Mom was sobbing horrible, agonized sobs, and Jack said, “Sloane, I’m going to call the post. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
My entire body was covered in chill bumps. My mouth was dry, my insides cold. Was that Adam? Were there more dead men? And if it wasn’t Adam it was surely one of our friends. Wasn’t it?
My first instinct was to call Major Austin. But I couldn’t. If what happened after that man fell was what I could only assume had happened, I didn’t want to know the truth. It was as if someone had reached inside me and pulled my heart out of my chest as I screamed, “No! No, no, no!”
I wasn’t crying. I was too numb and terrified for that—the exact same way I had felt that day after Major Austin and the chaplain had come to tell me Adam was MIA. That quiet that defied explanation, the intensity of a pain that can’t even be expressed.
My sisters were trying to hug me, but I was so far beyond comfort. Jack took my hand, his phone up to his ear. “Is it true, Jack? Tell me it can’t be true.”
I can’t explain why it was Jack I turned to. Maybe it was because he was a man or because he always seemed to take charge. Maybe, I had to admit, it was because he was the closest thing to a father I had left.
He put his finger up, and I could hear him saying, “Then you’ve seen it too. Yes. Is there any information about the soldiers?”
He walked out into the hall, and the tears finally came.
I picked up my phone and typed to Maryanne,“Have you heard anything?”
She responded immediately,“No. Why?”
If she didn’t know yet, there was no point in worrying her. Oh, God. What if that man was Tom? What if it was Adam? Could any of them possibly have survived? I couldn’t breathe. Even still, I managed to type back,“No reason. Just wondering.”
I leaned over and put my head between my legs. Mom rubbed my back. “Sloane, it’s going to be OK,” Caroline said. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
But it wasn’t going to be OK. It could never be OK. Earlier that night, I had felt like I could do it alone, like I could make this work. But now, when I finally feared that the worst had happened and my nightmares had come true, I felt more hopeless, lost, and terrified than I ever had before. And I couldn’t begin to imagine how I might face this world without the man who had changed mine completely.
IT TOOK MONTHS FORAdam to forgive me after I told him I didn’t want kids. But we had worked through what still remains the biggest test of our marriage. It hadn’t been easy, and there had been so many times I thought it might go another way. But, in the end, Adam decided he loved me more than he loved his future, unborn children. He had committed his life to me—and that meant he owed it to me to try to work it out, no matter how badly I had screwed up.
When I look back on it now, I can see that the issue wasn’t ever that I didn’t want to have children. It was just that after what I had endured, I had so many layers of fear and terror to pull back and so many years of trauma to work through. Marrying Adam and realizing it hadn’t been scary, but, instead, had been wholly wonderful, was a huge part of my healing process.
But the pivotal moment of change didn’t have anything to do with Adam. Emerson, Caroline, James, Vivi, Adam, and I were in Peachtree visiting Mom. We set aside a full week every summer to be together, and although we certainly saw each other plenty throughout the rest of the year, I always looked forward to it.
Only, this year, I knew things were going to be different. I had received a phone call from James earlier in the week, which was kind of odd. I was scared something was wrong, so I ran out of the gift shop where I was working, saying, “I’m so sorry. I have to take this.”
“Sloane,” he had said, his Northern accent a bit of a shock after being surrounded by so many Southern voices. “I think I may need your help.”
His accent sayingthatwas really a shock. “Are you guys OK? Is Caroline OK?”
“Not really,” he said, and I felt my stomach clench.
“Sloane, she is obsessed with having another baby. It’s all she can think about, and I’m really worried about her.”
I knew Caroline was getting ready to try in vitro again, and I knew she was consumed by this quest. But I reasoned that anybody would be.
Two days later, I saw for myself exactly what James had been worried about. Caroline had talked about nothing but babies and pregnancy since we arrived.
Ironically, Caroline was the one who had always been best at talking sense into people. It wasn’t my forte, but I was going to try. I waited until the two of us were alone in the kitchen.
“I’m going to have some of my fertility tea,” she said, getting up from the island and walking to the stove. Then she turned back to me. “Hey,” she said, “do you want some?”
I smiled. She was sneaky.
“You know I don’t want children,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, Sloane. It’s not that you don’t want children. You’rescaredto have children.”
“And?”
“And there’s a huge difference.”
