"Leave them," she said, her voice shaky. Our hands collided and she dropped a postcard onto the table. It fell facedown, revealing a familiar scrawl across the back.

Good night. There are lots of things I could say-you know them. Good night.

He hadn't signed it but he didn't need to. I knew Uncle Ike's handwriting well enough. Kay's eyes met mine as she scooped the card to her breast.

"Don't be a fool, Billy," she said.

Then she was gone. I was glad there was whiskey left in my glass.

Good night.

What were the things she knew, things Uncle Ike could have said, but didn't?

Good night.

What did it mean? With that question, I laughed at myself. What else could it mean? I didn't want to think about it. Outside of my dad and Uncle Dan, there wasn't a man in the world I respected more. We were some kind of distant cousins, on my mom's side. She was related to Aunt Mamie, so the general and I weren't exactly blood relations but he was family. Problem was, so was Aunt Mamie. Jerusalem was a world away from Boston and Abilene but even so I didn't think it right. I felt a bit like a prude but I couldn't help it, maybe because I looked up to Uncle Ike so much. He always seemed to know the right thing to do. He was the one I looked to when I couldn't tell right from wrong, the one who taught me the terrible mathematics of war. Some will die today so that more will live tomorrow. He bore the weight of that equation silently, and you had to look closely to see how it burdened him.

I didn't want him writing love notes to Kay. I didn't want her lecturing me on how to work things out with Diana, and I didn't want Diana going off and getting herself killed. I wanted everything to be exactly as it was before we came to Jerusalem.