“Sorry,” she said. “I’m Maryanne. I’m your new neighbor. Your back door was standing open, and I just wanted to make sure you were OK.”
My breathing slowed, and I felt my pulse return to normal. “Oh gosh,” I said, finally waking up enough to figure out what was happening. I looked around, mortified. “I’m so embarrassed. Please forgive the mess. I promise I’m not usually like this.”
She held out her hand, and I let her pull me up.
“You don’t have to apologize to me, honey. I feel your pain.” She pointed to her belly. “This is number two. Tom was deployed when number one was three months old, and I thought I would die then. I can’t imagine if he had left when he was as little as your guy.”
Anger, sadness, fear, and self-pity welled up in me all at once, and I burst into tears.
Maryanne hugged me, which only made me cry harder.
“Listen, sister,” she said, “you’re going to make it. It’s going to be fine. I’m going to teach you how to do this without losing your ever-loving mind.”
I nodded, wiping my eyes. Maryanne looked around, and I felt self-conscious again about my mess. But she said, “Wow. This place is incredible.”
I appraised the room as well, noticing for the first time in a while the custom-made couch, stylish art, mirrored gold end tables, and antique dining table with the beautiful oyster-shell chandelier over top. Admittedly, that was a little odd, but my mom had thought being stationed in North Carolina meant we would be living on the coast. I loved it anyway. It reminded me of home.
“My mom’s a decorator,” I said, apologetically.
“You don’t say,” Maryanne replied.
From that moment on, we were best friends. We were Army wives. We were in this together. Maryanne taught me that mothering on your own meant getting on a schedule and sticking to it no matter what. It meant Stroller Strides with the other moms on post at 9 a.m.; a trip into town every day, even if it was just to Starbucks; taking advantage of one nap to clean the house and the other to relax. “You’re a single mother now, Sloane,” she said. “You have to preserve yourself at all costs. It doesn’t matter if the laundry gets done, and no one is coming home to eat a five-star dinner.”
In the name of self-preservation, Maryanne and I enlisted two other wives to start a supper club. Once a week, each of us prepared dinner for the entire clan. It wasn’t fancy and our houses weren’t always spic and span, but it gave us adult time, and most importantly, camaraderie, the thing that we needed to survive almost as much as our husbands did. Those women became my sanity.
Now, all I could think about was them. How could I have done this to my best girlfriends? While they were on post fighting the fight, worrying about me, I was selfishly hiding away in my bed, letting others take care of my children. I felt like a sellout. I couldn’t face them.
I couldn’t count the number of missed calls I had. Maybe my friends weren’t calling only to check on me; maybe their husbands were with Adam. I don’t know how I hadn’t thought of it before. I felt so selfish. These were my friends, the women who saved me, who taught me how to be an Army wife. I sat down at the end of my bed. I had actually made it up that morning. It wasn’t much and it took most of my energy, but it was a start. I glanced at my painting in the corner of the bedroom. I knew I would give it to Maryanne. It was just her style. I searched for her contact and pushed Call.
“Oh, thank God,” Maryanne said, all in one breath. “We were all so afraid that something had happened to you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. I couldn’t face anyone. I basically lost five weeks of my life.” I paused, my lower lip quivering. With tears in my throat I said, “I’m so sorry, Maryanne. I don’t even know if Tom’s OK.”
When Major Austin, the rear detachment commander, had come to tell me the news, I hadn’t been in the frame of mind to ask. He had said, “Sloane, Adam is DUSTWUN, but we have every reason to believe he is alive. I know I don’t have to tell you this, but finding him is our top priority.”
My blood had run cold when he had said “DUSTWUN.” Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown. It meant he could have been captured. He could simply be missing. He could be AWOL. If I knew my husband, he wouldn’t want to die in the line of duty, but if that’s what he was called to do, he would. Being killed in the line of duty would have been preferable, in fact, to anyone insinuating he was a deserter.
That’s when I said, “You find out who has him, Major. Because you know just as well as I do that Adam would never, ever under any circumstances desert his men.” It was my only moment of strength in all of this. Army wives don’t often take a stand with their husband’s higher-ups. It isn’t our role. But I said, “Major Austin, I don’t want anyone speculating that my husband was in any way at fault here.”
He cleared his throat. “I promise you I’ll do everything I can, Sloane.”
I knew this would have caused a media frenzy. Soldiers didn’t go missing all that often these days. This would be big news. Speculation that my husband was AWOL was more than I could bear.
Now, I heard the shake in Maryanne’s voice when she said, “Adam, Tom, Brian, Luke, Jeremy, and Thad were all in the helicopter when it went down west of Mosul.”
Maryanne paused and cleared her throat. I could sense she was trying
