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Re-entry into normal life and routines was hard for some soldiers, I knew that. We’d been an Army family for a quarter century, since I got pregnant with Eli just before graduating from college and Mike lost all hope of ever being signed or picked for the NFL draft.
Truth was, the optics hadn’t been good, but I didn’t tell him that. I knew when scouts found out he was already a family man, with a wife and a daughter, he wouldn’t be considered the malleable player they were looking for. He couldn’t be as easily shaped into what a team wanted, as he already had responsibilities and expectations for his future that were molded around very real, established relationships.
My husband was still built like the football player he’d been decades ago: tall and broad, with wide shoulders and a trim waist. He was wide and muscular, his legs powerful, his shoulders and chest a thing of beauty. His arms were still bigger than my thighs.
All those years had gone by, and I still thought he was the most incredibly attractive man I’d ever seen. I wanted him desperately, in every way a woman should want her husband, but I couldn’t haveanyof him.
“WhereisDaddy?” Kingsley asked, and I had a guess but I couldn’t answer around the lump in my throat. Instead, I shrugged helplessly.
“Probably playing with Flash. You know that dog is an absolute fool for your father and vice versa.”
Kingsley looked disappointed. Despite our almost psychic bond with one another, she’d always been Daddy’s girl. I knew when she came to visit us, she was really coming to visit her father, and the visits had been more frequent since Michael’s return. Losing him–thinking for almost a full year that he was dead–had destroyed all of us, and all of us were frantic for him, as if we could make up for the lost time by drinking in every moment.
The kids didn’t know it, but they got so much more of him than I did, and I worked every day not to be jealous of my own children for their easy relationship with the stranger in my house.
“Claire.” Till’s voice was bright and friendly. My name was just about the only word I’d ever heard him say that didn’t carry with it a thick German accent. My son-in-law, the ambassador’s son. The boy–now man–who came from money and influence and culture. He’d fallen at my beautiful daughter’s feet the same way Michael had fallen at mine, all those years ago.
Till was fifteen, almost sixteen years older than my sweet Kingsley, closer to my age than he was to hers. She’d thought it hysterical when I pointed out he was closing in on his sixteenth birthday when she was born, which made him only three years younger than me.
“Till.” I tried to paste on a bright smile. “I’m afraid I didn’t expect the two of you, or I’d have been better prepared. Let me just get something on quickly. It won’t be a fancy dinner, I’m afraid, but I can have something together in a snap.”
Till smiled easily. “We should have warned you. I told Kingsley, but she wanted to surprise her papa.” He grinned, and I remained astonished that he didn’t envy Kingsley’s close, easy bond with her father.
“I’ll put the chickens in for the night, Mama,” Kingsley called as she slipped her feet into her shoes and I blew her a grateful kiss. I would still have to go out later, to make sure the horses were settled for the night, that none of the steers I’d introduced to pasture a few days before had stupidly broken through the electric fence, and the goats were bedded down for the night. My work was almost never done.
“Somethingiswrong.”
Till and I were not close, not like me and Kingsley, and to hear his deep, worried voice told me that the emotions on my face couldn’t be hidden.
“Claire, this is not like you.”
He had never called me anything but Muti in the past, in deference and respect, despite our infinitesimal age gap.
“It’s over,” I said quietly, feeling a barely-repressed sob shudder through me. “I’m not ready to tell the kids…I told Michael today that I want a divorce.”
My son-in-law’s handsome face went pale. “You cannot do this, Claire. It will kill him…it will also kill your children.”
“Right now it’s killingme,” I whispered, bracing myself on the counter against the tidal pull of painful emotion. I didn’t know how long we had until Kingsley dragged Michael back into the house. “He’s been home for three years, and in that time it’s been…nothing. He’s a ghost.” I lifted my hands in a helpless shrug. “I think he cares for me because he feels it’s his duty. Maybe he loves me, but I don’t think he’sinlove with me. And that’s…” I could feel tears creeping up, heralding a bout of utter hysteria. “I’ve been living with a stranger since he came home.”
Till looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I don’t think this will make it better, Claire. I don’t think this will fix anything for either of you. It will not push him to get better, if that is your hope.”
He was right, I knew that, but I couldn’t look at Michael every day for the rest of my life and allow him to continue to suffer. I couldn’t continue to look at him the way I’d been looking at him the past three years, with longing and hope and love and hurt, only to see a wounded man, a stranger, looking back at me. A man who chose not to let me in.
Till knew more than a little something of hurt. He’d been married once before, long before he met my daughter, and from what I knew he’d had his heart broken almost irreparably. Kingsley had, according to him, been the one to patch the cracks and give him hope again, filling him up with peace and happiness. (I’m not going to say that wasn’t a little weird, finding out our daughter was dating a man only a few years younger than her parents.)
“I will overstep here…” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “When Leni left me, it was my fault. I pushed her away for a very long time, because I could not accept what it was I needed to change. And when she left, I blamed her…but it was me.”
I’d had enough therapy for one day.
“I understand that you are hurt. But perhaps the reason Michael is withdrawn is because of what he fears will be your response when he tells you what it is that has caused this. It is too big for him.” He slapped a hand over his heart. “He saw something, Claire. He witnessed or experienced something that destroyed him. And now his fear is that you will not understand him–or forgive him for something that was not his fault. This is the only explanation for a man like him.”
The terrifying thing was that I was fairly sure he was onto something, but before I could even formulate a thought there was a sound from outside. Someone was sobbing.
“Mama!” It was Kingsley. “Please, Mama, come quick. Something’s wrong with Daddy. He’s on the ground by the woodpile and I don’t think he’s breathing.”
