Elizabeth Marro > Quotes

“It is the memory of this relief that will haunt her in the months to come. It will start to unsettle her tonight when they eat the lasagna and carve up the chocolate cake. It will continue to disturb her when Robbie leaves for boot camp, and later, when he is assigned to duty nearly three thousand miles away at Camp Lejeune. It will scald her when she learns he has been deployed to Iraq. Each day she will think back to this day and remember how she nodded and wiped her eyes. She will remember how Robbie’s body seemed to loosen, open up, how he squared his shoulders and embraced her as if he’d been practicing all his life for this moment. Sometimes she thinks she will be haunted every day by the memory of the relief she felt when Robbie asked her to let him go. And she did.”
― Elizabeth Marro, Casualties