Home Front

by Kristin Hannah

There are some things you learn best in calm, some in storm. —WILLA CATHER

Happiness was a choice she knew how to make. She chose not to think about the things that bothered her; that way, they disappeared.

No one could hurt you if you didn’t let them. A good offense was the best defense.

“Marriages go through hard times. Sometimes you have to get in there and fight for your love. That’s the only way for it to get better.”

Five words to change a world, to dissolve the ground beneath a woman’s feet. It was a tidal wave, that sentence, whooshing in without warning, undermining foundations, leaving homes crumbled in the aftermath.

But now she saw what she had never dared to see before: this love of hers was one-sided. She was the one who took care; he was the one who took.

It seemed he’d told her the truth: he didn’t love her anymore.

Mila turned, looked up at her. “Pretend with Betsy and Lulu and even my son, if you must, but not with me, Jo. I don’t need your strength. You need mine.”

Without love to protect them, they were both as raw as burn victims; every touch hurt.

Jolene sighed. How had they come to this place, and how would they ever find their way back? They wouldn’t.

He hadn’t expected any of this. How was that? He prided himself on his intelligence, but he’d been wrong, blinded by selfishness or politics or intellectualism. For years, he’d watched news reports about the global war on terrorism and followed images of soldiers in the desert and he’d thought about the politics of it all, about weapons of mass destruction and George W.’s declaration of war and the wisdom of arming and sending out troops. He’d argued with colleagues about it—while he sat safe and warm and protected in his country. He’d argued about the true cost of war. He hadn’t known shit. The cost of war was here, in this room. It was families being torn apart and babies born without their parent at home and children forgetting their mother’s face. It was soldiers—some of them his age and others young enough to be his sons—who would come home wounded … or not come home at all.

War. It was everywhere.

Michael looked away. He understood how that could happen, how you could forget someone. Hadn’t he done it himself, hadn’t he forgotten Jolene while she was standing right beside him?

She’d made an uneasy peace with death.

Too young to have a beer but old enough to keep his head calm in battle and die for his country.

He would give anything to take back that one night when he’d ruined everything. If he’d sent her off to war with love, would she have come back to him whole? Would she have been stronger then? Would she have turned her helicopter a split second faster? He knew the answer to that question was no. Jolene was an outstanding pilot, and if she had one great skill from her screwed-up childhood, it was the ability to compartmentalize pain and keep going.

“I’m not a mind reader.” “Clearly.”

It occurred to her that she had just been more honest with this man than she’d ever been with her husband.

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. —MARCEL PROUST

Keith rose. Staring down at her, he bent his arm in a salute. To her horror, she felt the sting of tears. She shook her head. “I’m not a soldier anymore.” Keith’s smile was heartbreaking. “We’ll always be soldiers, Jolene.”

“It’s not intentions that matter. It’s actions. My drill instructor used to say that all the time. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to.

New York was a city that showed off its greatness, sought to make tourists look at man’s accomplishments with awe. D.C. knew that man’s greatness lay not in stone and steel, but rather in ideas and decisions.

She understood now that some things had to be fought for to mean anything. There were journeys in life no one could take for you.