Shattered by Joann Ross Page B

stop-loss,” Kirby guessed.
    The involuntary extension of a service member’s active duty service under the enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service date was becoming all too common.
    “Just the opposite. Treating soldiers was the greatest honor I’d ever had in my life. So, I checked around and managed to hook up with the 5th MASH unit, which became a forward operating clinic in Iraq.”
    “That probably didn’t go over real well at home,” Kirby guessed.
    “Not well at all,” Rachel agreed. There was another long moment of silence as she seemed lost in thought. “Looking back on it, although Roger blamed the problems on my service, he’d never honestly signed on to our marriage contract.”
    “He skipped the part about ‘for better or worse’?”
    “Well, that, too. But he also ignored the clause about infidelity being a deal-breaker. Even before I enlisted.” She shook her head. “Our marriage was pretty much over when I shipped out. The only reason I didn’t file for a divorce was that I knew my parents would be upset.”
    “But you were a grown woman. A doctor. And a soldier. It seems they’d trust your decision.”
    “You’d think so. And perhaps they would have. But I would’ve been the first divorce in our family. Ever.”
    “I can see how that would’ve been tough,” Kirby agreed.
    Having already witnessed the doctor’s conciliatory nature, she could see how Rachel would have been reluctant to upset her parents with her marital problems when they were already worried about her surviving a war.
    “Although they didn’t say it, I knew they were concerned about their little girl going into battle,” Rachel said, confirming Kirby’s guess. “So I decided to wait until I got home.”
    “Makes sense. Besides, it’s not as if you were going to find someone else while you were deployed.”
    Another silence.
    Even longer than the others.
    “Oh, wow. You did, didn’t you?”
    Okay, so it was prying. But Rachel had brought the subject up.
    “I fell in love.” Rachel dragged a hand through her shoulder-length hair she usually wore in a braid, but had left loose for tonight’s dinner party. “For, I realized, the first time in my life. It was both the best and worst time of my life.”
    “Why? Was he married, too?”
    “No.” She shook her head. “He’s an unrelentingly honorable man. Unlike me, he never would have committed adultery.”
    “Excuse me. But sleeping with a married woman doesn’t exactly make him a saint,” Kirby pointed out. “Not that I want to sound at all judgmental, because you’d already said your marriage was essentially over, but . . .”
    “He didn’t know I was married.”
    “What?”
    “He didn’t know,” Rachel repeated. “Because I didn’t tell him.”
    Since she hadn’t exactly been a font of personal information these past months, Kirby could believe she’d kept her secret from her love. And understand why.
    “Because you wanted him,” she guessed. “And you knew your husband, who might be a husband in name only by that time, would’ve presented an obstacle.”
    “A huge one.” Another sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe Michael—that was his name—would have slept with me, anyway, but I didn’t want to risk him feeling the need to be noble. Later, after we’d fallen in love, I kept trying to tell him, but I was a coward.”
    “There’s not a cowardly cell in your body.”
    “We’re all afraid of different things,” Rachel said. “Anyway, I’d just decided to tell him when I received word my father had been diagnosed with cancer.”
    This was not where Kirby had expected the story to be headed. “I’m sorry.”
    “So was I. Fortunately, he didn’t die. But it was tough going for a long while. The doctors had originally given him a year, maybe two, tops, to live.
    “Perhaps it was because I was far from home, working in an unbelievably stressful environment after I’d moved to the