I lost one of my men today. His world is over. I’m still here. How can that be? All there’s left to do is keep fighting. All I can do is make sure he didn’t die in vain.
I love you,
Adam
SIX MONTHS INTO OURmarriage, Adam and I had slowed the fast, crazy pace of our relationship and begun getting into a routine. He was home, so I wasn’t worried. I was painting and working at a gift shop near our post. We would cook dinner together at night. It was a simple life, the kind of life I’d never known I wanted but, now that I had it, felt absolutely perfect.
Perfect, that is, until the night we were lying in bed and I was drifting off, when Adam said, “When do you want to start trying to have a baby?”
I had jolted up. “A baby?” I asked, panic surging through me. “No one ever said anything about a baby.”
It was true. No one had. In all those months of talking and writing letters, Adam and I had never talked about having children. Obviously, this was not a good idea. Having kids is one of the most life-altering things that can happen in a family, and I knew we should have talked about it a million times. It was always on the tip of my tongue, especially because I knew I seemed like someone who wanted that traditional life, that role as mother and caregiver.
Only, I didn’t. Being with Adam had, ironically, soothed that fear that had embedded itself into me like a tick in flesh after my father died. Whereas before, I felt terrified of getting too close to anyone, scared of loving or letting anyone in, paralyzed by the mere thought that I might receive another phone call that someone I had loved more than life was gone in an instant, now, with Adam, I felt safer.
It was strange since he had a job where he could be taken from me at any moment. But I knew that. In his line of work, people died. People were killed. It’s not that I expected he would be killed in the line of duty by any stretch of the imagination, but it was always a possibility. It was always something that was in the back of my mind.
While I realize this doesn’t sound totally rational—tragedy will do that to a mind, I think—I liked that the element of surprise was gone. If Adam were to be killed, it would rip my heart out of my body. It would break me in ways I couldn’t even imagine. But it wouldn’t be a total shock. And so, in that way, I felt prepared. But I wasn’t prepared for this.
“We’ve only been married six months,” I said. The reality was not that I didn’t want to have kids because Adam and I hadn’t been married long enough. I knew without hesitation that Adam and I would be together, happily, in love, until our dying breaths. The reality was that I didn’t want to have kids at all. And if I was honest with myself, I had never brought it up before because I was selfish. I had never brought it up because I knew it might be a deal breaker for Adam—and I wanted him more than I wanted anything else on the planet. If I was with Adam, everything else would work out. Or so I thought.
He laughed and kissed me on the cheek. “I know, babe,” he said. “But I’ll be deployed again soon, and wouldn’t it be great to be pregnant before I go?”
I looked into his earnest face. He was so happy, so enthusiastic, so charming. Who wouldn’t want to pass along those genes?
Well, I mean, I wouldn’t. I could never handle the level of fear and anxiety that would hide out inside me every minute if I had children out there walking around.
Were they safe? Were they sick? Would they get cancer? Break their leg? Get an infection that went into their bloodstream? Would they get hit by a car crossing the street? I could play “what if” all day, every day, all night, every night. And I didn’t even have them yet. There was no way. But Adam was so happy and he looked so expectant. I wanted to please him. I wanted to make him smile.
But I didn’t want children. I should have told him. I considered telling him. But I couldn’t bear to send him away, into a war zone, with this huge burden weighing on him. I couldn’t send him away distracted. I needed him focused on his security, his safety. I needed to give him a reason to come back home. I could have suggested we wait until then, but I looked into his eyes and I remembered what he had given me, what he had sacrificed for me. I couldn’t bear to break his heart.
So I said, “That sounds great, honey.”
Adam didn’t know I had an IUD. And what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
EIGHTEEN
well-behaved women
ansley
Mom called the boys to tell them about her cancer. Scott was reporting on a crisis in Venezuela, and despite the major flooding there, he promised he would be on the first flight back to the US. John was at work just an hour and a half away. He didn’t promise to come, didn’t even mention it, in fact.
Carter was a terrific judge of character, and it used to bother me that he didn’t like John. He never said as much, of course, but I could tell. He was usually so warm and open, but around John, he closed up. I’m not saying John is a bad person, necessarily, but I see now that Carter’s assessment of my brother was correct.
John and I have been distant for a long time. I always believed we would evolve past that, but when Grandmother left me the Peachtree Bluff house, I realized John and I would never have what Scott and I had. Because, at our core, we are fundamentally different people. Who would abandon his own sister and practically never speak to her again over a house?
All of that came rushing back to me when I got a text from him that morning:Let me know when Mom gets really bad off so I can come.
I texted back:She’s dying of cancer, John. I’d say time is of the essence.
I could feel the chill through the phone. His lack of response didn’t surprise me, but it would have been nice to be able to tell my mother that her son was coming.
Just like that, she appeared in her robe, fresh from a shower. I was sitting at the dining room table, sipping my first cup of coffee of the morning and sketching a room—something I hadn’t done in quite some time. Over the past several years, I had created mood boards for my clients so they could see exactly what furniture, fixtures, and fabric I was contemplating for their rooms. But I knew already that Jack would let me have free rein, and sketching the rooms I was designing was how I best dreamed them. I liked to think I was drawing them into life. Plus, the sketches were beautiful and would make a terrific thanks-for-letting-me-decorate-your-house gift.
Mom’s cane was tapping rhythmically on the floor as she walked into the kitchen. “Don’t you need to get to your store, darling?”
I needed to go to my store very, very much, but I had seemed unable to pry myself away from my mother’s side since she told me the news. The store would still be there when she was gone.
