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wrestled with the baby in her arms. Her biceps had grown an inch since
giving birth.
“I know,” he said. “But you have nothing to worry about. I’m with
the best men I could imagine being with.” He leaned back, allowing his
family to see the two sleeping soldiers in the webcam. “I take care of
them, and they take care of me.”
“Yeah,” Tristan said sarcastically. “It looks like they’re working
hard watching your back.”
“Hey,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “This is only the second
day we’ve had off since we’ve been here. Cut ‘em some slack. I’m going
to go eat Christmas dinner soon and come back and sleep myself. We’ll
be back out and at it again tomorrow.”
“Daddy,” Hailey said. “I hope Santa Claus gives me my wish.”
“What’s that honey?” he said, wondering if he’d even know what
toy she was talking about when she named it.
“I saw him at the mall last week. I told him I wanted to see you
for Christmas.”
“Well, you’ll see me on Skype tomorrow,” he said. “That’ll have to
work for now. But I promise honey, you’ll see me again next Christmas.
I promise.”
“I hope so Daddy.”
“Ok,” Tristan said. “This little guy is getting heavy and somebody
has to get to bed so Santa Claus can come.” She looked down at Hailey,
one eyebrow raised.
“Ok, guys,” he said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow if I can. Remember.
Never worry if I don’t call when I’m supposed to. You know that we get
stuck out on the road sometimes, or the net goes out and it takes ‘em a
couple days to get it back up.” This was another lie. The net did go out
regularly, and for extended periods of time, but it was intentional. When
someone from the base was killed, they blacked out the net so that the
DoD could notify the family and prevent them from learning about it on
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