Daphne paced back and forth in the tiny kitchen area in her new apartment waiting for her tea to steep. She was thinking about Nabeeh, wondering what he was doing, and she was thinking about the war. What the hell were those soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison doing? Why would they be doing those things? Were these incidents interrogations that got out of hand? Was it simply about getting the Iraqi prisoners to talk about terrorists? The reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross and others were giving her nightmares. Nothing the President or Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had said so far was making her feel any better about what was going on. She didn't understand any of it ... not the war now that no weapons of mass destruction (whatever those actually were) had been discovered ... and not the torture and the torture photographs ... and not what had happened between her and Nabeeh.

She squeezed the tea bag carefully against the side of the cobalt blue cup she had bought just last week when she was furnishing the apartment ... she had wanted everything to be new ... she wanted to leave the 6 years with Nabeeh completely behind.

Daphne would be driving up to her sister's house in central Massachusetts with their mother later this afternoon, staying overnight, and coming back Sunday night. It meant a total of 5 hours alone in the car with her mother. Oh well, it is Mother's Day after all. She was looking forward to seeing her sister’s family and their new dog - a older West Highland Terrier. They already had a puppy Cairn Terrier, and Daphne was not sure why they got the second dog, but with 4 kids and the puppy maybe it didn’t matter. Daphne was very glad that she and Nabeeh had not had any children ... or any dogs.(3/ to be continued ...)