The officers left me a few minutes later with a packet of information and details about the retrieval of the body. They would fly Jeff home with honors, and we could be there when he arrived. We could watch as they lowered the flag-draped casket. We could only wish he was getting off the plane and running toward us, like he normally did. He’d scoop the kids up first, and then he would grab me and spin me around. He’d whisper sweet words of love to me and my heart would swell with pride at the way he served his country, and the way he still served us. The way he loved us was pivotal. It was moving. It was perfect.
And it was no more.
Jeff was dead. He was never coming home again.
I walked into the kitchen on shaky legs. “Hey, kids,” I said quietly. My voice squeaked. I cleared my throat. “Kids,” I said again. “Let’s clean this up. Unless your last name is Stone, you need to go home.”
“But Mom,” Alex complained. Then he saw the look on my face. “Go home, guys,” he said. He was only seven, but he was so grown up in that moment. He looked over and saw Gabby standing by the stove and there were tears streaming down her face. She was fourteen the day we got the news that Jeff had died. But she may as well have been two. My stoic daughter was grieving, and I hadn’t even told her yet that her father was dead. Somehow she already knew.
Trixie slid her hand into Gabby’s. Gabby held it tightly, but she couldn’t stop the tears.
Once the other kids had gone home, I walked over to Gabby and pulled he
r against me. “You know,” I said. She nodded into my neck, her sobs nearly choking her.
“He’s gone,” she whispered.
“Yes.” I laid my forehead against hers.
“Did he suffer?”
“I don’t think so.”
She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Okay.” She steeled her spine and pulled her shoulders back. Then she picked Trixie up and set her on her hip. Alex took my hand.
“Who were those men?” Alex asked.
“They came to give us some really bad news,” I said. Then I took a deep breath and told my children that their father would not be coming home. I had to tell them that life as we knew it would never be the same.
We did watch the casket as it was removed from the airplane when they brought Jeff’s body back to the United States. It was almost as though time stood still. Soldiers who were there slowly saluted, their arm movement so precise that it looked almost like someone had slowed time. The airline employees doffed their caps, and when I looked up toward the area where passengers patiently awaited their flights behind a solid glass wall, they too were honoring my husband’s life. With their tears, with their reverence, and with all the feelings in their hearts, they paid their respects to my husband and to our family.
After the casket was loaded into the hearse, we followed it to the funeral home, where I would undergo the worst and best two days of my life. Family and friends showed up in droves, their fear and their worries thick enough in the room that it could choke a mortal person. But I was no longer a mortal person. I was the widow of a soldier. I was no longer a wife. I was a widow. I was suddenly super-human. But beneath it all, I was also flawed. Though I didn’t find that out until much later, a little more than a year, when the loneliness consumed me and someone new entered my life.
Cole was confident and charming. He was nice to my children and they had fun with him. He brought me flowers, and more important, he took me out of my grief and made me feel like a woman again.
Until the day he didn’t.
33
Jake
Katie wipes a tear from her eye. “Cole was a mistake I made, and I tried to undo it.” She lays a hand on her belly. “But there was a little more involved than just having him as a boyfriend, once this happened.” She jabs a finger into her belly, and then she soothes it with a warm stroke of her palm. “Jake,” she says on a heavy sigh. “No matter what happened with Cole and what a monster he turned out to be, I loved my husband. I never betrayed his memory. I honored it, or so I thought at the time, by moving on with my life.”
“You can love more than one person in a lifetime, Katie,” I say.
The ambulance arrives at the hospital, and the police and Katie’s family have already arrived. They meet us as Katie is getting settled in. I stand in the hallway. “Did they find him?” I ask Pop quietly as everyone bustles around.
Pop shakes his head. “They found a blood trail leading into the woods, but no body.”
I nod. “They should be checking the local hospitals.”
“They won’t find him,” Pop says. “Not until he wants to be found.”
I knew that.
A nurse steps into the hallway. “Is the father here?” she asks, staring down at her clipboard.
Dan and Adam look at one another and then at me and Pop.