'Nothin' wrong with your ego, that's for sure,' Jessie said with a sniff, but she was secretly delighted with his arrogance.
He chuckled. 'G'night-sleep tight.' In the doorway he paused. 'Oh-and remember, if you hear anything-'
'-don't touch you. I know.' She blew him a kiss and snuggled back into the pillows with a quivering, throat- easing sigh.
Tristan walked with an unhurried stride, winding casually among families of tourists sunning themselves or picnicking on the mall, testing the spring in his knee and in the new grass, quietly appreciating the miracles of dandelions and laughing children and Jessie beside him and kites dancing in a pale-blue sky.
Home. That was something else he had to keep telling himself. Because he still didn't believe that, either. Maybe because he didn't feel as if he was home. Maybe because he didn't know where home was, anymore.
One thing that had surprised him, though, was how he'd felt this morning, walking around Washington, D.C., with Jess. It had been her idea to spend some time seeing the sights before catching their flight to Atlanta, since it was something neither one of them had ever done before. Max and Sammi June had planned to visit the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, which had rather appealed to Tristan, too. But Jess had wanted to see the monuments, and he hadn't been in a frame of mind to disappoint her. Now he was glad he hadn't. It was a perfect day to be outdoors, not too warm, with a breeze that carried the scent of fresh-cut grass. The monuments were pristine white against that soft-blue sky, making him think of that line in 'America the Beautiful' about alabaster cities, undimmed by human tears. But he'd expected beautiful. He'd even expected to be touched by it all…the history, the symbolism. What he hadn't expected was to feel proud. 'My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty…'
His eyes stung and, uneasy with that, he laughed out loud. Jessie gave him a questioning look, and he said, 'Nothing-just glad to be here, is all,' and reached for her hand. It gave him a little pang in his heart to realize she hadn't asked him to tell her why he'd laughed or how he felt. And that she'd probably stopped asking right after he'd snapped at her that day on the plane.
Ah hell, he thought, as familiar clouds drifted into his day. Just as well. That only meant he didn't have to try so hard to protect her from his thoughts…his feelings.
They paused to crane at the Washington Monument, hands lifted to shade their eyes from the morning sun but didn't join the line of tourists waiting to go inside. They were short of time, and Tristan's newly developed claustrophobia was a compelling enough reason all by itself to skip that experience.
'Feel like going all the way to the Lincoln?' Jess asked it lightly, and he knew she thought he'd be impatient with her 'mothering.'
So he squeezed her hand and forced a grin to let her know he didn't mind. 'Sure, why not-we can always catch a cab to the hotel from there.'
He didn't know exactly when it had come to him, the realization that it wasn't the Lincoln Memorial he wanted to see, but something else nearby. But he knew that this was a pilgrimage he'd have made on his hands and knees, if necessary. And maybe it was something in his face, his silence, or some kind of woman's intuition, but he didn't have to tell Jessie where he wanted to go. It seemed they both just aimed in that direction without either of them saying a word to the other.
They came to The Wall at its end, the tapering point of the black granite slash that represented the conclusion of the war…that terrible war that had ended with a whimper rather than a bang. Holding hands, they walked slowly along the pathway that led deeper and deeper into the heart of the conflict…the worst of the killing. Beside them, The Wall rose ever higher, and at its apex, the names seemed to tumble out of the granite and overwhelm by their sheer numbers.
Finally Tristan's steps slowed. He paused, heart hammering, turned and faced the shiny black surface. The names…so many names…seemed to dance and shimmer before his eyes. He put out his hand and rested his palm against the cool, smooth stone. His fingers found and traced the tiny cross carved beside one of the names. He felt smothered. The breeze was gone, the bright-blue sky had darkened, and now the cold black wall seemed to close around him.
'The crosses mean MIA,' he heard Jess say softly. 'I read that, somewhere. When-if-an MIA is accounted for, the body identified, the cross is carved out to make a diamond, like the others.'
Tristan nodded, not saying anything. Not trusting himself to say anything. What he wanted to do was bow his head and let the tears come. He wanted to cry for those lost ones as he could never cry for himself. The lost ones who'd never made it home.
But Jessie was there, and he couldn't let her know how much he hurt. So he nodded and said gruffly, 'I know.' He pressed his palm hard against the granite, as if he could imprint the name of that lost soul there. Then he turned to face the light…the sunshine…the grass and the sky…the towering spire of the Washington Monument.
At least, he thought, drawing the sweet-scented air deep into his lungs, I'm one of the lucky ones.
Chapter 12
There had been Starrs in Oglethorpe County since before the War of Northern Aggression. Nobody in Jessie's family knew exactly how much before, since all the records prior to that had been burned up by General Sherman during his rampage through Georgia. All Jessie or any of her brothers and sisters had ever known was that after General Lee's surrender, one Joseph Jeremiah Starr had come limping back home to find the place burned to the ground, the livestock all run off or eaten, and the old folks dead and gone. Young Joseph being a resilient soul, once his wounds had healed and his dysentery cleared up he'd set about building himself another house, married a local widow woman-of which there'd been an abundant supply at the time-and started right in on establishing a new Starr dynasty.
Over the years, Starrs had continued to be born, live, build, procreate and sometimes die in Oglethorpe County. More had gone off to do most of those things somewhere else. A few found other wars to fight. Some of those hadn't made it back.
The house Joseph Jeremiah built burned down sometime in the 1890s and was replaced with a huge white Victorian complete with curlicues and cupolas; the Starr in residence at the time had made quite a lot of money in textiles, and his wife had her own ideas about what constituted high style. Forty years or so later that house, too, burned to the ground, taking its owners, then in their seventies, with it.
The one that replaced it was also white wood frame, but since it was the Depression, when money was scarce and labor cheap, this one had been built to be simple but solid, and was meant to last. It had two stories and an attic, high ceilings and a big cluttered kitchen that smelled of canned tomatoes in the summertime and wet shoes in winter, and a pantry upon whose doorjamb generations of Starr children, including Jessie and Sammi June, had had their growth recorded. It also had a big wraparound porch where Jessie and her sister-in-law, Mirabella, were sitting in creaky white rocking chairs, taking a moment's respite from the family gathering that was noisily in progress.
It was to this house that James Joseph Starr, just returned from the latest war-the Korean-and eager to begin carrying on the rest of the Starr-family traditions, had brought his bride, the former Betty Calhoun, a retired schoolteacher from Augusta. Having learned to drive big trucks in the Army, Joe Starr made good use of a G.I. loan to buy his own rig. With it he'd managed to provide reasonably well for the seven children Betty gave him, right up until his final heart attack-which fortunately did not happen while he was behind the wheel of his eighteen-wheeler. The three youngest of his children, including Jessie, had still been in school at the time, and Jessie's next older
