"Motorcycle?" Lori pivoted to Julia, braid swishing with the quick turn. "Ohhh, girlfriend, you have to talk now."
No doubt the Air Force had a first-class interrogator in Major Kathleen Bennett, and she wasn't walking away without her information. Of course she had an inside scoop since she'd scrawled out the prescription for Julia's birth-control pills.
Julia offered a token nugget. "Zach took me for a ride on his Harley after the party."
Kathleen tapped her watch. "You didn't get home until after two. Where did you go?
California?"
"Geez, Kathleen." Julia laughed rather than cry. "Do you and Tanner never sleep?'
"I was feeding the endlessly ravenous Tara."
Lori gave snoozing Patrick a final push before advancing toward Julia with a determined gleam. "Spill it. We want details."
Julia surrendered. Why not enjoy the memories and the sisterhood of sharing new romantic confidences without going into the deeper details of her marriage to Zach? Her months with him had taught her to look past the military regimen of pruned lawns and identical houses to see a communal spirit of support she hadn't experienced since childhood.
She might need that support soon.
Hugging her sweater tighter around herself, Julia dodged a tree root and plopped down beside Kathleen on the redwood bench. She waited until Lori's daughter Magda and Ivy scampered into the playhouse before continuing, "We took advantage of the time away from the children and stopped by his office."
"His office?" Lori frowned, then gasped, sitting across from Kathleen. "He'd just flown.
You know how they can be after a flight."
"Ahhh, of course." Kathleen's sage nod said it all. "And the poor guy had to wait through that party? No wonder he checked out early."
Lori rested her chin on her hands, a faraway look in her eyes as she gazed up at the sky.
"This one time, Gray landed early and rather than going home to wait for me to finish at work, he abducted me right out of a Feed-the-World strategy session I was conducting with two interns." A satisfied smile slid across her face. "I would have felt guilty, but those college kids brainstormed their hearts out to impress me while I was gone, uh, taking inventory...in the supply closet."
Kathleen leaned back, her elbows on the picnic table. "If Tanner so much as looks at an airplane, forget waiting to make it home."
"Ohmigod," Julia said. "You two didn't..."
Kathleen shrugged.
"In a plane?"
Kathleen straightened, a blush creeping up her redhead's complexion. "Well, it was parked in a deserted hangar."
Julia slapped a hand over her eyes. "There's not a chance I'm going to be able to look at either of them with a straight face if they come by here to meet up with you after they land."
She welcomed the laughs and the relief they brought from worries that dogged her with increasing persistence. Friendship brewed, comforting her like the gentle swirl of the breeze through the evergreens. Ivy flung the playhouse shutters wide and crawled through, Magda tumbling after her as both girls giggled in a tangled heap on the ground.
Julia tucked a leg under her, until that moment not realizing how tense she'd been about Zach's flight after all "Thanks for making me laugh. I needed to smile today."
Lori reached across the table to pat her hand. "That's what friends are for."
Julia wrapped her arms around herself, more to ward off the memories than the wind. She checked her son, still snoozing away in the gently swaying swing. She'd wanted to fill his first year with joy, but all that joy was tearing her heart out. "I never used to worry about the flights before, not beyond some vague sort of concern. Lance didn't share much about his work, so I had no idea how many times he'd flown in harm's way. Now, sometimes my imagination runs crazy with awful scenarios." She held up a hand to stop any sympathetic outpourings that would drag her down deeper. "But I'm doing better."
Kathleen's nod offered a blend of compassionate doctor and steely military will. "You deserve to be happy."
Julia wanted to fall further into the comfort of friendship and ask for their advice. Could she turn Zach's friendship into something deeper? She didn't know which would be worse: staying only to find out she couldn't win his love, or walking away now, knowing she would always think of him, worry about him and wonder if he'd found someone else to entice that beautiful half smile of his.
The mere thought of another woman in his life turned her green from the inside out. She wanted to be the one who brought all his defenses crashing down.
The phone reverberated from inside, jarring her before she made a weak mistake in spilling all. "I'll be right back."