One September Morning. Rosalind Noonan

tracks and reaches into the pocket of her skirt. “I almost forgot.” She pulls out a stick of taffy and hands it to the Teddy Bear Boy. “You dropped this. And your change is there, too.” Two dollar bills are wrapped around the bottom of the stick.

      “Whoa! I can’t believe you got the money out of that old geezer.”

      She didn’t, but Suz can’t stand to let it go.

      “I told you he’d give it back, Ziggy,” Madison says, turning to Suz. “We knew he was exaggerating.”

      “I wouldn’t be so sure.” Suz lifts her protest sign, spots Mount Rainier in the distance, and faces north toward Seattle. Come December, she’ll be out of here.

      She started her day looking for a sign, and dammit, she found one.

      Chapter 5

      Fort Lewis Sharice

      You can always learn something new. Sharice Stanton likes the style of the new chaplain, a young man who is trying to lecture on the ways to ease into reunion after your spouse has been assigned overseas for so many months. After a lifetime in the military, first as an army brat and now as an army wife, Sharice has weathered her fair share of reunions. As a girl, she waited for her father to return from exotic-sounding places like Vietnam, Germany, Guam, Korea, and Thailand. How the days would stretch out into plodding weeks, and when at last he returned, the reunion was over so fast. A kiss and a toy doll or necklace, and then he was just a boring normal father again, going to work, sitting at the head of the dinner table, taking care of small projects in the house or yard.

      Still, a childhood in the army made her the perfect wife for Jim, who was a career man, a graduate of West Point. When he proposed to her on one knee one spring day at Fort Drum, he warned her that, as a lifetime soldier, he couldn’t promise her a settled home in one place. And she said that was good, because she got bored being in one place for too long.

      She smiles, thinking of how they’d laughed at that…laughed so hard that one of the MPs had come out of the guard booth to make sure they were okay. Yes, she and Jim had lots of laughs over the years…and many trying yet fulfilling reunions when he returned from overseas assignments.

      Of course, her husband has been a fixture at the training academy here for so long, she doubts he’ll be deployed again, but both her two sons, Noah and John, are currently in Iraq, and she wants to be on her game to help them ease back into life stateside when they return.

      The new chaplain asked them to take the chairs out of rows and put them in one big circle, and Sharice liked the approach, which allowed her a chance to see the adorable baby boy who had been wailing in his mother’s lap in the row behind her. Sometimes it seems like minutes ago that she was holding a baby of her own, little John with a full head of dense black hair, and Noah, whose bald head had made him resemble an old man until wispy brown hair started sprouting at eight months. And then, years later, her surprise baby whom Jim called “Oops!”, sweet Madison with downy hair so pale she could have been mistaken for an Easter chick. Now Maddie’s in high school and her baby boys are in their twenties, soldiers, grown men, one with a wife.

      “They grow up so fast,” she whispers to the young mother, who is now burping the baby over one shoulder.

      “Not fast enough when they’re crying,” the mother answers wryly, and they exchange a smile.

      From this spot in the room Sharice is one of the first to notice when the door opens and two uniformed officers enter. One of the men is Lt. Col. Mitch Preston, a chaplain Sharice has known for years, the minister who baptized her youngest, Madison.

      The other officer, a captain, appears exceedingly nervous, beads of sweat on his brow and a pinched look around the mouth. Together, the two men have the look of a CAO—casualty assistance officer—the team that notifies family members when a soldier has been killed or wounded. Since the war in Iraq began, Sharice has been part of many a CAO team. Usually, wives from the Family Readiness Group wait in the car while the officers make the notification. Then the women approach the home to offer support. After that, any number of scenarios might follow, usually involving tears, hugs, phone calls, stories, and covered casserole dishes.

      With so many soldiers from Fort Lewis deployed in Iraq, Sharice has been a part of this process more times than she’d ever imagined. The war has taken a huge toll on the men who serve, and their families, and sometimes Sharice wonders if the rest of the country is half aware of the sacrifices that have been made by military families.

      With an apologetic gesture, Mitch makes an apology to the young chaplain as he moves around the circle of chairs. When Sharice meets Mitch’s eyes, his look is sobering, and she gathers her notes and purse, knowing it’s time to make a notification.

      “Sharice,” he says softly, “would you step outside with us?”

      “Of course.” She excuses herself as she quietly rises from her chair and follows Mitch to the door.

      “Are the other women from the FRG outside?” she asks once they’re outside the door. Although she’s tucked her notepad away, she’s not happy to be wearing chartreuse dress shorts for such a somber task. She smooths down the hem of her black tank top. “I’d like to go home and change.”

      “No.” The reluctant tone of Mitch’s voice snaps her head up. The gray pallor of his face makes panic bubble up inside her. “We’re here to talk to you, Sharice.”

      Me?

      She thinks of Jim, who is at the NCO Academy this very minute. Could it be…? No, more likely it’s the boys, Noah and John, assigned to a Forward Operating Base in the al-Anbar Province, that vast no-man’s-land in western Iraq.

      Oh, dear Lord, her boys…

      Whoever it is, let him be injured, she prays. Wounded. Able to heal.

      Despite the heated panic in her chest, Sharice maintains her composure as she follows the men out of the building, into the cool, surreal sunshine of the small Northwest garden. Mitch invites her to sit with him on a bench beside yellow black-eyed Susans and a wild lavender bush, and her heart is thudding so furiously she can barely hear the details when he tells her that there’s been a casualty in her sons’ unit in Fallujah.

      She holds up a hand to stop the white-washing words. “One of my boys?”

      “John.”

      Her eldest. “Is he dead?” she asks.

      “Yes.”

      The earth’s rotation comes to a crashing halt, its momentum a stone on her chest.

      Her oldest, her firstborn. The impact squeezes a squeal from her throat that resembles the cry of a wounded animal.

      Mitch squeezes her hand as the other soldier glances away, awkwardly.

      Don’t do this to yourself, Sharice thinks. Do not lose control; it is not your way.

      “And John’s wife has been notified?” she asks.

      Mitch Preston assures her that she has, as well as Jim. “Jim was the one who told us where to find you,” he says.

      All right, then that part is done.

      “I need to go home,” she says, rising.

      “Of course.” Mitch slides his arm around her waist, as if he’s escorting an elderly woman when, really, she can walk just fine.

      Sharice wants to drive home, but Mitch insists it’s the least they can do.

      During the ride, inside the shell of her skull, her mind checks off the to-do list. She’ll have to call the salon and have Mindy cancel her appointments. Though there’s no need for Jim to come home right now if they need him at the academy. She’ll get those boneless pork chops started in the Crock-Pot, and she can make a large portion of rice in the steamer Joyce loaned her. Sharice will call the rest of the family. Madison will be crushed, and Noah…the army will send him home for the funeral.

      She