He was sitting in the back of the plane, which meant the entire full flight would have to empty before he could start his sprint through the terminal.
He knew that Arlene was flying out through World Airlines. She was taking a flight to New York City, where she’d transfer to another that would go first to Germany.
As the plane taxied to the gate, the intercom clicked on, and Jack focused, hoping to hear which gate that New York flight would be leaving from. But instead, the pilot spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen welcome to Boston where the temperature is a balmy sixty-four degrees. Please remain seated until we get to the gate. And even then, once we arrive, please remain seated and leave the
aisle clear until passenger Jack Lloyd deplanes. See, his fiancée is shipping out to Iraq, and if he hurries to gate forty-two, he’ll have just enough time to kiss her goodbye.”
There was a murmur among the passengers, as Jack closed his eyes and blessed Jules Cassidy—this had the FBI agent’s name written all over it.
But then the plane was at the gate, and his seat belt was off and he was on his feet. As he dashed up the aisle, someone began to clap, and the whole plane was applauding like some ridiculous Hollywood romantic comedy.
The flight attendants were smiling at him, and then he was through the door and running full speed up the ramp.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE
Arlene sat in the now nearly empty waiting area by gate forty-two, with Maggie on her lap.
“I love you,” she told her daughter, who nodded as she clung to Arlene’s neck. “But I need you to get off of me now, because I have to give you something.”
Maggie wiped her eyes as she slid into the neighboring seat to let Arlene reach into her pants pocket. She pulled out the necklace she’d found on Maggie’s dresser. It was long enough to be hidden beneath the neckline of her shirts. And onto it Arlene had put the ring that Jack had brought over to Will’s apartment, that very first night he’d rocketed back into her life.
“I don’t want to wear this over there,” Arlene told Maggie. “So I was hoping that you would wear it for me until I get back.”
Maggie’s eyes widened. “What if I lose it?”
“You won’t,” Arlene said as she slipped it around her
daughter’s slender neck. “You’ll be careful with it. I know you will.”
Maggie lifted the ring to look at the diamond as it flashed in the waning afternoon light shining in through the big terminal windows. “I will be careful with it,” she promised.
Over at the gate, Jules was deep in discussion with the World Airlines attendant, who was shaking her head. No doubt they’d held the gate for as long as they could. It was time to go.
Jules took out his phone and dialed it, but it was more than apparent now that not only had Jack’s phone given up the ghost, but that he wasn’t going to make it. Arlene was going to have to say her goodbyes to him via email.
She stood up, and Maggie threw herself into her arms and hugged her tightly. “Be careful of land mines and mortars and snipers and IEDs and truck drivers who are afraid of bees.”
Oh, God, now her daughter had yet one more thing to worry about. “I will,” Arlene promised. “You be careful of truck drivers who are afraid of bees, too, okay?”
Maggie nodded, getting the message that the accident could just as easily have happened here in Boston. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, monkey-girl.”
“Hey!
Hey! Arlene!
”
They both looked up, and there he was, running toward them.
Jack.
And Maggie gave Arlene a push and it was all she needed to start running, too, toward Jack, and then, God, she was in his arms and he was kissing her.
His mouth was so warm, and he’d been drinking coffee, probably nonstop since he’d caught the plane from California, but he’d made it.
And she didn’t ever want to stop kissing him, but she
had to go. And the tears that she always worked so valiantly to hide from Maggie escaped. “I’m so sorry,” she told him.
“I know,” he said as he turned her so that Maggie couldn’t see her, even as she dug through her pockets for a Kleenex. “I’m in love with you, remember? I’m in love with
you
, and if I had to answer the question
What would Arlene do
, I would say that of course you’d go back.”
She laughed as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, as she looked at him, trying to memorize him—his smile, his warmth, the width of his shoulders, the unruly lock of hair that fell into his eyes—for the cold and lonely days and nights she knew were coming.
He was looking at her just as intently, but then he pulled her close and kissed her face, her nose, her cheeks, her mouth, her chin. “Vegas schmegas,” he said as he pulled Arlene over to where Maggie was standing near Jules and the woman from the airline. “Mags, can I borrow your lucky ring?”
Maggie clutched the diamond ring that Arlene had just given her, but Jack was pointing toward the kelly green plastic leprechaun that she’d gotten at Laser-Mania.
“I need to borrow it for a few months,” Jack added. “I hope that’s okay.”
Maggie nodded as she handed it to him.
But then Jack’s full attention was back on Arlene. And as she gazed up into the warmth of his whiskey-colored eyes, he whispered, “With this ring, I thee wed,” as he slipped it onto the ring finger of her left hand.
She laughed both from her surprise and from the power of the emotion that filled her.
“We don’t need to be in Vegas to start our lives together,” Jack told her. “We don’t even need to be together. You’re mine now, and Leenie, I’m
all
yours, and
when you come back, we’ll go and sign whatever papers need to be signed and filed. But that won’t change the fact that it starts right now. You and me. Forever.”
As Jack kissed Arlene again she heard the attendant from the airline say to Jules, “I’m sorry, sir, the flight is full, otherwise I’d be more than willing to bend the rules.”
“How about you let me go on and see if there’s someone willing to take the next flight to JFK,” Jules suggested, and Arlene knew he was trying to arrange a seat for Jack to go with her, at least as far as New York.
But Jack heard him, too, and he stopped kissing Arlene to say, “No, that’s okay. Thank you, Jules, but it’s best if I stay here.”
With Maggie. He didn’t say those words, but he didn’t have to. Arlene knew that whatever happened—what was it that Mike Milton had said? That line from that movie?
Come what may
…
Come what may, God help her, Jack would be there for Maggie, forever, too.
That vow he’d made may not have been legal, but it was real.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” the woman from the airline said, and she really was sorry. She actually had tears in her eyes. This was probably the most up-close-and-personal she’d ever been to the reality of a war that was being fought on the other side of the world.
Arlene picked up her carry-on bag, but then she dropped it so that she could hug Jules, and then Jack, and then Maggie one more time.
And then Jules was holding out her bag for her. She slipped its strap over her shoulder as she gave her boarding pass to the woman and started down the ramp. But she turned as she walked, to look back, one last time.
Jack had his arm around Maggie, and Jules was
standing solidly on her other side. “We’ll keep the home fires burning,” Jack called.
She nodded. “See you soon,” she said, and got on the plane.
E
PILOGUE
Sgt. Arlene Schroeder Lloyd received an honorable discharge from the Army in February 2009. She, Jack, Maggie, and three-year-old Ian live in Needham, Massachusetts, in a small house where they are joined several times a year by Jack’s sons Luke and Joey.
Jack recently sold his first novel, and has found some significant acclaim as a political blogger for a popular online news site. Arlene works part-time at a little bookstore five minutes from their home.
They are happy, but life is not without turmoil. Especially ever since Mike Milton joined the Marines.
He currently serves in Afghanistan.
And Maggie emails him every day, without fail.
C
HAPTER
O
NE
The tiny country of Tarafashir
A narrow portable stairway had been pushed up against the commercial airliner, and the metal pinged and shuddered under Sam Starrett’s boots as he squeezed his way down to the airport runway. He had his son, Ash, in one arm, Ash’s diaper bag over his shoulder, and not just one but two car seats in the other hand.
They were bulky and awkward, and it was all about getting a good grip—and having large enough hands.
Robin and Jules Cassidy were right behind him, wrestling with the third car seat along with a variety of the group’s carry-on bags. Then Sam’s wife, Alyssa, muscled down the two strollers they’d need for this months-long adventure, followed by Max and Gina Bhagat, who carried their freakishly polite three-year-old daughter, and their eight-month-old high-decibel soliloquist son, who was still bewailing the entire traveling team’s frustration, discomfort, and bitter disappointment.
This little multifamily outing had quickly turned into a misadventure when their first flight was delayed—nearly
six hours at the gate, and well over two on the tarmac, at J-Effing-K. As a result, they’d arrived in London at WTF o’clock, having missed their connecting flight, an event that had dominoed and created a need to take this latest several-hours-delayed flight which in
turn
had had a mild midair emergency with the electrical system, requiring that they land here, in the tiny country of Tarafashir, still a four-hour crapfest from their final destination.
Sam was well aware that there were definitely worse places to make an unplanned landing—Libya, Pakistan, Kazbekistan, to name a few. At least T-fashir was U.S.-friendly and safe, although mostly piss-poor. The government was a monarchy, and their leader a king who had, at one point, not just been a monk, but, according to legend, a
stoner
monk.
The country’s major exports in past decades had been marijuana and opium. And although there was a vaguely successful program in place in which farmers who replaced their crops with soybeans received sufficient food and medical care for their villages, it was clear to Sam, just from looking at the badly patched and pitted runway, that the also-promised modernization of the Tarafashir infrastructure had again been delayed.
Possibly because the entire country still had a raging case of the munchies.
“They’re holding our flight to Kabul. Gate one. It’s on the other side of the terminal,” Max Bhagat announced as he ended his phone call and slipped his cell into the pocket of his jeans before helping Gina juggle their two kids. Mikey, the eight-month-old, was usually as goofily, droolfully cheerful as Sam’s son, Ash.
Usually.
Today Mike had fussed and worried his way through the seemingly endless flight, needing all four parental hands to cope. His sister, Emma—age three-going-on-forty—had
been safely tucked in between her Uncle Robin and Uncle Jules. Emma had played for a while with one-year-old Ash—who’d gone into pissed mode, no doubt at Mikey’s stellar example, and who had decided he wouldn’t even
think
about napping unless he sat on Uncle Robin’s lap—until he’d finally fallen unconscious. Ash, that is, not Robin. At which point Em had no doubt spent the remaining hours of the flight discussing the socioeconomic ramifications of
The Cat in the Hat
with her patient pseudo-uncles.
The little girl was freakishly smart, impossibly polite and well-behaved, and way too somber for her own good. Plus, she was a tiny sponge—always,
always
watching and listening to the grown-ups around her.
“Shit.” Jules now swore at Max’s news about the flight to Kabul, not quite under his breath. He then made a face at Emma, whose brown eyes had become even bigger at his slip.
Sam found that to be one of the biggest discomforts of parenting—the inability to say
shit
in times like these, when a pungent and heartfelt
shit
was clearly needed.
In the past well-over-twenty-four-hours of nonstop, cranky-child-inducing, slow-mo travel,
this
was the one flight they could’ve stood to miss.
But as Emma giggled at the silly face Jules made, Sam made a note and filed it under
useful information
. The fact that Emma was capable of smiling, let alone giggling, was good to know.
Of course, Uncle Jules was special.
And not just because he was an FBI agent, or because he was fabulous and gay-married to a movie star.
Jules was … Jules. One of a kind.
“It’s all right, babe,” Robin murmured, giving his husband a smile and a nudge with his shoulder. “We
always know this might happen, anytime we travel. And it’s good. You need to get there.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jules muttered back on a sigh. “I just wanted … at least to be able to say goodbye properly.”
“We got time,” Sam pointed out. “They’re holding the flight.”
Max’s announcement
was
good news in the big-picture sense—and not entirely unexpected considering that Max, a high-level FBI agent, had the President’s private number among his list of contacts on his phone.
Sam turned to look at Alyssa, who took Ash from his arms.
“Mommy wants to say a bad word, too,” she told their son, who gave her a drooly smile as he burbled some of his near-perpetual joy back at her, unaware of his own impending misfortune.
Alyssa looked back at Sam then, and he could see her unhappiness. This was the hardest part—she hated this kind of separation. She preferred working
with
him, but she knew damn well that they couldn’t both go out into dangerous, terrorist-filled countries. Not together. Not anymore. Because of Ash.