Chapter 14 - THE QUIET WAR
I told Sophie about the assignment.
She listened.
No accusations.
No test.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“To stay.”
“Then stay.”
“What if I lose the command?”
“Will you?”
“Probably not.”
“Then why are you acting like somebody will court-martial you for loving a person?”
I stared.
“That is offensively simplified.”
“Answer the question.”
I called.
Requested additional leave.
It was granted.
Not indefinitely.
Enough.
I realized how many disasters in my marriage had been built from assumptions I never tested.
I assumed the Army always needed me immediately.
I assumed Sophie wanted space.
I assumed strength meant silence.
I assumed divorce would end pain.
I had been very efficient at being wrong.
Two days later, the biopsy happened.
We waited forty-eight hours.
The spot was benign.
A vascular lesion.
Not cancer.
Sophie sat completely still when Dr. Morris told us.
Then she said, “Can you say it again?”
“Benign.”
“Again.”
“Benign.”
Sophie laughed.
Then she looked at me.
“Did you hear?”
“I heard.”
She grabbed my shirt and cried against my chest.
I held her.
No restraint.
No careful distance.
When we got home, she slept twelve hours.
The next morning, I found her in the nursery.
She was holding the yellow socks.
“I think I want to paint this room.”
My stomach tightened.
“What color?”
“Not Morning Mist.”
“Thank God.”
She smiled.
“Maybe green.”
“Dangerous.”
“Why?”
“I have opinions now.”
She threw a paint sample at me.
It hit my forehead.
For three seconds, we were who we had been.
Then she grew serious.
“I don’t want this room to be a grave.”
I nodded.
“What do you want it to be?”
“I don’t know yet.”
May you like
That was the first future she had allowed herself to imagine.
