things, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Where does Isabella play with Lily most of the time?”

Maya gestured to her right. “In the den.”