10
HALF A WORLD AWAY, THE MUFFLED BOOMS OF artillery training at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, sounded in the distance. Valerie Chapman walked out her driveway to the mailbox. Her neighbor saw her and came over to say good morning. He was ex-military; everybody in the neighborhood seemed to have something to do with the service, past or present. The neighbor knew and loved Chappy. And Val was like a daughter. He glanced at her and commented, “You look so somber.”
She felt somber, and she was embarrassed and guilty for her feeling. If she were to put a name to it, she thought she knew that something bad had happened to John. She was not superstitious, and she tried to banish the thought. It kept returning, twisting and turning the most innocuous events into shadowy proof that her fear was founded.
The visit of her mother-in-law, Terry Giaccone, who was about to arrive on Val's doorstep from Connecticut for the weekend, was a sign. She had visited Fayetteville twice before, and Val wondered if this time she had an ulterior motive. At work, someone remarked that she looked different. Val was a home nurse, and she visited a patient. She drove home after picking up the girls from school and prepared for her mother-in-law's arrival, picking up the house, doing what daughters-in-law do when their husband's mother is about to come to stay.
She had called John's squadron at the JSOC compound at Ft. Bragg in the morning. She rarely did that. She was calling to ask if they could give her a new address to send packages to. She was given an APO address, and before hanging up she asked, “Hey, by the way, have you heard from any of the guys? Are they doing OK? Are they safe?”
“Yeah, everybody's cool,” she was told.
In the evening, she caught the briefings on TV, whatever was being said about Operation Anaconda and a mention of special operations troops being in a fight. She was up late with the girls, and they were about to call it a day—the girls had to get up early for school, and Val had her job. The latest news she heard from Afghanistan, a number of special operations troops had died. She said to Terry, “Oh, my gosh. I wonder if they're any of the guys I know?”
She assumed that the military already had notified the next of kin, not thinking about time zones far away. Terry went to bed, and the girls were sleepy. Usually this was the hour when John took over, reading to them, tucking them in, and turning out the lights. She turned off the TV, and she was walking down the hall. She heard a knock on the door—it was around 9:30. She thought, Who the hell's at my door at this time of night?
She looked out the window. She thought, Well, of course.