I didn't know

I see her once, maybe twice, a week -- the tall woman with a smooth, glossy, blond bob and wide, white smile.

She -- I'll call her Laura -- runs her own business, quite successfully from what I hear. Has a 3 year-old daughter with dimples and a mop of curls. My son adores Laura's little girl, talks about her all the time.

I don't know Laura real well. We've share only hurried exchanges at daycare pickups and birthday parties. But she's the type who always goes out of her way to greet people, even when it's clear she's in a rush.

Laura strode into today's birthday celebration in her usual confident fashion, calling out greetings and flashing that smile.

A few minutes into a light-hearted conversation, she told me that our last round of tornadoes hit her house. She and her little girl huddled in the bathtub as shingles popped off the roof and a tree punctured their home. "It did $40,000 worth of damage," she said. "And now my daughter's afraid to sleep alone. She's been in my bed every night."

I wondered again about the husband. I know there is one, but I've never seen him at the daycare. He wasn't at his daughter's birthday party a few months ago. On that February afternoon, I overheard a man asking if Laura needed anything.

She teared up, thanked him, said they were doing fine.

I speculated silently. Maybe she's recently separated. Maybe something happened to her husband -- an accident?

But the tears were gone in an instant. "OK, honey," she said to her daughter, clapping her hands together. "Let's finish opening these presents!"

In the weeks after that party, I saw Laura several times. She didn't act like anything was wrong. I wondered if I had imagined that moment at her daughter's party.

One day, a few weeks ago, after she flew down the hall after her runaway daughter, she called out to me from her car window -- "Hey! I didn't mean to be rude. You know how these guys are once they're let out!" She laughed and gestured toward her child. "So how are you doing?"

We chatted a few minutes, and then she pulled away, throwing a breezy wave as she drove down the street.

Today, even as she described the tornado, she was upbeat. "It could have been so much worse," she explained, describing the devastation at her neighbors' homes.

She shared a funny anecdote about her daughter. She talked about her shop. She asked about everyone else's kids.

About thirty minutes into the party, as the kids ate their cake and ice cream, Laura leaned into a group of mothers and said, "He's coming home."

One shrieked and offered a hug. Another said, "Your husband?"

Laura saw my look of puzzlement. "From Iraq," she said. "He's coming home on emergency leave."

Her eyes filled with tears. "This tornado ... the house ... I can't do it all by myself."

She said her husband is due in Tuesday, for a two-week leave. Their daughter doesn't know yet.

Just in case.

Laura cried again when she told us he would have to go back at the end of his leave. Then, swiftly, furtively, she wiped her eyes.

"How's that cake?!" she called out to her daughter.

As the party drew to a close, I watched her stride out the door, laughing and waving goodbye, and I marveled again at how strong we women are.

Laura told us she couldn't do it by herself. But she already has -- from the moment her husband left the airbase, through the lonely evenings and the worrying news reports, to the terrifying night she spent with her toddler in the bathtub.

She can. And she will.