LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

Second Lieutenant Sarah McIntire sat in her darkened bedroom and stared at the wall. She absentmindedly reached up with her right hand and lightly rubbed her shoulder, which was still in a sling. The music she was listening to was as dark as her room, and her thoughts. The Moody Blues had been one of Jack’s favorites, and Sarah now found that she couldn’t get enough, particularly of the dark melody emanating from the small speakers in the corner. “Nights in White Satin,” their most haunting song, sank deep into Sarah’s soul and burned itself into her psyche.

A single tear built in her left eye and then slowly traveled down her cheek as she absently wiped it away. She was still weak from the bullet she had taken in the battle for the sunken city of Atlantis, and she knew that because of losing Jack, her recovery was lagging.

The door opened and her mother, not hesitating as she had done the past week, stepped inside, flipping on the light switch. Her next move made Sarah wake up as the stereo was turned off abruptly.

“From what you told me of this fella Jack, I don’t think he would care for you sittin’ here in the dark, moping around and feeling sorry for yourself. You need to get up and work some of this despair out of your system.”

Sarah looked up at her mother. The woman was almost an older version of Sarah herself. Short at five feet, and with the same dark hair, only eight inches longer. She was thin and had none of the Arkansas homemaker demeanor about her. She faced her daughter with hands on hips and a frown on her pretty face.

“You tell me, is this any way for an officer in the army to act? I’m sure soldiers have lost friends before. Are you something special—the rules don’t apply to you?”

Sarah looked from her mother to the far wall of her room, which hadn’t changed one bit since she left home after joining the army six years before.

“Did it hurt you when Daddy left us?” Sarah asked, not able to look into her mother’s eyes.

Becky McIntire half-smiled, sad attempt though it was, and then sat on the edge of Sarah’s small bed.

“Oh, I hurt something fierce. Having you was what kept me from straying from the course of your upbringing. Without you, I doubt I would have been much good to myself. You were all I had.” She smiled and touched her daughter’s leg. “But you? Why, your letters to me tell of the people you work with, the way they all respect you, and the way you explained Jack in those letters, well, let’s just say he didn’t leave you like your daddy left me, honey. He was taken—and that is a world of difference. You know the folks you work with are hurtin’ too. Maybe they need you back there at your base—just maybe they need help from you to make sense of this. You go on and hurt, but sooner or later you’re going to get up out of that chair and do what your colonel expects of you.”

“And what is that, Mother?” Sarah asked, knowing her mom’s humor was about to be exposed for the first time in the week she had been home.

“To get your ass out into my garden and do some weeding, of course! Or get on a plane and go back to work. They need you more than I do.”

For the first time since she awoke to find Jack Collins gone from her life, Sarah smiled, and then cried hard with her head in her mother’s lap.

The next morning, Sarah boarded a plane bound for McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. She needed the men and women there because now she knew she could never heal without them. Second Lieutenant Sarah McIntire, with her arm still in a sling, was going home to heal among her friends at the Event Group.