I looked over at the hostage, still nameless. Whoever he was, he was young. Clearly not military. But he seemed remarkably calm.
My mind flashed back to Harper, remembering how she managed to stay so calm even when she heard some of the more gruesome stories about life on the front line. No one had really expected her to integrate into our lives as easily as she had. Maybe this guy was a journalist. Maybe he’d seen all the worst things already.
Seemed a little too important to be a journalist, though. But I definitely didn’t recognize him.
I shrugged, and we all waited for the transport that Tripp had finally managed to secure.
The rest of the night was hectic. All our nerves were raw as we drove back across no-man’s-land back to the makeshift base. The guys there wanted to congratulate us and shake our hands, but I just wanted to fall into my cot and sleep. Or maybe have a beer to soothe my nerves. But neither of those things were going to happen until we got back to “home,” our own base.
I thought they might keep us there for a little while longer, but they explained that our pickup meant this location was no longer secure. We didn’t know who might have followed us back, and this was a dangerous area, full of insurgency. Safer for us to head straight back.
So we got back onto another rattling transport van. This time, I had a harder time sleeping, even though my body was exhausted. My mind just kept going, spinning out more and more demons.
“You okay, man?” Kit asked under his breath as I jerked upright for the tenth time,
panicky as I scanned my surroundings.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I muttered back. “Just a bit of disorientation panic, you know. Can’t figure out where I am.”
“Who the fuck ever knows,” Kit said, shaking his head. “We might not be in Kuwait anymore, and we’d never know the difference. Not until we hit the ocean.”
I snorted at the thought of that. It had been years since I’d seen the ocean.
I thought of Harper again. She was from Boston. I’d never been to Cape Cod, but one of my friends growing up had sent me a postcard from there. It looked nice. And after the dry and dust of Kuwait, it seemed like some elusive paradise. Maybe when I got out of here, Harper would let me come visit her. Just so I could see the ocean.
We were rerouted on the way back to our base, and we ended up stopping over at another base for a couple of days. By the time we got back to our base, Harper was nowhere to be found. I’d expected her to stick around for longer. I’d expected her to say goodbye, maybe.
I wondered if something had happened, if there had been a reason for her abrupt departure. All I could hope was that I wasn’t the cause of it.
But no one seemed to have found out about us. Or at least, no one ever mentioned anything to me. I’d accepted her departure with a mental shrug and continued going about my life.
Sometimes, though, I thought about the ocean. It was my only reprieve from this dry, dusty land.
5
Harper
The meeting with my editor ended up just being routine. She was trying to convince me to come back to working full-time for them, but I had to explain why I couldn’t. She was sorry to hear that, and she even offered me a raise to help pay for childcare services, but I explained that I liked being such a big part of Ava’s life. Maybe when she was a little older and started preschool, I could come back to work in the office. But for now, I wanted to spend as much time with my little girl as I could.
I went back to Maisie’s to pick up Ava. “You’ll never guess who I ran into today,” I said almost the second the door opened.
“The president?” Maisie asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
I snorted. “No, not the president,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to ‘just run into’ the president.”
“Maybe not, but you do a lot of important work for that paper,” Maisie pointed out. “I thought maybe your editor had set up a meeting and that’s why she called you in.”
“Nah, she just wanted to talk about me coming back full-time,” I said impatiently. “I ran into Ace.”
“Oh wow,” Maisie said, putting a hand over her mouth and glancing back at Ava, who was playing on the living room carpet, blissfully unaware of her mother’s drama. “Ace Ace?” Maisie asked. “Like, Ava’s…” She trailed off, and I was glad she didn’t say the word. Ava was old enough to know words like “daddy.” Maybe not old enough to think there was anything weird about not having a daddy, but she’d be curious.
“Yeah, that Ace,” I said.
“Shit.” Maisie shook her head. “Girl, your life is a soap opera.”
“I know,” I moaned, putting a hand on my face.
“Mama, Mama, I drew you a picture,” Ava said, running over suddenly, beaming as she held out her masterpiece of two orange and red blobs next to a big blue blob. “It’s you and me at the beach,” she said proudly.