Chapter 6

Shep and Allegra went to drop a gift off for her grandmother on Christmas Eve. The housekeeper told them she was sleeping and wasn't feeling well, so they left the gift with her. Allegra sensed that Mariette was wasting away, grieving for her husband, and choosing not to return to the land of the living herself.

They spent Christmas alone in the apartment, and Shep loved his gifts from her. The sweaters fit perfectly, and he put the watch on immediately. He had bought Allegra a sweater in a soft green, the color of her eyes, and a narrow gold bracelet that she loved too. It had a little gold heart dangling from it, and he'd had the date engraved on the back. It was their second married Christmas, their first one together. The first one he'd spent in Afghanistan, as well as their first anniversary.

They had a quiet day together, watched old movies on TV, and ate popcorn. It was snowing again, and a perfect day to be at home, tucked into bed, and making love. They were living in their own private world.

Shep waited until the first week of January, after the holidays, to tell Allegra that he had made a decision. She could tell that it was something important. His hands were shaking, as they did most of the time now, when he told her. She wanted him to see a doctor, and he said he'd see one on the base when he went back to Washington. He still insisted it was nothing. She wasn't convinced. Sometimes she could feel his whole body shivering when he was asleep, as though he was ice cold. He didn't have the same nightmares this time, but frequently he either cried or shouted in his sleep. Afghanistan had left its mark on him again. More than she knew. He shared his decision with her on a Sunday morning.

"I'm going to stay with the army," he said. "I'm going to reenlist when my time is up. I like the work I do. It's a good job, and I think it's the right career for me." He looked determined, even belligerent, and she felt her heart pound as he said it. It was the last thing she wanted. The army had ruined her father. She didn't want it to ruin Shep. He wasn't the same kind of man. She didn't want to be married to a man like her father, one who was never at home and always on the other side of the world somewhere. That wasn't what she had signed on for. He had promised her he'd get out. Now he'd changed his mind. He was a tender person, a gentle soul. The army would destroy him.

"What does that mean for us?" Allegra asked him in a choked voice.

"I can wind up in a desk job in Washington eventually, doing interesting work I love. I won't be sent to places like Afghanistan all the time. This is just the beginning. After this, it will settle down."

"And if it doesn't?"

"I can request posts in the States."

"And they can send you wherever they want, if they say they need you there." She knew how it worked. She had lived it all her life with her father, although he was an extreme case, and he wanted to be sent to war zones. That was his specialty, and his strong suit. It wasn't Shep's. His two tours of duty in Afghanistan had taken a toll on him.

"I'd like to try it as a career. If it doesn't work out, I don't have to reenlist again, and I can get interesting jobs after this, in international security work, industrial espionage, positions that use my strategic skills."

"There are no war zones in civilian life, Shep. You don't have to go around killing and torturing people in a regular job. And once you head down that path, there's no turning back. Look at my father and what it turned him into. He's a killing machine. That's not who you are. The only people who come back from it come back broken or severely damaged. Take a look at your hands, that's how it starts." She spoke to him in a calm clear voice. "My father's father was just like him, maybe worse. It runs in my family. You wanted a career in business. That would be a lot better for you, and for us."

"I've developed skills that I can use in the army better than anywhere else. I'm someone in the army. I'll be nothing in civilian life."

"One of these times, if you go back to places like Afghanistan, it will break you. It already is."

"It's stressful, but I can handle it," he assured her. She didn't believe him, but she knew she couldn't change his mind. They had hooked him. They owned him now. It was what they did so well. A secret club you could never escape from once you'd been initiated. And clearly he had been. He was a member in good standing now.

"What deal have you already made with them?" she asked. When she looked him in the eye, she could tell he already knew. She wondered if he knew when he came home and didn't want to tell her until after the holidays. He squirmed when she asked him. He was guilty as charged.

"I want to re-up and see how far I can go. I'd like to achieve a high rank before I leave the military." He was already a captain. "I have to be back in Washington on the eighth of February. They want to send me back to Afghanistan on March first. I'd come home for Christmas again, and then I'd do a six-month tour at the Pentagon, before they send me away again." He was leaving for another ten months. "Whenever I leave the military, I'll have had an incredible amount of experience before I'm thirty. You won't even be twenty-six yet. We're still young. We can start a family then if you want, and I'll be sure I stick around, and stay in Washington as much as I can. I want to stay in till I'm thirty." Another four years of Russian roulette.

"You can never be sure they'll leave you in Washington. If they told you that, they lied. They'll send you wherever they want you, no matter what they promise you now. You've been home for two weeks, and you want to go back to Afghanistan for ten months." She had lost him to the army, and she knew it. No matter how long they stretched it out, he was already theirs. Their poison was in his veins. That's why he was shaking and shouting at night. And what was left of who he used to be cried in his sleep. It seemed tragic to her. The waste of a wonderful human being. The worst part was that she loved him and didn't want to leave him. "What am I left with? You come home every year for Christmas, like the Ghost of Christmas Past? A little more broken each time until one day you can't fix it anymore. The only things left are the broken parts. You're throwing your life away." And hers, she thought but didn't say.

"Don't be so dramatic. I'm stronger than you think. I can hold up to it."

"No one can," she said sadly. "Look how many men it breaks. Sooner or later it will break you."

"The ones who break are the weak ones," he said firmly. She shook her head.

"No, those are the ones who tried to hang on to what was left of them. They'll own you, Shep, and do whatever they want with you. And when you're too damaged to be of use to them, they'll throw you away, or park you in some shit job you'll hate. They revere men like my father, who'll do anything. That isn't you."

He wanted to play in the big leagues, but he had no idea what it would cost him. "And I don't want to have kids one day with a man who's never here. I grew up that way. I won't do that to someone else."

"We're not ready to have kids yet. We can talk about it when we are." She could see that there was no talking him out of it. He had made up his mind. They won. They had him now, with the tantalizing offer of exciting jobs.

What he told her cast a pall on the rest of his time with her in New York. She went to work and came home to him at night. What he planned to do, making the army his career, stood between them like a boulder. The tone of his visit changed after that. It was just a visit, not a life.

He went back to Washington at the beginning of February, and came home for two weekends after that. He was going back to Afghanistan on March first. She wasn't going to see him off this time. She couldn't bear to see it and dreaded who he would be when he came back.

—

By sheer coincidence, her father came to the States for a week in February. He came to see Allegra in New York for a day. She tried to talk to him about it, how Shep was the wrong man for them to turn into one of their killing machines, a star strategist who would see all the horrors of the war.

"It'll destroy him," she said over lunch.

"He's tougher than that. He's already been put to some hard tests, and passed with flying colors. It's what he wants. Every wife and mother in the world would say what you just said to me. It won't kill him, Allegra. It'll make a man of him." He was never going to help her dissuade Shep.

—

The last weekend together was an agony for both of them. Shep felt guilty and Allegra was heartbroken. It was a poor combination, and this time she cried more after he left than when he was leaving. She didn't go to Washington with him to see him off. She went to work instead. She planned to drown herself in work for the next ten months. His leaving was good for her job, but not for her heart or her soul or her life. She was sure he was doing the wrong thing for both of them, staying in the army.

—

She worked hard at her job for the next ten months. She did well, and was promoted to full editor at twenty-three.

She heard from Shep and feared for his life and his soul every day. She could already hear subtle changes in him. She couldn't put her finger on what was different, but she knew he was. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in March, he was transferred there in April, to Baghdad. She turned twenty-three once he was there.

Life didn't stop because he was in Iraq. It was a loss of innocence for both of them.

—

In April, almost a year to the day after her husband died, Allegra's grandmother had a massive heart attack and died in her sleep. She had been willing herself to die for a year. She had given up on life when he left.

Isabelle didn't come home this time. Mariette's attorney called Isabelle to notify her, and she said she couldn't get back in time for the funeral. She was on a cruise around the world on a yacht she and her husband had chartered, and she said it was too difficult to get back.

Allegra made all the arrangements, respectfully, and planned a dignified funeral for a woman who had been kind to her in the end, had neglected her as a child but done the best she was capable of, which Allegra recognized and understood. She had learned a lot about people's inability to love in her short lifetime. She knew that Isabelle would show up eventually, at her own convenience, to settle the estate.

Mariette left Allegra a small but respectable amount of money, which would give her some comfort and enable her to do some things she wanted, without changing her life dramatically. Mariette left the bulk of her estate to her only daughter, Isabelle, according to her husband's wishes, although she hadn't entirely agreed. But she had followed his request.

—

In June, Allegra had another unwelcome surprise. Her father was due to return to Washington, and was planning to retire. He had no choice. Bradley had stayed in as long as they would let him. He was about to turn sixty-eight, as a lieutenant general, a three-star general. Making a final tour of one of the key combat zones in Iraq before he left, he was shot and killed by a sniper. Allegra knew it was the way he would have preferred to die, rather than dwindling as he grew old and feeble in civilian life. He died while he was still strong and vital, at the relatively young age of sixty-seven. Allegra was contacted by a member of his staff at the Pentagon. There was no one else to tell her. When she got the call, she thought they were calling about Shep, and she couldn't breathe as she sat down to hear the bad news. It was almost a relief to discover it was her father. She hadn't seen him in four months, when she had wanted him to talk Shep out of reenlisting, and he wouldn't.

She had mixed feelings about her father's death. He had never been kind to her, never taken care of her, probably never loved her. In his own way, he was a great deal like her mother. In his case, he had fulfilled his practical responsibilities, to provide her an education and see to it that she was housed somewhere as a child by a member of her family, as long as it wasn't with him. And once she was an adult, he paid for a modest apartment and sent her a small allowance. But he had abandoned her in every significant emotional and physical way. Nonetheless, he was still her father, and she knew she should love him, but she wasn't sure she did. She didn't feel guilty about it. It was a fact, and inevitable, given how badly he had failed her as a father. She felt numb after hearing the news, unable to feel anything. And it wasn't surprising that, since he had no other living relatives, what money he had he left to Allegra. It wasn't a large amount, but it was more than she expected. He didn't own anything. He had a small, rented apartment in Washington, D.C. Material goods weren't important to him. His career in the military was everything, it meant more than people or money. What he left Allegra gave her an additional cushion to add to what her grandmother had left her. It was a respectable amount.

The army planned his funeral, so she didn't have to do it. He was buried with the full honors due his rank as three-star lieutenant general, in Arlington Cemetery. It was a very impressive ceremony, since he was highly decorated for his service, and she was surprised by how little she felt for him. She took the train back to New York alone, since Shep was in Iraq and couldn't come. He was in the midst of some top-secret operation that required him to remain there.

With her father's death, she had no living relatives except her mother, who really didn't count, by her own choice. Isabelle had never wanted to be a mother, and hadn't been. It was an odd feeling for Allegra, knowing she had no one left in the world except Shep, whom no one even knew she was married to. They had never gotten around to telling anyone when he left. She wasn't sure it mattered now. She knew she was married to him, which was enough. There was no one left to care about her.

The house in Newport belonged to her mother now, so Allegra didn't feel comfortable going there. For the first time in a dozen years, she didn't go to Newport that summer. It wouldn't have been the same without her grandmother anyway. She stayed in New York and worked all summer, which occupied her, and distracted her from the major changes she'd had in her life in the past two months. She needed time to absorb it and process it. She went out with friends from work occasionally, but kept mainly to herself.

—

Isabelle finally showed up in October to settle the estate. She put the cottage in Newport on the market. She had no interest in owning it, since she was married and lived in England, and had for so many years. Her life was based there now, and a large house to maintain in the States held no appeal for her. She had hated her stuffy, boring Newport summers in her youth. It saddened Allegra to know it was being sold, she had childhood memories of the cottage, some of which were dear to her. They were the only happy family memories she had.

Isabelle spent a week in New York, making decisions about her parents' apartment, which she put on the market too, sending their furniture to auction. She kept some of the paintings, which were valuable, and sold her mother's jewelry, except for a few pieces she wanted. She called Allegra and asked her to lunch, much to Allegra's surprise. She invited her to the Plaza, where she was staying, and as always looked very pretty when Allegra met her for lunch. Allegra went more out of curiosity than any hope that some deep emotional connection would happen. She knew that wasn't possible. There was no connection to be made, and Allegra was leery of her mother. Isabelle only thought about herself. No one else mattered to her.

"My God, it's a lot of work getting rid of all that stuff," Isabelle said, as soon as she sat down. She was forty-six years old and looked ten years younger, and Allegra thought she had done something to her face since the last time she saw her. "I'm trying to sell the cottage with everything in it. It will be perfect for some nouveau riche Texan who has no idea what to do with it and wants to make a splash in Newport society." She smiled. She was selling all her family history without a qualm, and Allegra's, although Allegra had never been part of it, except as an occasional visitor. She had never been treated as a full member of the family, although she was. She was an outsider and a guest. "Which reminds me." Isabelle put a small black suede box on the table in front of Allegra. "I think she'd have wanted you to have this. She loved you, in her own chilly way. They were terrible parents, and I don't suppose they were any better as grandparents," Isabelle said blithely. "I hated them when I was younger. I don't anymore. They were just very stuffy, dull people, part of a dying breed."

Allegra opened the box cautiously, and there was a small ruby heart pin in it that she knew her grandmother had loved, and she was touched. It had been a nice gesture for her mother to give it to her, and unlike Isabelle to be generous. It wasn't very valuable, or she'd have kept it herself.

"Thank you, I love it," Allegra said, feeling emotional for a moment. And then her mother rambled on about her trip, her life in England, another cruise she was planning, as Allegra listened to her. There were no questions about Allegra's life, no concern for her being alone in the world now. They were just two women who barely knew each other meeting for lunch. Allegra had worn her narrow wedding ring, as always, concealed by another ring. And at the end of lunch, she had the feeling that she might never see her mother again. There was no reason to. Isabelle had come to New York to get rid of her parents' possessions, not to see Allegra. She was a sidebar and nothing more in Isabelle's life. Ancient history, the result of a youthful mistake. Isabelle had given Allegra up seventeen years before and didn't want her back in her life. It would have been cruel if she had intended it to be. But she didn't. Allegra was someone she had shut out of her life, and rejected all responsibility for, but didn't mind running into from time to time when circumstances threw them together. As long as she didn't have to make any effort, or care about her.

She didn't kiss Allegra goodbye or hug her, or promise to stay in touch. She just waved, and floated away the way she always did, and she might float back again one day. Allegra hoped not. They had no connection, and never had one. Isabelle saw to that. The bridges between them were gone, Mariette and Allegra's father. Without them, they would have no reason to meet again, and Isabelle wouldn't bother. Allegra knew that about her. She went back to her office, with the ruby heart brooch in her purse. It was the only sentimental possession she owned. And the only piece of her family history she had, that and all the memories she would rather forget, of people who had left her.