I began going over the events surrounding the death of my husband more closely.  He’d been stationed in Afghanistan just after Osama Bin Laden was killed.  Heaven only knows why he was placed in one of the most brutal areas of the operation, but he was and he’d performed brilliantly, giving intelligence about the location of several enemy camps and leading the attacks that brought many early victories.  At the time, he spoke of nothing but the baby and how the pregnancy was progressing.  He hadn’t even met our son before his group was killed by enemy fire.

No, wait a minute.  He spoke of something else as well.  He’d said that an Afghan woman had told him of good fortune surrounding his family and that because of him, she would be able to sleep at night.  Now that I thought about it, there was no sense in what he said.  Afghan women did not speak to outsiders and especially not men.  It was custom, forbidden.  So what had he really said?

Could that be what the man in my home was looking for?  But, in all reality, I still had no idea what it was.  I began to pick apart the statement, but as I did so, the man appeared again before me, his boot ready to strike.  

“Give it up, or the boy comes with me,” he said.  He knelt down and put his dirty, scowling face closer to my own.  He looked directly into my eyes as he again spoke.  ”I said, where is it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.  I don’t have anything, I swear.”  My eyes pleaded with him.  Please don’t do this, I thought.  Please don’t hurt my baby boy, my only child- my one and only link with my poor, dead husband.

“Think, Mrs. Gentry.  Robbie wouldn’t have left you completely in the dark.  I know he told you,” he said, his voice dripping with nervous energy- energy she knew could leave her dead and the baby in his filthy hands.  ”He told you and now you can tell me.”

I tried to make some kind of sense out of what Robert had said.  I knew that that was the answer this man and I both were seeking; I just didn’t understand why or what it really meant.  And before I could formulate any kind of answer, the man was gone, down the hall and into the baby’s room.

I panicked!  I got my body off the carpet and raced to the room where my son was being plucked out of his crib harshly.  So brutal was the pick up that the baby began to scream instantly.

“Don’t hurt him!  Please,” I pleaded, but the words fell on deaf ears.  He didn’t listen, but turned his body away from me, cradling the baby so that I couldn’t see him.  Frantically, I pulled at his arms, trying desperately to pull the baby out of his grasp and into safety at my breast.  He elbowed me hard on the chin and as I fell back against the dresser, he laughed and left the room.

I stumbled back into the living room, the dizziness of the first and last blow overtaking my senses.  I knew now that there was incredible meaning in what Robert had told me and that it meant life or death for me and our son.  Until now, I hadn’t realized just how precious life was and how easily that could be taken away, whether by guns in a far away land or by a madman, who was now sitting on my sofa, talking gibberish to my only child.