Read To Have and to Hold for Free Online

also adversely affect short-term memory coding—”
    “No, thank you,” Hunter said.
    “Figured you’d say that. Okay, then. I’m here if there are questions I can answer,” the doctor said. “And I’d like to see you again, regardless, in a couple of weeks, just to repeat a few of the tests.”
    Hunter nodded.
    “I’ll refer you to a psychotherapist who specializes in these issues—but he’d be the first man to tell you that he’s not a miracle worker. He doesn’t purport to bring back lost memories, only to deal with the emotions around the loss. He’ll tell you to get lots of sleep, take it easy, eat well, exercise, and keep things as ‘normal’ as possible.”
    Driving home—at least his old Subaru wagon felt familiar, down to its rattles and shakes—it occurred to Hunter that “normal” was not at all a clear concept in this case. He couldn’t exactly head back to Afghanistan and hang with his buddies, who, according to Carmichael, had another few weeks to go before they’d wind down their deployment and fly home. And having Trina in his guest room, trying valiantly
not
to look like a puppy that had been smacked with a newspaper, wasn’t normal, either.
    Except that for Clara, having Trina around was the very
definition
of normal. He’d seen a demonstration of that last night when he’d tucked her into bed.
    “Why are you making them leave?”
    When Clara had been little, coming home had followed two different patterns. Sometimes the returning parent was the conquering hero, and the parent who’d stayed behind and done all the dirty work got thrown over for the missing parent as soon as he or she walked through the door.
    And then there was this pattern, which he thought of as the cat-pooping-in-your-suitcase phenomenon. He’d had a childhood pet that had punished them on returns from family vacations by performing exactly that action.
    Clara was mad. Poop-in-his-suitcase mad. And honestly, he couldn’t blame her. It was bad enough that he came and went without—in a child’s world—logic. But this time, he’d fucked things up worse, by coming home and blowing up a world she’d come to count on.
    “Everything was fine before you left! We were all friends. Weren’t we?”
    “I’m not making them leave,” he said, as gently as he could. He almost said, “They’re leaving because they want to leave.” But that wouldn’t be fair—not to Trina, whose hand was being forced, nor to Clara, who might shift her anger, unjustly, to Trina.
    And then this morning, he’d poured shredded wheat for Clara, and she’d said, in that same tight tone, “I hate shredded wheat,” and he’d felt something squeeze, hard, in his chest. He didn’t know what she liked and disliked, how her needs had changed. What pet names and gestures of affection she’d decided she was too old for.
    But there was a difference between not knowing and not even knowing what you didn’t know. And somewhere in that gap was—terror.
    Trina had come into the kitchen, wearing a butt-hugging pair of gray sweatpants and a Seattle Grizzlies T-shirt. She’d somehow instantly read the situation, and before he’d even been able to react, she’d produced a plastic container of granola and poured some in Clara’s bowl, adding rice milk—which was another new thing. Then she set about putting away the dishes in the dishwasher, as if—
    As if she lived there.
Jesus
.
    And yet, he’d been more relieved than freaked out. So relieved he’d flashed her a smile of gratitude, and she’d given him a small, shy one back.
    Having her around was weird, yeah, but it was the way Clara had lived for the last year, and kicking Trina and Phoebe out might be really hard on his daughter. Plus, he’d missed a substantial chunk of Clara’s life. Trina knew all kinds of things about his daughter that he didn’t—not just what she ate for breakfast, but what she’d want to pack in her lunch when school started. What activities she