Page 5 of Head Room

And — back to Tullie and the café — her niece was one of Penny’s sources.

“May we have the table in the corner?”

Tullie blinked at me, probably thinking it could sit five or six.But this was well past what passed as the lunch rush, so she wasn’t missing out on the prospect of more tips.“Sure.”

I ordered on our way to the table — one less interruption we’d have, one less opportunity for Tullie to overhear anything and share it with Penny.

“How do you know Frank Jardos?”I deliberately made my opening question to the colonel present tense.

He knew it was deliberate, too, but he still relaxed a fraction of an inch.

“He was sergeant for my first command.Years ago.Crusty, experienced, wily.He didn’t precisely take me under his wing, that’s way too soft.More like knocked me around enough to make me stagger, but didn’t let me fall — all while sayingYes, sir!like he meant it.Set my teeth on edge from the start.I wanted to battle it out, but there was never anything overt enough to battle over.”

He shook his head at memories.

“My wife saw it first.Said he was rocking the boat on purpose to force me to get my sea legs before we were out on the ocean.”His mouth quirked.“I wanted to drown him.Even after we were deployed and I started recognizing why I’d needed to know what he’d forced me to learn.”

He fell silent.Memories playing behind his dark, protective eyes.

Most times, I’d let the silence extend to see where the memories brought him as a reentry to the present.It wouldn’t tell me details of the gap, but could sketch a thread spanning the silence.

But Tullie arrived with my BLT and coleslaw, interrupting his reverie.

So, I went for direct.After all, the man had a plane to catch.Besides, I had a sandwich to eat and getting him to talk would give me time for that.

“That relationship changed at some point.”

CHAPTER THREE

“Yes,” he said.“My wife had our first baby while I was deployed—”

What was the proper response to that?

Sorry you weren’t there?

Congratulations, but sorry you weren’t there?

How did she cope?How did you?

He spared me having to decide by talking on.

“—and it was a difficult birth.She was okay, our daughter was okay.But Yelena required a recovery she — we — hadn’t counted on.Her family came to help, but they had to go back to their lives.I was on the other side of the world.What got her through was a woman on base named Irene Jardos.Sergeant Frank Jardos’ wife.

“She had nursing experience and beyond that, she was one of those women who...knew.Gave Yelena the support she needed and room to grow her own confidence.”His face twisted.Possibly toward the start of a grin, but he rubbed his palm over his mouth and chin, masking the expression.“Maybe her own version of what Jardos did for me, though I sure as hell would have preferred Irene’s methods to his.”

I smiled, then dug into the coleslaw to soften any discomfort he felt at sharing this.He was clearly not a man to spill his family’s history to a stranger.That he was doing so reinforced how strongly he felt about this situation.

“Army moved us on, moved them on.But they stayed in touch, Yelena and Irene.Got closer if anything.Didn’t realize that until after I got a new command, walk in, and there’s Frank Jardos, my first sergeant.We would have done fine, regardless — both professionals — but the wives had other ideas.Tried to talk Yelena out of it and learned later he did the same with Irene, but they insisted.Started with groups.Didn’t push us together.But the groups kept getting smaller.Until it was the four of us one night for a cookout in our backyard.The kids, playing and chasing fireflies.Mostly dark closing in.Relaxed.And we got talking.”

He twitched a shoulder.“Not like baring our souls or anything.”

“Of course not,” I agreed solemnly, before another bite of sandwich.

“Yeah, all right,” he acknowledged my mild jab.“But it wasn’t like you ladies do.Though if it hadn’t been for our wives...Not only insisting the families spent time together, but who they are as people.I came to hold Irene in the same regard my wife does.And he feels the same about my Yelena.”

“I’ve had promotions, more prestigious posts, but never a better working situation.Don’t expect I ever will.He said something similar.Said it was the one to go out on — he retired at the end.And I got to be the one who officially thanked him, on behalf of the Army and our nation, for his service.”

His voice remained almost uninflected, yet, darned if the insides of my eyelids didn’t prick with incipient tears.