Home Front(13)

So she didn’t know about wanting to fit in so desperately you felt sick at the smallest slight. Ordinarily, she would talk to Betsy about inner strength now, about believing in herself, maybe even about cutting her friends some slack.

But smoking on the school grounds changed all that. If Betsy’s friends, ex-friends, were smoking, Jolene needed to be more firm.

“I’ll call Sierra’s mother—”

“Oh, my GOD, you will not. Promise me you won’t. If you do, I’ll never tell you anything again.”

The fear in Betsy’s eyes was alarming.

“Promise, me, Mom. Please—”

“Okay,” Jolene said. “I won’t say anything for now. But, honey, if Sierra and Zoe are smoking cigarettes at school, you don’t want to follow their lead. Maybe you need to make new friends. Like the girls on your track team. They seem nice.”

“You think everyone seems nice.”

“How about Seth?”

Betsy rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease. Yesterday he brought his guitar to school and played it at lunchtime. It was superlame.”

“You used to love listening to him play his guitar.”

“So what? I don’t now. People were laughing at him.”

Jolene stared at Betsy; her daughter looked utterly miserable. “Ah, Betsy. How can you be mean to Seth? You know how much it hurts when Sierra and Zoe are mean to you.”

“If I’m his friend no one will like me.”

“You have to learn not to be a lemming, Bets.”

“What’s that, a rodent? Are you saying I’m a rodent?”

Jolene sighed. “I wish I could make all this easier on you. But only you can do that. You need to be your best self, Betsy. Be a good friend and you’ll have good friends.”

“You want to make it easier on me? Skip career day.”

And just like that, they were back to the beginning. “I can’t. You know that. I made a commitment. When you make a promise to someone, you follow through. That’s what honor is, and honor—and love—matter more than anything.”

“Yeah, yeah. Be all that you can be.”

“I won’t volunteer next year. How’s that?”

Betsy looked at her. “Promise?”

“I promise.” Jolene tried not to care that she’d finally drawn a reluctant smile out of her daughter by promising not to be a part of her life.

*



Career day was as bad as expected. Betsy had been mortified by Jolene’s appearance at the middle school. Jolene had tried to be as quiet as possible, modulating her voice carefully as she told the kids about the high school to flight school program she’d entered at eighteen. The kids had loved hearing about the missions she flew in state, like last year’s rescue of climbers on Mount Rainier during a blizzard. They questioned her about night-vision goggles and guns and combat training. Jolene tried to underplay everything, including the coolness of flying a Black Hawk, but all the while, she saw Betsy slinking downward in her seat, trying her best to disappear. At the end of the event, Betsy had been the first one out the door. On the other side of the gymnasium, Sierra and Zoe had pointed at Betsy and laughed.

Since then, Betsy had been even more hormonal and moody. She yelled; she cried; she rolled her eyes. She had stopped walking and begun stomping. Everywhere. In and out of rooms, up the stairs. Doors weren’t shut anymore; they were slammed. When the phone rang, she lunged for it. Invariably, she was disappointed when the call turned out to be for someone else. No one was calling her, which for a twelve-year-old was the equivalent of being stranded on an ice floe. Jolene might be overreacting, but she was worried about her daughter. Anything could set her off these days, send her spiraling into depression.

“And today is the first track meet. You know what that means. Potential humiliation. I’m worried,” she said to Michael that morning. He was beside her in bed, reading.

She waited for him to respond, but it quickly became apparent that he had nothing to say, or he wasn’t listening. “Michael?”

“What? Oh. That again. She’s fine, Jolene. Quit trying to control everything.” He put down his newspaper and got out of bed, heading into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Jolene sighed. As usual, she was on her own for family matters. She got out of bed and went for her run.

When she was finished, she took a shower and dressed quickly, tying her wet hair back in a ponytail as she awakened the girls. Downstairs, in the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of coffee and started breakfast. Blueberry pancakes.

“Morning,” Michael said from behind her.

She turned and looked at him.

He smiled, but it was tired and washed out, that smile; it didn’t reach his dark eyes. In fact, it wasn’t his smile at all, really, not the one that had coaxed her so completely into love once upon a time.

For a moment, she was struck by how good-looking he was. His black hair, still without a trace of gray at forty-five, was damp and wavy. He was the kind of man who drew attention; when Michael Zarkades walked into a room, everyone noticed—he knew it and loved it.

“You’ll make the track meet, right? I know how busy you are at work, and normally I get that you can’t come home, but just this once I think it’s important, okay? You know what a daddy’s girl she is,” she said.