She shuffled to a stop at the kitchen entrance. Allison’s back was to her as she sorted silverware from the dishwasher to a drawer. No curtains obscured the afternoon light from the small window above the sink.
Even with her back turned, Allison showed hints of stress. Always slim, she was downright skinny, her shoulder blades too prominent under a red T-shirt that was half-untucked. Her hair was pulled back into a lopsided ponytail, a look she usually only wore at the gym.
“Hey,” Harper said.
Knives clattered into the drawer, lying like pick-up sticks. Allison whirled around, her hand on her chest, her breathing rapid. Surprise stripped away any pretense she might have worn for appearance’s sake.
She looked haggard. Spent. Weighted. Harper had worn the same expression for months after Noah’s death. Things were even worse than Harper feared. She crossed the kitchen and hauled Allison in for a hug. Allison’s body loosened until she collapsed into Harper, a desperate sob escaping.
Harper let her cry, rubbing circles on her back and whispering soothing nonsense words. After too short a time, Allison stiffened, and Harper released her when she really wanted to encourage her to get it all out. But that wasn’t Allison’s style. She grabbed a paper towel and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
“Sorry. I thought I had time to grab a shower and clean myself up before you got here.” Allison redid her ponytail and tucked in her shirt, her gaze focused somewhere over Harper’s shoulder.
“Allison.”
Allison hummed but evaded Harper’s eyes. “Allison, look at me.” Finally, her gaze skittered to meet Harper’s. “You don’t have to play the perfect officer’s wife. Not with me.”
Allison’s chin wobbled, but she nodded firmly.
“You have some wine stashed?” Harper didn’t wait for an answer but opened the fridge to find a bottle of white in the door. Grabbing a glass, she poured and pressed it into Allison’s hands. “Hop in a steamy shower and take your time.”
“But—”
“I’ll handle dinner and the kids. Darren too, if he wakes up. Go.” She used her no-arguments-allowed mommy voice, and Allison complied without another peep of protest.
Once her footsteps faded up the steps, Harper inventoried the pantry. Leave it to Allison to have the fixings available for any type of casserole imaginable. Harper went with a beefy, cheesy noodle concoction that was a favorite of Ben’s and the definition of comfort food.
Allison still wasn’t down when Harper called the kids in for dinner. She herded them into the kitchen and sat down at the table but didn’t fix herself a plate.
“Is Daddy up?” Ryan asked around a mouthful of pasta. He was the spitting image of Darren with his thick, dark eyebrows, wide mouth, and prominent nose. On his eight-year-old face, the combination looked ungainly, but Harper had no doubt he would grow into a handsome man.
“I haven’t heard him stir.” Harper took a sip of iced tea while she debated the friendship ethics of pumping Allison’s kids for information. “Does your dad take lots of naps?”
Libby nodded. “He doesn’t sleep so good at night. Mommy says he has bad dreams.”
Sophie, the youngest at five, piped up. “Sometimes he’s really loud and wakes me up.”
Libby shushed her little sister as if she was aware of the strangeness and the need to keep secrets.
“Everything is going to be okay.” Harper held Libby’s gaze as the hated platitude slipped out of her mouth.
God, the number of times she’d heard the same words after Noah had been killed had made her want to scream or punch the kindhearted soul in the face. At the time, nothing felt like it was ever going to be okay again. Now she understood. You said it when you didn’t know what else to say. The crazy thing was all those people were right. Eventually, everything was okay. Not the same, but okay.
Harper left the kids to finish up their dinner and stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening. Nothing. She climbed, trying not to make a sound, but the steps creaked under her weight.
The kids’ rooms were empty, so she padded to the end of the narrow hallway. The door was cracked, so she toed it open enough to peer inside. Allison had curled herself into a ball on top of the covers next to her husband. Both were asleep.
Harper returned to the kitchen, forced herself to eat a small bowl even though worry had stolen her appetite, then played crazy eights with the kids until bedtime. Libby and Ryan got themselves ready for bed, but after a quick bath Sophie begged for a story, her big blue eyes impossible to deny.
Harper tickled her. “Can we read about a princess? Ben never lets me read those.”
“Princesses are my favorite,” Sophie said between giggles.
Harper snuggled next to Sophie and read until the little girl drifted to sleep. Reaching over to turn the lamp off, Harper dropped her nose into Sophie’s shampoo-perfumed hair. A few months older than Ben, Sophie seemed younger. Was it simply their different personalities or had growing up without the umbrella protection of a father forced Ben to mature faster? Harper prayed Sophie traversed this difficult time without losing her innocence.
Lying next to Sophie in the dark, Harper let her imagination travel down alternate futures. One where Noah hadn’t died. One where they had a daughter with his blond hair and blue eyes. One where Ben had a father and little sister and she had a husband.
She startled awake, blinking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Had she dreamed the noise? Her heart pounded a steady rhythm in her ears, masking external sounds. What time was it? Her phone was downstairs, but the moon was high, the streets quiet.
As the adrenaline faded, her body loosened, and she closed her eyes, wanting to somehow reinsert herself into her dream. The snick of the front door closing bolted her upright. After a quick check showed Libby and Ryan both in bed, Harper shuffled to Allison and Darren’s room and peeked in. Allison had burrowed under the covers at some point, but Darren’s bulk was missing.
Thankfully still dressed, she made her way down the steps, shoved her feet into her running shoes, and muttered a curse. He was a grown man, but wandering the streets in the middle of the night in February was not normal. Harper had a feeling nothing had been normal since he’d made it home.
She jogged into the middle of the street. No sign of him in either direction. She spent precious seconds waffling over which way to go, finally taking off at a fast walk into the heart of the base. At the next crossroads, she turned in a slow circle on the hunt for any movement.
Yellow and red slides of a playground were lit by weak streetlights. A dark figure hunched in a swing and rocked back and forth. Harper’s heart dropped from her throat back where it belonged.
Darren did nothing but watch as she approached and took the swing next to him. The squeak of the chains broke the silence of the night. She shivered and stared down at his bare feet.
“I’m not crazy.” His voice was graveled with disuse.
“I know.”
He planted his feet and stopped his swing. “They all think something’s wrong with me.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Harper sensed his defensiveness and deflected.
“I’m not crazy,” he repeated.
“No one thinks you’re crazy, Darren. But … you were injured.”
“Banged up. Not like some of my boys who came home without legs or in body bags.”
Harper was out of her depth, drowning in platitudes. How was she qualified to help exorcise his demons when she still fought her own? “There’s different kinds of injuries. You might be physically healed, but concussions can affect you for months.”
“Fuck that.” He pushed up and stalked off. She scrambled to follow. “I should be able to deal with a head knock.”
He didn’t turn back toward the house, and she kept pace at his side. “Aren’t your feet cold?”
He glanced down, his step stuttering slightly as if he hadn’t realized he was barefoot. His stalk evened out and slowed to an amble. “No.”