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  “Right.” The guy nodded and took it in for a moment. And no, an IED was not some kind of birth control.

  “Improvised exploding devices,” Michael explained, shaking his head. “Homemade bombs are kind of an everyday thing over there. You learn to deal with it.”

  “So you did like your duty over there. Lots of excitement,” Gustafson remarked.

  He would have expected the master sergeant to say something like that.

  “Not that part. I liked fixing things that were broke. Putting them back in action. I was thinking, when I got back, I could maybe open my own shop, someday…”

  Michael let the thought dangle. Forget it. The master sergeant didn’t really care about his plans, just his war stories.

  “So…you saw a lot of those IEDs?” asked Gustafson.

  “A few. I don’t know. They told us to expect them, especially when they got the bright idea—I mean, when someone decided that they would put Air Force guys like me in as convoy security.”

  “Security? You’re kidding.” Now the master sergeant was hooked, and Michael was sure the guy had been stuck behind a desk too long. “I’d heard ofthat. Wasn’t sure they went through with it.”

  Michael nodded. “Oh yeah. Gave us each a brand-new M-4 rifle, body armor, the works. The Army was hard up for warm bodies who could point a gun, so who do they call?”

  That was as much bravado as Michael was prepared to summon. The master sergeant, duly impressed, snapped his jaw shut and seemed to regain his composure as their plane finally touched down, bumped once, and taxied forward.

  “So…,” Master Sergeant Gustafson ventured, “you ever have to use it?”

  Michael knew the guy was just curious. Probably he flew a desk, the kind of noncom who’d never touched a weapon outside the shooting range and who went home to a wife and kids in the Washington suburbs every night. In his place, Michael would have asked the same question, probably. But that didn’t make answering it any easier, since he’d stupidly let himself wade into a place he hadn’t intended to go.

  “Er…use what?” Michael stalled, wishing he knew how to ignore the questions of a master sergeant. It was too late to close his eyes and pretend he was asleep.

  “The M-4.”

  Michael bit his lip and turned his gaze to the window. A drizzle painted sideways streaks across the glass, and he wished to heaven that it didn’t suddenly remind him of the private tears he had shed in the quiet of the barracks the night after that first disastrous convoy duty. But the emotions exploded within him, just like the hidden IEDs they’d cursed for the past year and with just as much force. He winced at the pain.

  “Some of us had to,” he finally mumbled, and that would have to satisfy the curious master sergeant, sir.

  The plane lurched to a halt and the cabin lights snapped on. Michael breathed a quiet sigh of relief and promised himself to never volunteer that kind of story again.

  But the master sergeant paused before standing to get his bag.

  “Nice talking to you, Airman,” he said. “Good luck going home. That’s where you’re going, right?”

  Michael nodded. “That’s right, sir. Wherever that is.”

  Who did he think he was talking to? The base chaplain? He hadn’t meant to say that. It had just slipped out, giving the master sergeant fodder for one last comment.

  “One good thing about reenlisting.” The master sergeant shrugged into his night-blue official issue coat. “The way I look at it, you don’t have to worry about trying to reinvent yourself or waste a lot of time deciding your future every year, ‘cause that’s somebody else’s job.”

  “I suppose that’s true, sir.” Michael shook the man’s hand and nodded the way he had for the past few years whenever a superior said something that sounded dumb to him.

  The worst part was that the master sergeant was probably right.

  “And if you never had much family,” said Gustafson, “the way I never did, you always have a home in the Air Force.”

  “Right.”

  “You think about it, huh? There’s always time to change your mind.”

  Michael actually did think about it. Seriously, even. The part about someone else deciding his future for him? Strangely compelling. And having a family there that always accepted you, understood you, didn’t pester you for every little thing? Even better.

  He must have looked as if he was really mulling it over, because the master sergeant gave him a smile and a pat on the back. And that was the master sergeant’s mistake, since it reminded Michael of the recruiting officer in Walnut Creek who had first signed him up, back when he and Josh Peters had decided they were going to fly airplanes and wear blue uniforms. You bet, said the recruiter. Sign here.

  Yeah, and they could give him the next fifty years to change his mind; it wouldn’t matter. He stood there as Master Sergeant Gustafson and the rest of the passengers filed off—most of them smiling and chatting, glad to be getting off the airplane for a break. If they weren’t in his squadron, maybe they were reporting for duty here in the States after an overseas assignment. Or maybe they had wives or husbands waiting here at Andrews. Good for them.

  Michael closed his eyes and leaned against the bulkhead, imagining who might be waiting for him back home. He imagined staying well away from sand and dust for a long time to come. Never picking up a gun again, if he could help it. And never again having to point it at a small child with large, frightened eyes in a broken country where…

  “We’re clearing out the aircraft here, Airman. Wake up and smell the coffee.”

  Michael opened his eyes as a mechanic hustled through the cabin, toolbox in hand.

  “I’m going.” He gathered his things: an American news magazine he’d bought at the commissary back at Ramstein Air Base before boarding the plane, his coat, and an unfinished package of Skittles. To tell the truth, coffee didn’t sound like a bad idea.

  And just to say he’d considered all the angles, he gave a parting thought to what his life would be like if he changed his mind and reenlisted. Did they still want someone who could replace a Humvee engine, ride shotgun on a supply convoy, chew gum, and tote an M-4—all at the same time? If so, they would probably have all the paperwork drawn up and signed before he found a seat on the next westbound flight out of Maryland. Funny how quickly the military could move for that kind ofthing.

  He looked down at his watch. Almost there. No offense to Master Sergeant Gustafson, but he would go home, or he would find what was left of it. Maybe that was the only way to forget what he had lived through.

  three

  Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and he knowed it.

  You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.

  MARK TWAIN, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  Do you think he’ll look different than when he left?” Merit wondered aloud as they slalomed through traffic on the interstate heading north. Will had that NASCAR-guy look on his face as he weaved into the fast lane, and they headed over the Martinez-Benicia Bridge. Below their wheels, San Francisco Bay mingled with the muddy waters of the Sacramento River Delta, looking a bit too much like yesterday’s cappuccino.

  “I think we can pretty well count on it.” Will gripped the wheel and glanced over the bridge railing toward the river. “Guys don’t come back from that kind of duty the same.”

  Merit wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, except that the mother in her wished it weren’t so. She checked the backseat to make sure both girls were still sleeping, then slipped her hand over to take hold of the steering wheel, the way she always did on this bridge. Just in case.

  Sure enough, she caught them beginning to drift as Will’s gaze followed the ships below. She knew how he loved to watch the ships on their way upriver to Sacramento, but this was the impressive Mothball Fleet, dozens of retired old warships and cargo ships, gray destroyers and rusty tankers—a ready reserve fleet awaiting recall or the scrap heap.

  “Keep your eye on the road,�
� Merit warned, and Will snapped his attention back to the traffic ahead of them as if he’d been surprised by the sight.

  “Sure are some nice old ships out there.” He caught one more glance. “Kind of a shame they’re just sitting.”

  “I’m glad they are.” She pulled her finger back from the wheel; they’d crossed the bridge. The way she saw it, if those ships were tied up here, they weren’t being used for a war, filled with boys like Michael.

  They followed the freeway as it veered northeast, leaving miles behind them without another word. Travis Air Force Base lay just ahead, the welcoming ceremony due to start in an hour and a half. Their car radio sputtered stray notes from a classical station nearly out of range, but neither made a move to turn it off or change the setting. Instead, Merit pondered how to welcome home the boy who had become a man. Still her son, but perhaps a stranger now.

  His letters over the past year had been few, brief, and to the point. First about the training, the presumed but unwritten destination, then about the machines he fixed, hints about something more dangerous and much darker. Something they d hear about on the news until she stopped listening.

  He’d mentioned a chaplain once in a while, so hopefully he hadn’t pulled away completely from his faith, even though he’d never mentioned anything spiritual.

  At least he’d never asked about his old girlfriend Jessica, since Merit would have been afraid to answer truthfully. It was better for Michael to find out what she was really like sooner in life rather than later, but not too soon. She’d heard what some boys did over there. Poor, young boys whose girlfriends had broken their hearts with those awful “Dear John” letters.

  So much for the Air Force being a “safe” decision. Those people had turned their adopted son into a soldier, a man, and she didn’t like it.

  “I’m going to ask him,” Will said, breaking the silence a few minutes later. Obviously, someone else had been thinking about it too.

  Merit knew what he meant. “No, please, Will. You haven’t even given him a chance to get off the plane.”

  “Come on. I think it’s the perfect way to get him back, give him a chance to get back to something normal, something with the family again. Give him something to consider, something to fall back on. And every man likes to be offered a job.”

  “Is that what he is now?” She shook her head, trying to shake her mental picture of little pudgy Michael in the fifth grade, taking apart his bicycle and not being able to get it back together again. He’d thrown the broken chain across the garage, breaking the window, then bawled his eyes out. And now…

  On the radio, Tchaikovsky faded into a neighboring station playing the Rolling Stones. Merit reached down and snapped it off.

  “I just think you should at least wait until we hear back on the offer,” she told Will. A quick glance told her the girls were stirring in the backseat, so she lowered her voice a notch. “You’re talking as if it’s a done deal, us buying the resort. You know it’s not.”

  Will puffed up his chest as if she’d insulted him. “You don’t think anyone else is trying to buy the place, do you?” It was a rhetorical question. “Of course the owners are going to say yes. Eventually. They’d be crazy not to.”

  “But if they don’t?”

  “I’m telling you they will. One hundred percent.”

  “You’re making it sound like some kind of…divine revelation or something.”

  “Divine revelation?” He wrinkled his nose at her. “That doesn’t sound very Lutheran to me.”

  “Honey, it has nothing to do with Lutheran or not. All I’m saying is that—”

  “That it’s going to be good for our family. And I thought we were both agreed.”

  “I agreed because I hate to see you so miserable at work. I agreed because your boss is going to give you a heart attack one of these days. I—”

  “And you know how much I appreciate your saying that.”

  “But I didn’t agree because of…”

  Her quick glance at the backseat finished the sentence for her, because of them. And neither Abby nor Olivia knew anything about this scheme, not yet. Merit would make sure of it, one more time.

  “And you promised not to tell them,” she finished.

  “I told you I wouldn’t, so I won’t.” Will held up his hand to reveal the scout’s honor sign. “Even though I still don’t think it’s a good idea to keep it a secret. They’re going to find out, you know, sooner or later.”

  “Not if it doesn’t happen.”

  “Oh, thee of little faith.”

  His boyish grin melted her a couple of degrees, and she yelped when he squeezed her knee. He always did that, didn’t he? Made her laugh when he knew he was losing an argument.

  Well, she wasn’t backing down about not telling the girls. Not until this wild idea had changed from a crazy offer to a firm deal—if it ever did. Until then, there was no way Merit would allow the girls—her two precious girls— to be dragged through the debris of their parents’ wild-goose chase.

  “Kids are flexible, Merit. You know that. They’ll love it.”

  “Oh, they’ll love going to school with all the—”

  “Don’t say something you’ll be sorry for.”

  “I was going to say the bears and coyotes. Don’t they have wild animals up there?”

  He smiled but kept his eyes on the road.

  “Only friendly ones. You know, Smokey Bear, that kind ofthing.”

  She hit him in the side, not hard. “I’m being serious, Will.”

  “Mama bears are always serious. And only you can prevent forest fires.”

  “And about Michael, even though I still think it’s going to end up a moot point, if you ask him now, he’s going to say no. And even if he doesn’t, we don’t have the place yet.”

  “Okay, we’re going around in circles now.”

  “I thought you knew the way to the base.”

  “Oh, so now you’re the silly one.” Will pulled up to the base guard post, rolling down his window as he did.

  “Promise me, Will. You’ll wait to ask him.”

  He sighed and slumped his shoulders. She hoped that was a yes.

  “Just like on TV!” Olivia clutched her little American flag and smiled from their spot on the bleachers, where several dozen families sat waiting for the big gray plane to approach. And Merit had to admit, they’d watched this scene unfold before on the six o’clock news: happy reunions as soldiers returned from duty in the Middle East. The obligatory scenes of hugs and kisses, tears and speeches—all to the music of a military brass band.

  At their real-life version of the TV event, a conductor in uniform raised his little baton and launched the military band into an energetic version of the Air Force theme. Olivia, their third grader, started to sing along.

  “Off we go into the wild blue yonder.

  Will turned to his younger daughter with a question on his face. “How did you know the words to that?”

  She sang through the first line, dum-te-dummed a couple more, then answered, “Michael taught me before he left.” She pointed her flag at an approaching plane. “He said maybe I could ride along in one of his airplanes.”

  “You’re not going to ride in any airplanes,” Abby said, not bothering to look up from the book she was reading.

  “How do you know?” replied Olivia.

  Merit leaned a bit closer to her younger daughter. “Michael shouldn’t have been making promises he couldn’t keep, dear. You understand he’s not going to be in the Air Force anymore, don’t you?”

  “I know.” Nothing—not even her crabby big sister—seemed to dampen the little girl’s spirits—or her flag waving. Not on this special occasion, with TV news cameras ready, officers in full dress uniforms standing by, and plenty of balloons and flags to decorate the homecoming of the 732nd Logistic Support Squadron. A couple of balloons escaped the grips of their owners and darted heavenward.

  “And that means that—” Merit began
, thinking she’d better explain a little more, but Olivia interrupted with a wise shake of her head.

  “I knew it would probably never happen, Mommy.” Olivias voice fell. “Lots of things never happen.”

  Merit almost said “that’s right,” but thought better of it. Instead, she just smiled and let the wisdom of her eight-year-old stand.

  Something else was obviously puzzling Olivia, however. She looked around the crowd. “Where’s Jessica? I thought she would be here too.”

  “She’s not coming,” Abby monotoned, turning the page. “They’re not going to be boyfriend—”

  “You can read that book later, Abby.” Time to give Abby a gentle prod in the side. Merit didn’t want to discourage her older daughter from reading— just reading at the wrong times.

  But Abby’s nose didn’t move. Her eyes scanned the next page as she held up a hand to fend off her mother.

  “Please? It’s just getting to the good part,” she explained, pointing at the page. “The boy and his raccoon are in this pie-eating contest, and—”

  “You’re always just getting to the good part.” Olivia poked her sister in the arm with the tip of her little flag.

  “Just because you can’t read.” Abby squirmed away from her sister and stayed glued to her story.

  “Very funny. You always think you’re so smart, just because you’re a year older than me.”

  “Year and a half.”

  “Year and three months. But I guess you never were so good at math.”

  “That’s enough, girls.” At home or in the car, Merit might have let the fight escalate so the girls could learn to resolve their own conflicts, but not here in public. This time Merit stepped in to referee and reached across to confiscate Abby’s book. “You can finish this book later, Miss Abigail. I’ll put it in my purse. Your brother is going to be here any minute.”

  “Aw, Mom,” Abby whined, holding back. “The plane isn’t even here yet. We’re just sitting here.”

  “And bickering. Relax. Look around. It’ll be here in just a minute.” Merit meant to grab the book, a copy of the animal classic Rascal, but only managed to extract Abby’s bookmark. It wasn’t a real bookmark, but the kind of paper scrap Abby usually found to keep her place in the books she read. Something about the crumpled paper caught Merit’s eye.