“We don’t even have three months,” Kate lamented. “Who’s going to volunteer to step into this mess? The 5k, the parade, the carnival, the fireworks. We’re screwed.”

The Gloria That Left Glenn After the First Time would be involved. She’d be a volunteer, a doer, an organizer. She’d champion causes and lend her resources to support the community at large. She’d be on boards and hosting functions, making a difference.

Gloria rose as if pulled by puppet strings. “I’ll do it,” she announced loudly.

Conversation in the diner came to a screeching halt.

Sophie’s bite of sandwich fell out of her mouth and onto her plate.

17

He had sand in every fucking crevice. To top it off, the sand was mingling with the sweat that flowed from a bottomless, salty well, creating a kind of exfoliating slurry that Aldo knew from experience would take more than a week’s worth of showers to get rid of.

Afghanistan. Seven thousand miles from Benevolence. From his house. From his mother—that part wasn’t so bad. His job and his friends. The rocky landscape bounced heat back off the ground like a convection oven, cooking everything on its surface. He’d get used to it—mostly. He always did. But as a first lieutenant, part of his duty was to help his unit acclimate.

This stony slab of desert was about as far as you could get from the comforts of the U.S. Not only was it a combat theater with swarms of insurgents hoping to at least get a shot at any foreign “interloper,” it was also hot as balls and riddled with opium, and the education level peaked around first grade.

But over the years, he’d learned to embrace the discomfort. It made going home all the sweeter.

He pushed through the tent flap and angled himself toward his cot. It was a cozy setup with fourteen other soldiers crammed under the musty canvas.

“Hey, LT,” Private First Class Scotty Kettle greeted him, opening one eye on the cot next to Aldo’s. He was stripped down to briefs with a battery-operated fan blowing on his head. At nineteen, fresh out of high school, it was the kid’s first deployment.

Aldo grunted a greeting and toed off his boots. He yanked the blanket back on his own cot. He always checked for spiders. After his first encounter with a camel spider the size of a dinner plate, well, he never took any chances.

He stripped off his shirt and pants and flopped face down on his spider-free bed.

He’d been up for thirty hours straight, starting with a stint in the southern guard tower, flowing into a briefing with the base’s Afghan interpreters, and ending with a briefing and firearms training with the Afghan National Security Forces.