Ever After Read Free Page B

couple knives and handed one to Sally. “I need to remember that everyone isn’t an enemy. Just because my views are different from everyone else’s in Fallon.”
    “I know you think so, but you’re not that different.” Sally shrugged. “War’s complicated.” Sally washed her hands and dried them on a nearby towel. “We might be married to military guys, but we wonder, we question.” She reached for one of the loaves of bread and began slicing it. “We believe in the cause of the war in the Middle East, and we support our troops and the president. But we wouldn’t be breathing if we didn’t have concerns.” Something deep and sad filled her eyes. “Our husbands’ lives are at stake.”
    Lauren washed and dried her hands too and reached for one of the loaves of bread. She hadn’t thought about that. Even military people might not see things in entirely black and white. Something stirred in her heart, an unsettling thought that if she’d been wrong about the women she was sharing dinner with, maybe she’d been wrong about other aspects of the war. Maybe some of the things military information officers had told her hadn’t been so exaggerated or distorted after all. She ran the knife through her loaf and banished the thought. She could be wrong on some things. Tonight she was, and she was sorry. But she wasn’t wrong in her passion to see the war ended, to have the president admit that the loss of life and resources was all for naught and that nothing had been gained in the process.
    Sally finished slicing her loaf. She lifted her eyes to Lauren. “I’m a Christian.” She looked across the room at Becky and Ann. “We moved here from the Northwest. Most of the women I’ve met here, navy or married to navy, are Christians too. That defines them more than their politics.” She was quiet for a minute. “Seems that peace is a lot more about kindness and sacrifice than any kind of international political paradise.”
    Peace. There it was again. The idea that peace could come through more than one course of action. Shane had tried to convince her of that since they reunited just before Christmas, back in Illinois. Peace comes from the inside, he would tell her. Lauren wanted to believe it was true, but she couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. Sally was waiting for a response. Lauren moved the sliced bread from the cutting board to a wooden bowl. “Peace is complicated, I guess.” She kept her eyes on the bread. “Just like war.”
    “Hmm.” Sally added in her bread. “I guess.”
    Lauren wanted to let the subject go. Talking to Sally — to someone who didn’t see her as a freak of nature — was nice. If she stopped now, they could at least have the beginning of a friendship. But she couldn’t let it go. “What I want is a peace that’ll send our kids home where they belong.” Her tone was gentle, with a subtle pleading. Maybe if she explained herself well enough, they could be friends despite their fundamental differences. She sighed. “I keep thinking of all those young people who’ve lost their lives. That’s why I’m against the war.” Lauren looked over her shoulder at the chatty women in the dining room. “If any of you lost a husband or brother or daughter, you’d switch sides in a heartbeat, don’t you think, Sally?”
    “No.” The blonde woman covered Lauren’s hand with her own. She exuded patience and her eyes shone in a way that Lauren had seen before — with Shane and their daughter Emily. “That’s not how it works.”
    Something tightened in Lauren’s gut. She didn’t want to hear about patriotism and courage. Patriotic, why? Courageous over what? Sacrifice for whom? Dying for the sake of dying? Wasn’t that all any of them could say about a convoy of American kids being killed by a roadside bomb? Or being struck down by an insurgent sniper?
    Lauren sighed. “I’m sorry, Sally. I sort of have my mind made up on all that.” She smiled. “But tell me about the