Home Front(57)

Michael glanced past his mother; he saw Lulu in the corner, seated at a garden display table, pretending to serve her doll tea in a paper cup. “Where is she?”

“Outside, by the big rock.”

Michael nodded. “We’re going to the Pot for dinner. You want to join us?”

“I’d love to, but I can’t. Helen and I are changing the window display tonight. Labor Day’s coming up—the big sale starts.”

He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Ma.” With a sigh, he headed through the store, past the shelves full of knickknacks and planters and gardening tools. At the back door, he paused for just a moment, gathering his strength, and then he went out to the parking lot that ran between the Front Street stores and the marina. A huge gray boulder sat on a patch of grass overlooking the docks. For as long as he’d lived here, kids had scrambled up, down, and around the rock. Now, he saw his daughter sitting on top of it, her blond hair tousled by the warm summer breeze, her gaze turned out to sea. Hundreds of boats bobbed on the flat calm waters below.

He came up beside the rock. “Hey, you,” he said, looking up.

She looked down at him, her pale, pimply face ravaged by tears. There was an alarming flatness in her eyes. “Hi, Dad. You’re late.”

“Sorry.”

As he stood there, trying to dredge up some words of wisdom, her watch alarm bleeped. Betsy yanked the watch off and threw it to the ground.

He bent over and picked it up, heard the beep-beep-beep that his wife was listening to at this very moment, a world away. For a moment, he imagined it, imagined her, looking down at her watch, probably feeling so far from home.

“Your mom’s fine,” he said at last. Honestly, all of this had been easier before the Keller case, when he could believe in Jolene’s optimistic letters and assurances of safety. Now, he knew better. How was he supposed to comfort a child when her fears were reasonable and he shared them? “It wasn’t her, Betsy.”

Betsy slid down from the rock. “It could have been.”

“But it wasn’t,” he said quietly.

Her eyes watered at that, her mouth wavered. He could see her composure crumbling. “This time,” she said.

“This time.”

“I’m forgetting her,” Betsy said, reaching into her pocket for the latest picture Jolene had sent, lifting it. “This … this isn’t her. She isn’t only a soldier.”

What could he say that wasn’t a lie? “Let’s go to the Crab Pot and look at the picture of her. That will make you remember.”

She nodded.

It wasn’t enough.

He reached for her hand. Sometimes holding on was all you could do.

*



After dinner, Michael led the girls into the house and watched them run upstairs. He felt drained. He should have known how affecting dinner at the Crab Pot would be. Jolene’s spirit had been so strong there. Lulu and Betsy had spent a good ten minutes staring up at the Polaroid picture of their mom tacked to the wall. Lulu wouldn’t even eat—she just held on to that little wings pin and cried.

He poured himself a drink and stared out the window at the night just beginning to fall across the bay. He heard Lulu come up behind him. She climbed monkeylike up his body, attaching to his hip. “Betsy is crying, Daddy,” she said in that squeaky voice of hers.

He kissed her forehead, sighing.

“It’s about Mommy,” she said, then burst into tears. “She got losted or hurted, right?”

He tightened his hold on Lulu. “No, baby. Mommy’s fine.”

“I miss my mommy.”

He rocked her back and forth, soothing her until her tears dried. When she was calm again, he put her down on the sofa and started The Little Mermaid DVD. That would keep Lulu busy for a while. She should be in bed, of course. It was late. But all he could think about was Jo, and what could have happened.

He didn’t really make a decision; rather, he found himself moving toward his office. He went inside and shut the door. His hands were shaking; ice rattled in his glass.

It could have been.

He slumped onto the sofa and bowed his head. Betsy was worried that she was forgetting her mother. But Michael had forgotten Jolene long before, hadn’t he? He’d lived with her, slept with her, and still somehow had forgotten the woman he’d married. He glanced to his left and saw a framed picture of him and Jolene; it had been taken years ago, at the arboretum in Seattle. They had been young then, and so in love. Look at the family of ducks, Michael, that will be us one day, waddling along with our babies in tow … In that one image, in Jolene’s bright smile, he remembered her.

He was a little unsteady as he got to his feet. At the bookcase, he withdrew a leather-bound photo album and an old VHS tape. Tucking them under his arm, he went into the family room, asked Lulu to follow him, and went upstairs.

He knocked on Betsy’s door. “Can we come in?”

“Okay.”

He picked up Lulu, carried her into the room, and sat down on the bed beside Betsy. Settling a girl on each side of him, he opened the album.

Centered in the first page, covered by a shiny piece of see-through plastic, was one of the few pictures he’d ever seen of his wife as a young girl. She stood on a rocky outcropping, wearing faded jeans and a cheap V-neck sweater. She was turned slightly away from the camera, looking into some invisible distance, with messy strands of long blond hair pulled across her face by the wind. Off to the left was a man walking away; all you could see was a ragged jeans hemline and a scuffed black boot.