Matt & Zoe - Charles Sheehan-Miles Page 0,15

direction. “I’m not arguing with you, Jasmine. If you want ice cream after dinner, you’ll eat.”

Nicole, still in her uniform after a day on patrol, leans close to me. “You’re starting to sound like a mother.”

That sets Jasmine off. She slams her little fist into the table, sending her plastic cup full of milk flying across the table. Milk splatters everywhere, including on me.

“You’re not my mother!” She bursts into tears and runs out of the room. Moments after she runs out of the room, I hear the back door slam.

I stare after her. I know I should follow. I know I should hold her in my arms and comfort her and do all that motherly stuff. She’s right. I’m not our mother, our mother is dead and we’re all alone.

Nicole squeezes my shoulder. “It’ll get better,” she says.

“I hope so.” I throw my napkin on the wet table and stand. “I’ll be right back.”

I don’t hurry. Jasmine needs a minute to collect herself anyway. Instead, I dawdle to the back door and switch on the outside light, illuminating the space between the house and Dad’s garage.

I still haven’t been in there. It sits dark and hidden in the twilight behind locked doors. I have a compulsion to call a contractor and have the thing bulldozed and taken away.

Instead, I open the back door and step down the cinderblock steps to the gravel pathway behind the house. It’s still warm, and the scent of turned soil, hay and manure drifts my way. South Hadley, like much of the Pioneer Valley, is a weird mix of college town and rural paradise, with working family farms across the street from eclectic bookstores and coffee shops. Mom and Dad rarely locked the doors when I was growing up.

The light is on in the stable, the building backlit by a sky washed with orange and red.

A thought nags in the back of my mind as I approach. I never expected to be taking care of my little sister. Much less my little sister and a nine acre horse farm and three horses. This morning I met with Veterans Services and the admissions department at UMASS Amherst. Veterans Services is trying to get an exception to the normal admission procedure so I can start college this semester. I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but either way I’ll either be working full time or going to school soon. I can’t afford to take care of this place, to take care of my sister and the horses and everything else. The life insurance will pay off the house, but there won’t be much left after that—maybe enough for a year. A cold pit of anxiety runs through me as I approach the stable.

Jasmine sits on the top rail of Mono’s stall. His gigantic head is in her lap, his tail swishing about.

“Hey,” I say.

Jasmine leans closer to the horse. She has a look of intense concentration on her face. Her hands move carefully, taking long strands of hair on the back of his neck and deftly braiding them together.

“He loves you,” I say.

She doesn’t respond. I’m not equipped for this. I stand helplessly, overcome with a surge of grief. Why didn’t Mom and Dad make any provisions for this? I’m not cut out to be somebody’s mother.

“I miss them too, you know.” The words come out of me, even though I know it’s the wrong thing to say. “I loved them.”

She looks up at me for the first time. Her face is streaked with tears. “All you did was yell at Mommy.”

I wince. Her words are correct. My last leave, a two-week visit, was punctuated by half-a-dozen skirmishes between me and Mom. It was always the same thing. When was I going to stop playing soldier? When was I going to come home and go to college? Didn’t I know the Army was dangerous?

That was a laugh. Didn’t I know it was dangerous? Who had she thought she was talking to? I was there.

I blink, once, twice, then several times, because my vision is blurring. The last thing I’d said face to face to my mother had been … cold. Not hateful, but angry. I’d just finished loading my duffle bag in the back of Dad’s Austin Healy so we could ride to the airport. I don’t normally take it out in the snow, he’d said. But this time I’ll make an exception.

Mom had hugged me, but I hadn’t responded well. Then she looked me