Eighteen Acres: A Novel by Nicolle Wallace Read Free Book Online

support—the war in Afghanistan had always maintained higher levels of popular support in America than the Iraq war. It seemed to lack a strategy, but what strategy could be crafted to get young boys out of caves where they studied bomb making and adhered to the radical teachings of the madrassas so they could grow up and fly airplanes into buildings? Charlotte and Roger had been back to Iraq and Afghanistan more than a dozen times to meet with local leaders, diplomats, commanders, and U.S. troops. Iraq, while ghastly and heartbreaking, at least seemed to have a pulse. Afghanistan felt as if it had been flatlined since the Dark Ages.
    Charlotte couldn’t help thinking about her son when she traveled to the war zones. In every speech she gave, she praised the men and women of America’s military and their families. Yet in order to get through every speech without showing emotion that could be interpreted around the world as weakness, she forced herself never to contemplate sending her own son off to either of those godforsaken places. She knew herself well enough to know that she could never send her child to fight against faceless enemies on hostile terrain. She was deeply ashamed of her thoughts, and she’d even started going to church with Roger and Stephanie to ask forgiveness and to offer extraprayers for the mothers who did have the courage—and most likely did not have the choice—to send their baby boys and girls into battle. She let herself cry for the mothers when she was alone at night. The dogs were the only witnesses to the tears she shed when she wrote the letters.
    Each night, she brought with her to the residence the names and details of the lives and deaths of every U.S. soldier killed on her watch. She spent hours crafting handwritten notes to mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters. Sometimes she went through several drafts. No two letters were the same. This was the least she felt she could do. The letters to the mothers were the hardest for her to write, so she separated them and worked on them last. She stayed up all night sometimes, until just the right words formed on her personal stationery in her messy cursive. She always finished the letters emotionally drained and aching for her own children.
    Charlotte revisited the decision to send the twins to boarding school every morning when she woke up to an empty house.
    “This is the last year at Kent,” she’d often said to Peter and the twins. The problem was that the kids were thriving at Kent. They were growing into clever, kind, and daring young people who cared not at all for material items (other than their iPhones) and very much about the world around them—just what every parent of teenagers prays for. Peter traveled to Kent every weekend to watch their soccer games in the fall, hockey in the winter, and water polo in the spring and summer. Sometimes he brought his players with him, and the kids loved introducing the famous athletes to their friends. Charlotte wished she could pop in on them and surprise them for a weekend, but she made such a commotion with the motorcade and security. It was best to have Peter visit and allow the kids to pretend that they were just like the rest of the students.
    When this is all over, the kids and I will travel around the world
, Charlotte thought while stroking Cammie’s belly.
    She finished her briefing papers, having made notes and written questions all over them that she knew would leave her economic team peeling themselves off the ceiling when they got in the next morning. She gathered some reading on intelligence reform for later thatevening and walked the dogs across the South Lawn back toward the residence.
    It was quiet on Sundays. A large crowd always gathered to greet her and the dogs upon their return from Camp David, but now all the staffers were home with their families or out with friends, and all the tourists had made their way back to the train stations or airports or bus