“Right. Right. I was thinking if you could visit with her … But look. Just, you’ll be getting some official communication about how to meet him at Walter Reed. I’m not qualified really to be making this—”

“Mary, I’m worried about you. It’s … you … for you, this isn’t exactly new. It’s—I’m worried for you.”

That wasn’t right. How strange of Clara.

“I’m fine—really, I am.”

“You’re not fine. You should talk to someone.”

There it was. The advice she always got.

“I probably will. Listen, they’re telling me time’s up here.”

She hated to lie, but not too much.

“Mary, thank you. Thank you for making this call.”

“Frank wanted me to.”

“He’d told me that,” Clara said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, he asked me who it was I’d like to hear from. And I said you.” That surprised. Her thinking stopped cold. Finally, she said, “Clara, you know my e-mail, right?”

“It’s on the refrigerator.”

“Well, you know how to find me, then. If you need, you know, anything.” What could she give her that she needed? She would have liked to say something more true, something perhaps about having no idea Clara felt close to her—in any way.

“I’m honored, Clara.” That was military talk. What a mistake.

“Oh, Mary,” Clara started to cry.

Mary tried one more time. “I’m moved, more the word—you—that you wanted me to be the one to call.”

“Mary, you promise me you’ll talk to someone.”

Well, at least Clara said that again. That made it easier to say her goodbye.

12.   HIDDEN IN THE BARROW

All day and all night, the snow melted. Bagram had become rivers. The largest were slush. Mud spread everywhere, and at once. The sound of it clasping and unclasping her boots as she tried to move through it in the early morning made Mary tense. She could see that a grouping of Gators, their drivers attempting to lay down planks to make camp passable, had succeeded only in getting mired. A smaller truck brought to pull them out got stuck too. The tank sent to save them waited. Beside it was a sludged congregation of logistics officers and Afghan civilians arguing with an army sergeant who had slept with all three of Purdue’s reservist friends. She watched him take the opportunity to grin at her, but then he looked as if he remembered the latest news about her. He changed from giving off that he was planning to wink at her and exuded a smoldering, sad seriousness that seemed designed to burrow through her toward the place where consolation could lead to desperado fucking. She looked down, furious and tempted and then mad at herself about that, then aggravated and clumsy in the silt slickness; when she looked up again, the group was out of shouting range.