Chapter 1: The Long Drive North
"You are driving six hours for cake you made yourself?" Nico said through the car speakers.
"I am driving six hours for your promotion," I said. "The cake is coming because Mom does not trust a grocery store with family honor."
"Mom said that?"
"Mom said, and I quote, nobody in Jacksonville knows how to frost."
He laughed, and the sound filled the car somewhere north of Savannah. "She is not wrong, Jules. Last party here, the cake said Congradulations Staff Sargent."
"Did you eat it?"
"I ate three pieces. I have standards, they are just low."
I smiled. The cake sat in the passenger seat in a white bakery box tied with string, because I did not trust the lid. I had belted the seatbelt around it twice, and every time I changed lanes, I glanced over like it was a frosted passenger.
"What kind?" he asked.
"Lemon. Your favorite."
"Lemon has been my favorite since I was nine."
"I know what your favorite is, Nico."
"And Mom knows?"
"Mom thinks your favorite is chocolate."
"Do not tell her. She will drive down from Pittsburgh with a chocolate cake and a speech."
"Your secret is safe," I said. "I am good at secrets."
I said it lightly, the way we said true things in my family, by making them sound like jokes. My uniform hung in a garment bag behind my seat, the one I wore at Robins Air Force Base every day. I had packed a sundress, and nothing with rank on it. I never did, when the destination was family.
"So," he said, "you got away okay? Nobody needed you to file the important papers?"
"Something like that."
"Jules, I swear your office would burn down if you took a real vacation."
"It survived," I said. "It will survive until Monday."
"You ever get bored doing that all day? Communications office, forms, whatever it is?"
"Some days are busier than others."
"That is the saddest answer in the world."
He let it go. He always let it go. That was the deal we had never made: he did not push, and I did not have to lie outright. I answered around the edges, he joked around the edges, and the middle stayed empty.
Before I left Robins, Naomi Feld stood in my driveway and watched me load the cake.
"Tell me again," Naomi said, "why a major in the United States Air Force is hiding her rank from her own brother."
"I am not hiding," I said. "I just have not corrected him."
"You have had four years to correct him, Jules. Four. Years."
"I know how long it has been."
"Do you? You keep saying later, and later keeps not arriving."
Naomi was a major too, and the only person at Robins who talked to me like that. "When he pinned on staff sergeant, did you think, maybe today?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"And then Mom cried, and Dad kept touching the stripes, and it was his day."
"It can be his day and your truth at the same time."
"I will tell him," I said. "Later."
She looked at the garment bag, then at me. "You are stubborn about everything except this."
Back on the highway, Nico described the party. "It is the house. Some guys from the unit, Megan and Aaron might stop by, burgers, nothing fancy. Do not dress up."
"I am wearing a sundress."
"A sundress is dressing up for you," he said. "Last Christmas you wore a sweater with an actual hole, and Mom sewed it while you were still wearing it."
"Dad said it built character," I said.
"He is a retired steelworker, Jules. He says that about everything."
The road hummed under the tires. I thought about his first call after Sangin, years ago, when I could not tell him what those nights in the operations center had sounded like. I said, "I'm fine," and he said, "You sound fine," and we talked about the Steelers for twenty minutes. I had hidden behind that call ever since.
"You still there?" he said.
"I'm here."
"You went quiet."
"I do that when I am driving."
"Same thing, with you." He paused. "Thanks for coming. I know it is a long drive for a backyard party."
"It is not just a backyard party. You earned this, Nico."
"Listen to you, getting sincere at mile marker whatever."
"It will not happen again," I said. "Do not get used to it."
"Would not dream of it. Drive safe, Jules."
"I will."
He hung up, and the car got quiet. Beside me, the cake rode on, level and unharmed. I kept one hand on the wheel and reached over on a curve to steady the box, and I did what I always did. I held on.