again, it was to express volumes in a few words. “Sometimes it’s impossible to want what you have.”
She drew a sharp breath, sensing the anguish those calm words covered. The urge to try to soothe him in some way nearly overwhelmed her, but she didn’t have a clue what to do or say.
“I guess,” he said after a moment, “the thing you need to keep in mind is that even the worst things pass eventually. Everything passes.”
She suspected he might know more about that than most, given what he’d done and where he’d been. Impulsively, she reached out and took his hand. He didn’t pull away but let her squeeze his fingers gently.
At that exact instant, Sophie bounded into the room, waving her cell phone and nearly hopping up and down. Connie swiftly released Ethan’s hand.
“Mom, Mom, Jody wants me to come over to spend the night tonight! Can I, please?”
Everything inside Connie shrieked no! but she held her tongue, trying to deal with the terror that swamped her and respond rationally. “I don’t know...”
“Aww, Mom, I’ll be safe there, and we’ll have so much fun.”
Connie fought the battle that every parent faces sooner or later, though in this case the threat was real, not imagined. In the end, after nearly biting a hole in her lip, she said, “Okay. But I’m driving you over there and picking you up in the morning, and under no circumstances are you to go anywhere without Jody’s mom.”
Sophie let out a shriek of delight and began babbling to Jody on the phone that she’d be over as soon as she got her pajamas and sleeping bag. A second later she was running up the stairs.
“That was brave,” Ethan remarked.
“Or foolish.” Connie shook her head. “I’m overreacting. She’ll be okay with Jody’s family.”
“Of course she will. One thing you can say about creeps like this is that as a general rule they prefer their victims to be alone and unprotected. She’ll be neither.”
Gratitude warmed Connie. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. You’re doing the hard job.”
“I just hope I’m doing it right. I guess you get the night off. Want me to take you up to see Micah?”
He shook his head. “We talked some this afternoon. Some things just take time, Connie. We’re taking our time.”
“All right, then. Help yourself to anything you want.” She rose. “It’ll only take me ten minutes to run Sophie over there.”
He nodded. “I’ll be fine. You just go.”
She thought about inviting him to ride along, then realized that would mean getting into a car, and she suspected that being a passenger probably was only marginally more comfortable for him than driving, despite all his hitchhiking. As a passenger, if he had a flashback at least he couldn’t be in control of the vehicle.
Sophie came bouncing down the stairs with her sleeping bag and backpack. “I’m ready!”
Ethan smiled. “I guess so.”
Connie looked at Sophie and started smiling, too. This child was so precious, so full of life. Her heart swelled with love. “Let’s go, sweetie.”
Behind her, Ethan sat staring into the darkening living room.
While Connie was gone, Ethan stepped outside to walk around the house again. His training had built a restlessness into him, and he still struggled to realize that war no longer surrounded him. The thing with Sophie was keeping him on his toes, which he supposed was delaying his readjustment a bit.
Not that he blamed anyone for that. He actually felt good about having something useful to do, something he’d been lacking since he’d been shipped home on a stretcher from Afghanistan. He didn’t remember much about being wounded, and the pain that plagued him had become a background noise to his days.
He still didn’t fully understand why he was receiving a discharge. People with worse injuries returned to combat or took support positions of some kind. But somehow, because of the decision of some review board, he was out.
He struggled with that. He worried about his unit all the time. A sense of failure pervaded his every waking moment, just as nightmares haunted his dreams. He didn’t feel as if he had a problem of that magnitude, but apparently others thought differently.
You have inoperable shrapnel embedded near your spine. It hadn’t affected him yet, other than to cause pain, but one of the doctors had said that it would be years, if ever, before the body’s protective mechanisms immobilized it or even ejected it. Until then, the wrong move could paralyze him.
And maybe that was all it was. Maybe they felt he could endanger his unit. One wrong move and he could become an instant paraplegic. Yeah, that could be a problem, all right, but no more of a problem than if it happened because of a wound on the spot.
He paused, looking up at the stars, noting that here in town he couldn’t see very many. Not nearly as many as he had seen at night in Afghanistan. Most people in this country probably had almost no idea anymore of how many stars were up there, how many could be seen in the inky blackness of true night. He knew he’d been amazed when he’d looked up from the mountains of Afghanistan the first few times.
Sighing, he continued his perimeter check. He wondered if the good memories would ever begin to replace the bad. These days, his brain functioned like a bad TV show, with almost subliminal flashes of people being torn apart, buddies dying, and all the rest of it. It was as if no matter what he was doing or thinking about, some nasty director would flash up an image so fast he almost didn’t catch it.
Except he knew what they were. He didn’t have to wonder what had just zipped past his mind’s eye. Some things were burned too deeply into memory to escape awareness that easily.
Time, they said. It would just take time, and maybe some therapy. He’d tried the therapy while he recuperated but found it pointless. The guy he had talked to didn’t have any direct experience. Oh, he tried, even offering medication, but how could you discuss something worse than the worst horror movie with someone who hadn’t even seen The Exorcist?
Smiling grimly, he finished his circumnavigation of the house, aware that if this were his post, he would be ripping out a lot of concealing shrubbery and cutting down a few trees that came way too close to the roof.
But this wasn’t a military post, and he wasn’t preparing for a Taliban incursion. Drawing that distinction seemed to be getting a little easier, and for that he gave thanks.
Inside again, he glanced at his watch. Connie had been gone more than ten minutes. A man who had learned that tardiness could be a sign of catastrophe found it hard to remember that she had probably just stopped to talk with Jody’s mother for a few minutes.
God, this living in two worlds was going to drive him nuts.
The phone rang, and he hesitated only a moment before answering it.
“Hi,
