Chapter 1 - The Laugh Behind the Crying

The first thing I heard when I came home from deployment wasn't my son's voice.

It was my husband's laughter.

My three-year-old boy was screaming hard enough to make himself sick, and Caleb sat on our couch with a beer in his hand, laughing like the whole thing was a joke.

I stood in the doorway in my dark-blue Army dress uniform, my overnight bag sliding from my shoulder. On the other side of the room, Owen reached toward Caleb with both hands. His little gray sweater was wet at the collar. His face was red and shining.

“Daddy, please. Want Grandma.”

Caleb lifted his feet onto the coffee table. “Here we go again. The little prince wants another audience.”

I had imagined this homecoming for eleven months. I had pictured Caleb lifting Owen, my mother smiling with baby Lily in her arms, and all of us crying for the right reasons.

Instead, something metallic crashed in the kitchen.

I rounded the corner. My mother, Evelyn, stood beside the stove clutching Lily against her mint-striped cardigan. Water spilled from a saucepan onto the wooden floor. Mom's silver hair was flattened on one side, and tears rolled down her face without a sound. Vanessa, Caleb's sister, stood behind her in black, arms folded as though she were waiting for a bus.

“Mom?” I whispered.

She looked at my uniform, then at the baby, and flinched.

That was what turned my stomach. My mother had never flinched from me in her life.

“Rebecca,” she said. “You're early.”

Vanessa's face drained of color. “Caleb said you weren't coming until Friday.”

“It's Tuesday.” I stepped toward Mom. “What happened to your hand?”

She tried to hide it beneath Lily's blanket. I caught a glimpse of swollen fingers and a purple burn across her wrist.

“Stove accident,” Vanessa said quickly.

“Funny,” I answered. “I asked my mother.”

Mom's eyes filled again. In a voice barely louder than Lily's breathing, she said, “Please don't leave me here with them.”

Behind me Caleb stopped laughing.

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Then he said the sentence that changed everything.

“Rebecca, put your bag down. We need to talk about what you signed.”