Sam at eighteen, the target pistol he’d given her as a gift.

“What kind of a gift is a gun?” Peter had asked. But Sam’s eyes had lit up when she’d opened the box, and she’d hugged him tight.

Sam as an ERD trainee, working twice as hard as anyone. So determined. So sure of what was right and what was wrong. So naively loyal. So patriotic.

What happened to you, Sam? What really happened in Bangkok?

He needed answers.

Chapter 11: Clouds on the Horizon

11

CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

Mid October

Sam almost opened herself to Jake three times that week. The first time was as she watched him work on the old truck, which had broken down again. She watched as he explained what he was doing to a curious Sarai, pointed out the parts and how they worked, handed her the wrench and showed her how to use it.

He’d make a great dad, Sam thought. But that night he was distracted and his mind felt troubled, his head buried in his slate dissecting the budget of the house, line items weighing on him like stones. She let the moment pass.

She decided again two days later, when little Kit fell from the tree he was climbing and his pain and shock lanced through all their minds, and somehow, even though she knew she was faster, Jake was there before she was, shushing Kit and sending soothing thoughts and gently probing the arm the boy had fallen on. She could feel Jake’s calm win the boy over, feel the fatherly awe Kit held Jake in, and it warmed her.

But that night, drunken village teenagers came to their gate and threw insults and stones and bottles. Sat pralat! they shouted. Monsters! You have monster children in there!

A bottle flew over the wall and crashed into one of the windows of the house, sending a spiderweb of cracks out. Jake winced. Sam’s anger rose, and she got up to go show these punks a lesson, but Jake put a hand on her arm.

“They’re just kids, Sunee. Just ignore them.”

Then she felt ashamed.

She decided a third time three nights later, while she waited for him to return from a supply run. She lay awake in the bed that she’d invited him into every night for weeks, and lost herself in the conjoined dream of the children, a riot of forms and shapes and thoughts and memories.

Sam drifted off to sleep, smiling, in love with these magical children, in love with her life, and maybe, maybe just a tiny bit in love with this man.

She woke two hours later. She was alone in the bed. Where was Jake?

She rose, pulled on an oversized shirt for modesty, and padded down to his room. The door was open. His bed hadn’t been slept in.