A Song for Julia

always minefields,” I said.
    “Have you heard from Jack?”
    “No … not in about a week.”
    “If you do, please tell him—” She cut herself off, then said, “Tell him I love him, and I’m thinking about him, okay?”
    “I will.”
    “Did you open your present?” she asked.
    “Not yet. I kinda wanted to talk with you first.”
    “Well, open it, bonehead.”
    I grinned. It was weird. It seemed like it had been weeks since we’d had a casual conversation that wasn’t weighted with tension and emotion. “All right,” I said. I walked over to the tree and picked up the tiny box, which didn’t weigh more than an ounce.
    “Is it empty?” I asked.
    “Yes, I decided to give you two cubic inches of oxygen.”
    I rolled my eyes and tore open the wrapper. Then I noticed my mom looking in from the kitchen. Nosy. I turned my back, keeping the phone tucked between my ear and shoulder, as I opened the tiny box inside the wrapper.
    Inside the box was a tiny friendship bracelet … woven, with pink and white threads. It was worn … really worn. I wrinkled my eyebrows. It was the one I’d seen on her wrist a thousand times. I didn’t think she ever took it off.
    She’d been wearing it the day we met. And every day since. This … I was afraid to even ask what it meant.
    “Your friendship bracelet,” I said.
    She was breathing heavily at the opposite end of the phone line. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay—you have to promise you won’t think I’m weird.”
    “It’s a little late for that,” I replied.
    “Shut up,” she said. Then she went on. “Well … I used to make those when I was in middle school. Corporal Lewis brought me the kit back from the States when he’d gone home on leave. He was just considerate that way.”
    I grinned. She’d talked a lot about her Marine Corps bodyguard from those days.
    “Anyway, I made that one. But I didn’t really wear them, until after … after I hurt myself. And then … well, you’ve seen. I wear a thousand bracelets, to … to hide it. To hide me. And that one, I’ve worn every day since it happened. Until this week. It was part of my—part of my armor. But I don’t need it any more.”
    Jesus H. Christ . My eyes burned a little, and voice rough, I said, “Holy cow, Julia. That’s … that’s some gift.”
    “You don’t think I’m weird?”
    “Of course I think you’re weird,” I said. And then I went on, knowing that I shouldn’t, knowing that it was a mistake, but I did it anyway, because it was just true, and she had to know it. “That’s one of the reasons I love you.”
    She was silent, breathing at the other end of the phone line.
    “Oh, Christ, Julia. Don’t hang up on me. I’m sorry if I upset you by saying that.”
    She was still silent, and I’d have sworn she’d hung up on me if I couldn’t hear her breathing. Finally, she whispered, “Promise you won’t give up on me, Crank? At least not until I get home after the holidays? Please?”
    I sucked in a breath. Then I said, “I’ll never give up on you. Do you hear me? Never.”
    “Merry Christmas, Crank.”
    “Merry Christmas, Julia.”
    With a click, she hung up the phone. I put the phone away and stared at the bracelet. It was a little thing, the threads frayed and worn, the white threads permanently stained to gray. But it was part of her armor. I wondered if that meant she was going to let me through?
    It was too small to fit my wrist, by far. But I bet we could enlarge it somehow. I walked toward the kitchen, calling, “Mom? I need your help with something.”
    The next two minutes of my life will be engraved in my memory forever. As I walked toward the kitchen, someone knocked on the door. Thinking Tony was early, I veered off course, toward the front door, just as my mom came out of the kitchen. She was wearing Dad’s “World’s Greatest Mom” apron … which, of course, had once been hers. I opened the door and stepped back in shock.
    My mother gasped and covered her mouth.
    Two men, both of them in Army dress uniforms, stood on the porch. One had the stripes of a master sergeant; the other was a chaplain. A notification team? We weren’t at war yet, what could have happened? Was Dad okay? I started to panic.
    “Oh, God, please no,” my mother moaned. I grabbed her, because she had started to collapse.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

    I need a favor (Julia)
    I’ll never give up on you. Do you hear me? Never.
    I hung up the phone and sat there, his words