“I know she’s drinking, damn it. She’d be drinking if I weren’t here, Peaches. I think she might be drinking a lotmore.”
“I heard her crying last night.”
Tony could see her out the back window where she wascrouched in catcher’s position so that Jess could practice herpitching. She was smiling. She looked content, comfortable, as if she carried nothing around heavier than theweight of that softball. Tony knew better. He’d had her inhis arms the night before, when she’d had the nightmarePeaches had heard. She’d struggled and cursed and reachedout in her sleep, begging somebody to help her. Beggingthem to help somebody named Jimmy.
When he’d awakened her to slip back into her own bed before dawn, he’d asked. She’d looked at him as if he werecrazy and told him she didn’t know anybody named Jimmy.
She had circles under her eyes. She’d lost weight. AndTony had taken to counting the wine bottles under the cabinet when the kids didn’t notice.
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to sayor ask or give to take that brittle look from her eyes.
“You just tell me what to do, Peaches,” he said. “And I’lldo it.”
But Peaches couldn’t do more than slam the bread downagain with his big hands and scowl.
Tony smiled, but his smile was grim. “I know. I wish thiswere something I could fight with my hands. That’d be easy.This... this, I feel like a blind man walking across glass in my bare feet.”
“Except she’s the one gettin’ cut.”
Tony nodded, more frustrated than he’d been in his life.“Except she’s the one getting cut.”
* * *
“Breathe,” Claire suggested to her son as he stood poisedin her kitchen like a heron ready to take flight.
He flushed uncomfortably. “I’m breathing. But thedeadline is going to pass, and I haven’t gotten an answerfrom you yet.”
Claire couldn’t take her eyes off the television screen. Amotley crowd of civilians filled it, their heads covered, theirmouths twisted in grimaces of atavistic hate.
They had captured a pilot. Claire’s stomach twisted inknots as they dragged the body through the streets to thepeople’s shouts and jeers. She couldn’t watch. She couldn’t look away.
A soldier’s heart.
Is that why it hurt so badly? Why the hurt never went away but just spoiled into something old and ugly and decaying? Is that why no matter how much she cried, it wasn’tenough?
Maybe Tony was right. Maybe she should get in to talk to somebody. Begin to offer up her secrets where they might besafe. Maybe it was time now that her children were gettingold enough to understand. Maybe it was time to begin trusting someone. Someone who’d been there before andsurvived to only wander the night a few nights instead of allof them.
“Mom, come on!” Johnny insisted. “I’ve tried real hardto be patient like you asked. I’ve left you alone about it, butyou know I’m not going to change my mind. This is all I’veever wanted.”
Claire turned her attention to him, to her sad-eyed,handsome son with his unruly passions and his unboundedtalents. Be a painter, she wanted to beg. I’ll pay for it. I’llsupport you the rest of my life. Don’t do this to yourself.
Don’t do it to me.
“No,” she said, and turned away.
“Why?” he demanded, following right on her heels.
All she could do was squeeze her eyes shut. “Because I can’t deal with it,” she said, more than she’d ever said to him. “I’ve worked almost eighteen years for you and Jessto be safe and healthy, and I just can’t throw that away.”
“But Mom—”
“Please, Johnny,” she begged, whirling on him. Knowing she was being unfair. Not caring anymore. He had to besafe, or she couldn’t make it, “There are other ways to be apilot besides the military. We’ll work together to find yousomething. I promise. I just can’t give you permission forthis when I think it’s wrong.”
Neither of them heard the back door open. “John, I needsome help over in the inn.”
John spun on Tony even faster than his mother.
“Go to hell!” he snapped. “And get out of my house!”
