YOU’RE NOT GOING to give your mother a hug?” Jeanine said.
Becca couldn’t move. The shock of seeing Ben had not yet worn off, and now here was her mother, who was supposed to be a few hundred miles to the northeast gardening organic vegetables in the name of Jesus.
“Are you a hunk of rock?” Jeanine asked. Becca put her arms around her mother, but the older woman’s hands on her were feathery and noncommittal. “What in God’s name are you doing here?” She pulled away from her daughter.
Becca was saved from having to explain herself by Elaine, who emerged from the departing crowd. The middle-aged women eyed each other, one buxom, one lean, and both equally guarded. The air was charged, crackling, as if two opposing forces were about to collide.
“So you’re Jeanine,” Elaine said with none of her typical good nature. Her mouth was cinched tight.
“Who are you?” Jeanine looked Elaine up and down with unchristian disdain.
Elaine seemed shocked. She and Becca exchanged glances. “That’s Elaine, Dad’s girlfriend,” Becca said.
“Girlfriend?” Jeanine snickered. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her dress pocket, poorly affecting nonchalance.
“Of five years,” Elaine said, smiling.
As her mother lit up, Becca did the math. Five years meant that King had taken up with Elaine shortly after her mother had kicked him out. Jeanine must have realized the same thing just then, because a small fissure of hurt cracked open in her face.
“So that was Ben,” Elaine said, her eyes softening. “He’s handsome.”
“I suppose you’re in support of all this,” Jeanine said to Elaine, picking up on a conversation they hadn’t been having.
“I’m in support of King finding peace of mind,” Elaine said. “However he needs to.”
“Despite it being a huge mistake.”
“You’re here to bring him to Jesus, is that right?” Elaine shook her head. “King said you might show up and try to save some souls.”
“My sisters and I came here to save him, it’s true,” Jeanine said. “But that has nothing to do with Jesus.”
“Says the missionary.”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you. I know my own purpose.”
Maybe it was because Becca had not seen her mother in a long while, but suddenly she recognized herself in Jeanine’s stance, heard her own voice in her mother’s combative tone.
How much Jeanine had taught her, Becca realized now. How unfortunately alike they were.
“I know I never cared much for your husband, Becca—”
“You’ve never even met him!”
“But,” Jeanine went on, ignoring her daughter’s protest, “at least he had the selflessness to take King’s place.” And then Becca heard her mother murmur something that sounded like Better your man than mine. But that didn’t seem right.
“You heard the CO,” Elaine said to Jeanine. “King has to complete the final test on his own. He’s going to participate and he’s going to win.”
“We’ll see about that.” Jeanine threw her half-smoked cigarette on the ground and crushed it with her shoe.
King was the infirmary’s only occupant. Laid out on one of the narrow beds, he looked like a giant in a child’s room. Jeanine sat beside him in a wooden chair, hunched over, her face close to his. Becca stood alone in the doorway, failing to make sense of the scene before her. Jeanine had been so relieved to get rid of King all those years ago. So why was she now smoothing his blanket and running her fingers across his forehead? What was she doing here, watching over him?
Over the years, Becca had periodically asked her mother about King’s leaving. What had finally caused the breakup?
It’s not about any single thing that happened, Jeanine would say. It’s about who your father is and what he is—and is not—willing to do for us. It’s about where his allegiances lie.
Now that Reno had filled in many of the gaps in Becca’s parents’ history, the question of allegiance took on new meaning. Perhaps the trouble between her mother and father was more about this place than the army. But Jeanine had known that King would run straight to Kleos when the marriage fell apart. So why, all these years later, was she suddenly trying to pull King back out?