“Don’t be like this, Carmen,” he said.

“How do you expect me to be? I’ve stayed home and tried my damnedest to be a model army wife. I never cheated on you one time. I raised our daughter, most of the time alone, and now you don’t even have the decency to tell me you’re considering a divorce until after you’ve filed? Come on, Eli, how would you feel if the roles were reversed?”

“I’m being fair. Until the divorce is final, you’ll still get the same amount of money each month,” he said.

“Fair is trying to make this work, not just being sure I can pay the mortgage and electric bill,” she said. “Give us six months. If at the end of that time, you still feel the same, I’ll sign the papers. I’m not speaking to you about this again until my lawyer tells me what all this legal shit means. Goodbye, Eli.”

“Wait a minute,” he yelled. “I’ve only got another few minutes before I have to hang up. Can’t you be reasonable? You don’t need to pay a lawyer. I’ve already done that. Read the papers. You’ll see that I’m not being unfair.”

Carmen looked around at her home, the little brick house that she was so proud of. Did the papers say it would be sold and what equity was in it would be split? Or did they say she could keep the house if she took over the payments? Natalie barely remembered a time when they didn’t live here. This was her home, and what if Carmen couldn’t keep up the mortgage on what she’d make at minimum wage before she got her degree? It would be her fault that Natalie’s home was gone.

“What’s the big hurry? Didn’t you just say that my money for keeping a home for our daughter will keep coming in until the divorce is settled? I’m not rushing anything. I may delay the signing for a year so I can finish my classes and get a job as a teacher.”

Joanie patted her on the back.

Diana gave her the thumbs-up sign.

“Nothing—not a therapist, not even God—is going to change my mind. It’s over. Accept it and move on,” Eli said.

She ended the call, jumped up and ran to the bathroom, leaned over the toilet, and brought up everything she’d drunk and eaten in the last hour. Diana held her hair back while Joanie wet a washcloth with cool water for her face afterward. The taste in her mouth was horrible, so she grabbed a bottle of mouthwash and rinsed it, then gagged at the taste and dry heaved until her sides and throat hurt.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Why is he so determined to get the papers signed?”

“No need for apologies,” Diana told her. “I think you held my hair a few years back when I was in the same frame of mind you are right now. Only difference is, I was begging in person, and you’re doing it on the phone. And if I remember right, Joanie threatened to shoot him if he didn’t get out of the house. It’s just payback time. I’m going to make you a club soda with a little lemon twist. It’ll help.”

“And, honey, evidently he’s given this a lot of thought to want things to go quickly.” Joanie took her by the hand and led her to the sofa, made her stretch out on it, covered her with a throw, and sat down on the floor beside her.

Diana brought her the drink. “Here, sip on this. You did good on the phone. If you’d let him bully you into signing those papers right now, you’d have always felt like a doormat.”

“Why can’t he just give it some time? What’s the rush? Can’t he see I need a while to even adjust to the idea?” Carmen gasped and ran back to the bathroom. This time she put the toilet lid down and sat on it, bending forward until her head was between her knees. “I feel like I’m going to faint.”

Joanie got another cold washcloth ready and handed it off to Diana, who flipped Carmen’s dark ponytail to the side and laid it on her neck.

“How am I going to tell Natalie?” Carmen groaned.

“You’re not. That’s Eli’s job.” Diana handed the cloth back to Joanie, who ran it under the cold water again and then wrung it out. “When she can make and receive calls, he can explain it all to her, and she can make up her own mind about how to handle it. Thank God she’ll be through basic training before he comes home and she has to face him. She may be small, but she’s got a temper, and she’s liable to light into him.”

“But we share everything. How can I even talk to her in two or three weeks without telling her?” Carmen asked.

“By then, you’ll be over this first initial shock, but don’t you dare tell her. Eli’s the one who messed up, not you,” Joanie said. “Think you can make it back to the sofa?”

“I don’t know what I’d do without y’all.” Carmen’s chin started to quiver again.

“That’s what friends are for,” Diana told her.

Chapter Three

Diana eased open the door to her daughter’s room. Where had the years gone? It was only yesterday that she would’ve gone in and shaken Rebecca awake so she’d have time to eat breakfast before early-morning band practice. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around at the mess. Clothing on the floor, shoes flowing out from the closet door, one drawer hanging open on the chest of drawers, and at least a hundred pictures stuck around the mirror on her dresser.

“But if I touched a single thing, you’d know it the minute you walked into the room,” Diana muttered.

Even though her suitcase was packed, her laptop was in its case, and she’d even remembered a jacket and an umbrella, she couldn’t force herself to get up off her daughter’s bed and go over to Tootsie’s house. And yet, she wouldn’t let herself call and back out of the trip.

“I’m not deserting you,” she said out loud. “It’s not like I couldn’t wait for you to grow up and leave home so I could take a vacation alone. This is the hardest thing I’ve done since the day I signed divorce papers.”

Get out of my room. Rebecca’s voice came through loud and clear. I’ll clean it when I get home on leave.

The message was definitely a strange one, but it gave Diana the courage to leave. She checked the thermostat, made sure that the lamp in the living room was set to come on at six every evening and go off at seven in the morning, and locked the door behind her.

Joanie had a second cup of coffee that morning and fretted about the trip. Zoe should have been in the kitchen with her at that time of day. She would have just come in from the two-mile run she’d started doing the first of the summer. She’d said she was getting in shape so that basic training didn’t whoop her ass. Joanie had seen her daughter in cheerleader action for four years—there was no way that anything they could throw at Zoe would get the best of her. She touched the senior picture of Zoe sitting in the kitchen window.