Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Storms

“Blooming?” Kelley says. “Like a flower?” He pictures a rose or a peony on the back of his head.

“The tumor has tentacles, some of them far-reaching,” Dr. Cherith says. “It’s not resectable.”

Tentacles now, like a squid. Kelley prefers the former analogy.

“So you can’t operate?” Kelley says.

“No,” Dr. Cherith says.

“What can you do?”

“Well, radiation, certainly. That should shrink it. The chemo protocol for this particular kind of cancer is notoriously nasty and effective only twenty-five percent of the time.”

“Kind of like our new president-elect,” Kelley says.

Dr. Cherith smiles, but just barely. Honestly, Kelley is so confused and overwhelmed, he can’t remember who won the election.

“I’ll give you all the information about the chemo and you can make your own decision,” Dr. Cherith says. “For now, I suggest radiation, much like before-thirty days.”

“Just keep me alive as long as you can, Doc,” Kelley says. As soon as Mitzi arrived at Mass. General, she told Kelley what she’d been screaming about right before Kelley fell over. Another soldier found, reporting that half of his fellow soldiers were alive… and half dead.

“Bart?” Kelley asked. He’d wanted to ask if Bart’s specific fate had been decided, but he didn’t know how.

“They’re going to find him,” Mitzi says. “He’s coming home.”

Kelley had asked for Dr. Cherith to give him the diagnosis privately so he could decide how much to tell Mitzi and the kids. Everyone is consumed with thoughts of Bart. The AP reports on the recovered soldier, Private Jonathan Mackie, on Thursday night included his quote that half of his brothers-in-arms were killed by the Bely, but half remained alive. Kelley admires Mitzi’s certitude that Bart is alive, and as much as he would like to join her in this steadfast belief, he can’t seem to keep his mind from visiting the dark side. What if Bart was killed? What if Bart mouthed off or otherwise angered the Bely? This is certainly possible, but Kelley thinks back on everything Bart has gone through since he enlisted. The thirteen weeks of boot camp on Parris Island, where the drill instructors broke Bart down to nothing-he referred to himself only in the third person-then built him back up into a Marine. By his own account, he excelled at his PFT (physical fitness test), running three miles in twenty minutes, doing thirty-nine pull-ups and then seventy-two crunches in sixty seconds. His basic training culminated in the Crucible, a fifty-four-hour exercise during which he was allowed to sleep for only two hours and had to hike forty-two miles with obstacles. After boot camp came the Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Lejeune, where over the course of three months he learned skilled rifle shooting. Mitzi had initially had a hard time thinking about Bart handling weapons but that had been Bart’s favorite part of ITB. Every Marine is a rifleman, he said.

Bart had been trained by the best drill instructors, men and women far tougher than the enemy; he had learned the finest combat techniques. His body was strong, his mind stronger. He would have found a way to survive.

Kelley tells Mitzi that the cancer is back, now in his brain, and that the only treatment Dr. Cherith can recommend is thirty more days of radiation.

Her bottom lip quivers and then her chin drops. He kisses the part in her hair. She smells vaguely of cigarettes. She’s back at it. But under the circumstances, Kelley really can’t blame her.

“I’m going to beat it,” he says.

Mitzi says something he doesn’t hear. She’s weeping.

“What’s that?” he says. He rubs her shoulder.

“We,” she says.

As with all things related to events around Bart, Kelley expects a lull to follow. It may take weeks or even months for the Pentagon to move on the intelligence they received from Private Mackie. But a scant week later, the Monday following Christmas Stroll weekend-which Kelley passed quietly while Mitzi and Isabelle tended to the guests; no parties or celebrations this year-the phone at the inn rings. It’s four o’clock in the morning. Mitzi answers right away, as though she has been waiting up for the call, but she is trembling so badly, she hands the phone to Kelley.

Kelley clears his throat. “Hello?”

It’s Major Dominito, calling from Washington, DC. Navy Seal Team 6 was deployed and the major reports that they have recovered all of the missing Marines, alive and dead.

The major asks Kelley if he is in a place where he can receive news about his son.

Kelley pauses before he answers. He’s safe in bed with his wife. The inn is quiet; most of the Stroll guests checked out the day before. But if the major is calling to say that Bart is dead, then no-he is not in a place where he can receive that news. He will never be in a place where he can receive that news.

“Yes,” he whispers. He imagines the flower blooming or the squid sinking its tentacles into his brain. He will take this diagnosis, this cancer; he will take death. But please, he thinks, let Bart live.

“Your son, Private Bartholomew James Quinn, was one of the lucky ones,” the major says. “He’s alive.”

Kelley can’t answer; he is crying too hard. This is, of course, unspeakably cruel to Mitzi, who is vibrating like a live wire next to him.

“He’s alive,” Kelley says, and his voice cracks. Did she hear him? Did she understand him? “Our son is alive.”

Mitzi goes to wake Ava while Kelley calls Patrick, Kevin, and Margaret.

Bart is alive!

Thirty minutes later, Ava, Kevin, Isabelle, Genevieve, Mitzi, and Kelley are all gathered in Bart’s bedroom, where the light has been on for twenty-three months, one week, and two days. They join hands and through his tears-they just won’t stop-Kelley says a prayer.

Thank you, God.

It’s the biggest news story of the year other than the election (including the election, if you ask Margaret), and it’s one she reports on somberly, out of respect for the seventeen American families who each lost a soldier and a son. Inside, Margaret feels not joy but relief. There but for the grace of God go I.

Bart Quinn is alive. The troops have to undergo a medical evaluation at Ramstein and then a ten-day debriefing. Even so, Bart should be home by Christmas Eve-in time for Kevin’s wedding.

It’s a Christmas miracle, sent especially for Kelley, who is sick again, sicker, Margaret suspects, than he’s letting on. If everything goes according to plan, he will see his son on Christmas.

By anyone’s standards, Mitzi is a Christmas person. But this year, she goes nuts, bonkers, off the reservation, completely and insanely all out in decorating for Jesus’s birth.

It’s not just for Bart, she says. It’s for everybody celebrating Bart’s return. The entire family! Plus, Kevin and Isabelle are getting married, and the Beaulieus are coming all the way from France!

Bart is in Germany, although they’ve all talked to him on the phone and done video chats. His cheekbone was broken, the skin punctured; he has bruises and bandages; but still, it is Bart, Ava’s baby brother, and when the family sees him for the first time, they all blubber while Bart waits with no expression on his broken face. His head is shaved; all of the surviving soldiers have lice, scabies, ringworm, and dysentery. Bart has lost sixteen pounds, which is far less than most.

They aren’t allowed to ask him any questions about what happened. Not yet. So mostly the conversations are Ava, Mitzi, and Kelley filling Bart in on all the family news since he’s been gone. They do not, however, say anything about Mitzi’s affair with George the Santa Claus and her lost year in Lenox, nor do they tell him about Kelley’s cancer, although nearly the first thing he says is “Geez, Dad, you look worse than I do.”