Wednesday, September 14, 7:45 p.m. EDT

Washington, DC

“I’ll let them know. . . . Love you too.”

Tara ended the call and set the handset on the kitchen counter. Riley could see just a hint of aggravation on her face, but she quickly hid it behind a smile.

“Scott says to apologize and that he’ll be home in about ten minutes.”

“No problem. This way we get you all to ourselves. Right, Skeet?”

Riley turned to get an affirmation, but Skeeter never heard him. He was too engrossed in the book he was reading. The best Riley could figure out, it was about this caterpillar that just kept eating everything in sight until he made himself sick. It was Skeet’s fourth time through, and he seemed to still be as fascinated with the story as baby James, who was nestled snugly in the crook of his massive dark arm.

“A salami? A lollipop? A cherry pie? That’s nothing for a silly caterpillar to be eating,” Skeeter’s deep voice softly rumbled across the room like the tremble of a thunderstorm heard from miles away.

“Can’t get enough of seeing that,” Tara said, moving up to where Riley was seated on a stool.

“Too cool,” Riley agreed. “Reminds me of when we were in New York after the attack. We actually started something called Uncle Skeeter’s Story Time, and kids from all over the refugee camp would come running each afternoon at 3:00. There would always be a big clamor over who got to sit on his lap while he read. Finally, Skeet would lift two kids out—never the same ones twice—and drop them on his legs. He’d put his arms around them, and they’d hold the book while he read—turning it to show the pictures when Skeet’d tell them to.

“It was an amazing thing to watch these kids whose lives had totally fallen apart laugh and cheer and dance around, even if just for fifteen or twenty minutes. It truly was remarkable. . . .”

Riley’s voice trailed off as his mind drifted back to those terrible days. So much death, so much sorrow, so much hopelessness, so many tears. The faces of the victims—men, women, children, old, young, dead, alive, somewhere in between, dirty, bloodied, crushed—still visited him in his dreams.

The sound of a refrigerator closing snapped Riley back to the here and now. He saw that Tara had moved away from him and was laying out ingredients on the counter—onion, green pepper, olives, pepperoni, pineapple, cheese.

“Sorry, I kind of lost myself there for a minute,” Riley said, embarrassed.

Tara smiled. “Occupational hazard. Scott does the same thing.”

Riley took a knife and a green pepper and began cutting. “What about you? You spent enough years in CTD.”

“True, but I was never ops. I read about the things you guys did, but I never actually saw them.”

“You ever regret that?”

“Are you kidding? I like being able to close my eyes at night without seeing whatever it is you guys see.”

Riley smiled at Tara, but he knew his smile was hollow. He turned his head back to the cutting board. “You know, right off the top of my head I can think of about twenty-nine other topics of conversation that would be both cheerier and more interesting.”

“Hear, hear,” Tara said, dumping a can of olives into a bowl, then popping one into her mouth. “Let’s talk about football.”

Riley looked up to confront Tara’s laughing face. “You know, that wasn’t even nice.”

“Here, help me out,” she said, tossing him a jar of pizza sauce.

Riley quickly dropped the knife and caught the jar. He was thrilled when he had seen that they were going to make homemade pizzas tonight. Not because it was necessarily his favorite meal, but because it was fun, simple, and best of all, cheap.

In the past, whenever Riley and Skeeter had come over for dinner, Tara had always felt like she had to make a big production of it. The recipes would be intricate; the ingredients would be expensive; the china would be gleaming. Tara would spend most of the night scrambling to make everything perfect, and Scott would become more and more subdued.

“I wonder what was up with Scott tonight,” Riley had said to Skeeter a few weeks ago on their way home from a dinner that probably could have earned Tara Michelin stars.

“It’s the money,” Skeet said.

“What money?”

“Think about how much jing they laid out making that dinner.”

A wave of shame and anger came over Riley. How could I have missed it? I’m such an idiot! Living in my world of way too much, I keep forgetting the struggles of those just getting by. Since Tara stopped working, they’re down to one salary in the household—and a government one at that.

“Dude, you’re awesome. I’m calling Scott and demanding he let us pay for the dinner tonight.”

He pulled his phone from his pocket, but before he could dial Skeeter snatched the phone from his hand.

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m not?”

“You’re not. Come on, Pach, you’re not really this clueless, are you?”

“No,” Riley responded defensively. What the heck is Skeet getting at? Why can’t I just pay for the stupid meal—I’ll even throw in a little extra to help out. “But let’s just say—for argument’s sake only—I was. What would you tell this hypothetically clueless, pretend Riley was the reason for not paying for dinner?”

“Because you’d embarrass them—”

“You mean, hypothetically clueless, pretend Riley would embarrass them,” Riley corrected.

“And you’re not going to tell them to stop making expensive dinners because of their financial situation either.”

“I’m not? I mean, he’s not? Then what, pray tell, is he going to do?”

Refusing to play along, Skeeter said, “You’re going to tell them that you don’t like the fact that Tara is always running around and missing the company. You spend your life eating fancy meals, and you’d just like some good, old-fashioned, everyday, real-people food.”

“Ahhh, that would probably seem like a really good plan to hypothetically clueless, pretend Riley.”

So here they were tonight, eating homemade pizzas with packaged meats, jarred sauce, and premade, store-bought dough. And Riley couldn’t be happier.

Riley loosened the lid from the jar and slid it back across the counter to Tara.

“Thank you, kind sir.”

“It’s good to have Captain America around the house.”

“Tru dat,” Scott said as he walked from the mudroom into the kitchen. “What up, Cap?”

Riley leaped up, and they did the manly one hand shaking, one hand double-clapping the back thing. Scott next went to Tara, gave her a kiss, and whispered something to her that made her smile and give him one more kiss.

Then he moved toward Skeet and James. Holding out his arms, he said, “How’s daddy’s big man?”

Skeeter looked up from the book and said, “You best be talking to me, because you ain’t getting the boy.”

James, who got a big smile when he saw his dad coming over, turned and laid his head on Skeet’s chest when he heard the man’s voice. Scott pulled up short.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” Riley said. “It’s like guys and the rumble of a Harley. You can’t explain why, but you could waste a whole day just sitting there listening to it.”

Somewhat mollified by Riley’s explanation, Scott leaned over and kissed James on the top of the head. To Skeeter he said, “You can have him now, but he’s not going home with you.”

“We’ll see,” Skeeter replied, turning his attention back to a new book, this one about a bear who was determined to stay awake until Christmas morning.

“You want to go get changed, honey?” Tara asked.

“Into what?”

“He’s got a point,” Riley said, knowing that for Scott getting changed from a day at the office meant changing from a black Ozzy T-shirt to a black Dio T-shirt.

“Well, then take the cheese and make yourself useful,” Tara said, tossing Scott a bag.

“So, did you have fun storming the castle?” Riley asked, grabbing a handful of veggies to spread around the first pizza.

“Well, I didn’t get shot today, so that’s a plus.”

Tara punched him in the arm. “That’s not funny.”

“You guys got anything going on?”

“Mostly we’re just trying to figure out these attacks. They’re so random. We’ve got the ones that have already happened, and intel is going through the roof saying there’s more to come.”

“You know who it is?”

“On the surface, it’s just a bunch of homegrown hajjis. Guys pissed off—”

Tara elbowed him and nodded toward James.

Lowering his voice, Scott said, “Guys angry at America because they’re not able to make something of their lives, so they use their religion as an excuse to blow stuff up.”

“But it’s weird that it’s all happening at once, don’t you think?” Tara said. “For a while, nothing. Now, all of a sudden it’s all over the place.”

“That’s what’s been bugging me,” Scott said, sprinkling a final, thin layer of cheese over the first pizza. “There’s got to be some unifying factor.”

“Could they be distractions designed to draw your attention away from some major thing?” Riley asked.

“Funny, that’s what Khadi said.”

Riley stopped short, a pepperoni hovering over the second pizza. “Khadi? When did you talk to Khadi?”

As Scott and Tara exchanged glances, Riley heard Skeeter stop midsentence. A moment later, he softly started up again: “He stands with a stretch and a great big sigh. ‘I hope I can make it. I do want to try. . . .’”

“Scott?”

Scott laughed. “Dude, I’ve got the biggest mouth ever. I mean, ever! Remember that time when we were going to surprise Posada for his birthday? Remember that? I went off and—”

“Scott, when did you talk to Khadi?”

As quickly as the laughter started, it stopped. With venom in his voice, he said, “What, is there a crime in that? Are you going to start telling me who I can and can’t talk to?”

“Didn’t buy the laughing bit. I’m not buying the angry one either. Why can’t you just tell me when you talked to her?”

Scott sighed, beaten. “Because one question will lead to another, and I don’t know how much I can or should say.”

Scott was always so free with his information, so when he clammed up, Riley knew something big was going on.

“I’m not looking for you to betray any confidences. Just tell me this: is she doing okay?”

Again the glance to Tara. “She’s all right. Going through a bit of a tough spell.”

“Is there . . . I mean, you’d let me know if there was something I could do to help, right?”

“Of course.”

Stillness hung over the kitchen betrayed only by the steady movement of hands over pizzas and the low verbal rumble from Skeeter’s corner.

Without looking up from his work, Riley said, “Did she . . . ask . . . You know, next time you talk with her, tell her I said hey. Tell her I’d like to . . . Tell her I said hey.”

The rest of the night went great. The pizzas were great, the conversation was great, the obnoxious banter was great, the games of hearts after James went down were great. Scott was elated that Skeeter had decided to rejoin CTD, and for a while the two of them talked through logistics. Riley was thrilled that everything was working out so well for all of them. It was great . . . just great . . . absolutely, positively, flippin’ great.

And at 2:47 a.m., when he looked at the clock on his nightstand, he was still thinking about just how great everyone’s life was. Everyone’s except mine . . . and apparently Khadi’s. But I can’t help her. And she can’t help me. Because we’ve got this thing, this massive whatever-it-is between us that keeps us apart.

So I’ll just stay miserable, and she’ll just stay miserable, and together we’ll separately live out our miserable lives. And it’ll be great. It’ll be just great.