He seemed lucid enough. His eyes were open, and his voice sounded normal.
“What are you doing?” I asked in response.
“Taking a midnight stroll. What did you think?”
“I thought you might be sleepwalking.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”
I drew closer, still unsure about his state. “Why would you be out here at this time of night?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” His cheeks glistened under the moonlight. Damp from tears, I realized.
“Oh, Theo, what’s the matter?”
“I can’t shake the memories, Jo. That’s all. And nightmares. Sometimes I’m afraid to fall asleep.”
I plunged my hands into my coat. Cold had crept up my bare legs. “No one knows what to do for you.”
“I’m not sure there is anything. Other than for me to delve into a purpose. Some way for me to focus on something other than the past.”
“Is that why you’re so keen on university?”
“Partly, I guess.”
“What’s the other part?”
“I don’t know how to describe it, really. This feeling all the time…like I want to crawl out of my own body.”
I looked up at the sky. The stars twinkled back at me, encouragingly, but I couldn’t draw on their light tonight. The darkness surrounded me. My little brother was hurting, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to help him.
“If I could become a doctor and save people, then perhaps God would forgive me for the things I did over there. The lives I took.”
“Theo, you were only doing what was asked of you.”
“I’m a man for whom what’s asked of me is too much to bear. The others didn’t think of our enemy as men. But I did, Jo. I could imagine their mothers, like our Quinn, waiting for their return. Praying on their knees every night for their return. And I took that from them. These wars, fought for what? Men who want more territory to rule? Who pays the price? Mothers, wives, sisters. All for nothing.”
I couldn’t argue with him. These were thoughts I’d so often contemplated while my brothers, Isak, and Walter were over there. Even now, knowing what Walter had done, I mourned his loss and those of all the men and women all over the world who’d paid the ultimate price. And as my brother said, for what?
“I wonder sometimes,” Theo said, “if what we were fighting for is even true?”
“The fight for freedom for all?”
“Yes, but are we really free?”
“For those of us in countries ruled by democracy, I suppose we’re as free as we can be.”’
“I don’t feel free. I feel chained by these demons in my mind.” He brushed a layer of snow from the top of the fence. “I used to think if I could just get home, I’d be all right. Stay alive. That’s all I thought about. Now that I’m here, I realize that living wasn’t the only thing I should have worried about. I should have been more concerned over what lasting damage I would bring home with me.”
“Yes, I see that now too. I was the same, praying only, ‘Bring them home.’”
“Flynn says he’s fine, but I know different. Isak too. None of us will ever be the carefree boys we were before the war.”
“I’m not sure any of us can ever be like we were as children. The war changed us here at home too. But Theo, even before that, we had tragedy and hardness inside us. You and I haven’t been innocent since Mother died.”
“Even before that. Her strangeness and violence.”
“The girls were too young to remember, and Flynn, well, he has a way of directing all his energy into the current moment. But the two of us, we were the ones who suffered.”