Home Front(104)

“A nightmare?” Betsy shook her head. “Do we look stupid?”

“Go upstairs,” Michael said, helping Jolene stand. She was breathing like a freight train beside him. “I’ll take care of your mom.”

“Can I sleep with you?” Lulu asked her sister. There was a tremble in her voice.

“Sure.” Betsy took Lulu’s hand and led her away.

Jolene climbed into bed and leaned back against the headboard so hard it banged against the wall. “Sorry about that,” she said shakily.

He sat down beside her.

“I’m having … trouble, Michael,” she said, swallowing hard.

It was the closest Jolene could come to asking for help. “I know, Jo. We’ll get you some help.”

“Are they safe with me?”

He wanted to say yes, sure, of course they are, but he was sitting here, his eye throbbing from a punch she probably didn’t remember throwing, feeling his wife tremble beside him. And the truth was, he didn’t know.





Twenty-Four



The next morning, Jolene was up before Michael.

He found her in the family room. She had a mirror set up at one end, and she was walking in front of it, studying her gait, trying to walk as naturally as she had before.

As he watched from the doorway, she tripped, fell hard, and cursed.

He went to her side, reaching out. “Jo—”

“I have to do this myself,” she said through gritted teeth, shoving his hand aside. “I have to be me again.”

He heard the desperation in her voice and saw the fear in her eyes, and he drew back. It actually hurt to watch her climb to a stand and waver, grab the back of the chair for support.

She fell three more times while he stood there. Each time, she curled her good hand into a fist, breathed hard, and got back to her feet. She didn’t curse again, didn’t say a thing about her pain. And he knew it had to hurt like hell; Conny had told him she’d been working so hard she had blisters on her stump.

“You look great,” he said when she made a good pass and an apparently easy turn.

She smiled at him, but he saw past her can-do attitude and was startled by the sadness in her eyes. He saw what it cost her to fall, to trip, to need help with the simplest things. She frowned. “You have a black eye.”

“Very Jack Sparrow, don’t you think?”

“Did I do that?”

“Not on purpose, Jo.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know. Don’t worry about it.”

“Right,” she said tiredly.

He saw how fragile she was, how scared by the idea that she had hurt him—and that she didn’t remember doing it. He wanted to talk to her about the nightmares, but she’d just put up one of her walls, and how could he scale it? He had no idea what she’d been through in Iraq. What would he even ask?

The girls came running down the stairs. At the sight of Jolene, they stopped so fast Betsy shoved Lulu forward.

“Girls,” Jolene said, looking as sad as he’d ever seen her. “I’m sorry about last night. It was just a nightmare.”

“A nightmare that gave Dad a black eye,” Betsy said tightly. “What’s wrong with you?”

Jolene sighed. “I’ll be fine. Honest. I just need to try again.”

“I’m hungry,” Lulu said. “Daddy, are you going to make us breakfast this morning?”

Michael saw Jolene’s reaction to that. She looked disappointed; her shoulders slumped. She turned and limped away, walking resolutely toward the mirror again.

“Okay,” Michael said, “let’s get breakfast going.” He ushered the girls into the kitchen, made them breakfast, and then followed them upstairs, where they got ready for school. “Tell your mom good-bye,” he said as they headed for the door.

“Bye, Mom,” they said dutifully together. They didn’t look at Jolene, and she kept walking toward the mirror, gauging her gait. Michael walked them both to the end of the driveway and stayed until the buses came to take them away. Then he returned to the house. When he approached Jolene, he saw the sadness in her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, touching her arm.

“Don’t be nice to me this morning,” she said. “I can’t take it.”

And there it was: the reminder of how far apart they’d drifted. She didn’t want to be comforted by him, even now when she was terrified and depressed and her heart was breaking.

“Come on, Jo, it’s time to leave for rehab” was what he ended up saying. It was all he could think of.

On the ferry, she didn’t want to leave the car. So they sat there in silence until Michael looked at her. “It must have been terrible over there,” he said tentatively, feeling like a fraud. He had no idea, and both of them knew it.

“Terrible? Yeah.”

“Were you scared all the time?”

She stared out the car window. “Not all the time. I don’t want to talk about this, Michael. It doesn’t matter now.”

“You’re home, Jo,” he said.

She nodded but didn’t look at him. Neither did she speak again on the drive through Seattle. She just stared out the car window and shrugged in answer to his questions.