Maggie called. She asked me to give you a message—to tell you that she’s not coming home, and I told her I wouldn’t, that she was going to have to talk to you herself …? But then she texted me and …”
He held out his phone.
Maybe mom wont have 2 go back if *I* get pregnant. Tell her ill b back in the morning.
Arlene shifted her horrified gaze from Jack’s phone to his worried eyes. “Oh, shit,” she said, as he tried calling Maggie back.
He shook his head—she wasn’t picking up. “She’s not serious,” he reassured Arlene. “We’ll find her—we should start by calling her friends.”
But Arlene shook her head. “I don’t … Her friends—they’re just names to me. I don’t have …”
“I’ll call Will and Dolphina.” Jack flipped through his phone’s address book. “We’re going to find her, Leen. She’s just … This is a threat—her way of holding her breath till she gets what she wants.”
“You don’t know her,” she said, and as the words left her mouth, her heart clenched because the truth was, Arlene didn’t know her own daughter anymore.
“You gonna let me in?” Jack asked, and as she stepped back, opening the door wider, she felt the last of her control slip and she burst into tears.
CHAPTER SIX
Before tonight, Jack had never seen Arlene Schroeder cry. Not like this, with deep, body-shaking sobs, as if her world were coming to an end.
He’d seen her damn near frothing at the mouth with anger. He’d seen her frustrated and humiliated and joyful and proud and giddy with laughter. He’d seen her fight not to cry, furtively wiping away any moisture, so that no one could see her tears.
He’d seen her green eyes filled with passion and, damnit, love—that was love he’d seen that night as she’d pulled his head down to kiss him, their bodies moving, straining together.
“I got maybe thirty seconds, Lloyd, so make it fast or I’ll talk to you later.” Will’s voice was loud and clear through Jack’s phone.
“I’m at your place,” Jack informed Arlene’s brother as he put his arms around her still-shaking shoulders. “Maggie’s in trouble. Arlene’s melting down. You and Dolph need to get over here—now.”
He didn’t let his old friend reply, he just hung up his phone, tossing the damn thing onto the rug, so he could wrap himself more completely around Arlene.
Who slapped him away. “Don’t touch me!” She was now trying—and coming close to succeeding—to stop her tears, to jam her emotional outburst back inside. But the look on her face broke his heart, and he couldn’t keep himself from reaching for her again.
“We’ll find her,” he promised her again. “Will and Dolphina are on their way home. We’ll make a list of all of Maggie’s friends—”
Again, she pushed him away, striding into the living room where a box of tissues sat on Will’s computer desk. “None of whom I’ve met. Lizzie, Beth, Paloma, Inez, Keisha, Jason, Mike.” She blew her nose forcefully. “I don’t even know their last names.”
“Will and Dolphina will know.”
“I’m her mother.” Despite her best efforts, Arlene’s tears again overflowed. “I should know. I should be here.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “You should.”
And there they stood, looking at each other.
“I don’t want to go back,” Arlene whispered. The tip of her nose was pink, which made her attempts to wipe away her tears rather useless. But she straightened her shoulders and kept her lower lip from trembling. “But I have to. I made a promise.”
“But when’s your debt repaid?” Jack asked her quietly. “This war’s gone on too long. And I’ve read the reports. Your being over there—our being over there … It isn’t making things safer here, for Maggie, for any of us. How do you reconcile that?”
“I don’t,” Arlene admitted. “And I hate being there. I hate it, Jack. But I made a promise. If called upon, I would serve.”
“The government made a promise to you that they haven’t kept,” he pointed out.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” she countered. “For the sole sake of argument, let’s assume—I don’t believe you are, but let’s assume—you’re right. They broke their promise, not just to me, but to everyone in the Reserves and the National Guard, by extending our tours, by creating the stop-loss program that says we can’t leave, even if we want to. Okay, great. It sucks. I’m with you there. But nearly everyone overseas has someone who is growing up without them, Jack. Everyone has someone they miss with all of their heart. Every