A cold sweat broke out all over him.

Why was this return so dreadful?
He pressed a shaking hand over his heart.

How surely he knew he could not deceive his mother! The moment she saw him, after the first flash of joy, she would see the wreck of the boy she had let go to war.

Lane choked over his emotion, but he could not spare her.

Opening the door he entered.
There she stood at the stove and she looked up at the sound he made.
Yes! but stranger than all other changes was the change in her.