“Happy?” she stood from the park bench and jammed her fists into the pockets of her jeans. “Happy?” she paced in front of him, gaze lasering into the dry grass. Behind her, Cissy played on the slide.
“What I mean is it’s all for you. For us. For our family. All this work. All this being gone. I’ve got to go back and finish right, Tenley. I need this,” he said.
“But do you need me?” she asked.
Of course he needed her. Without her, there was nothing to come back to. Without her, he didn’t know what to define himself against. Without her, there couldn’t be this—the park, the day, their daughter, the world. It all seemed so obvious it never occurred to him to say it out loud. At what point did his own wife no longer believe that? How long would her doubts hang over him? He couldn’t fathom the shift, couldn’t accept that he tried to do everything right and still ended up wrong. He remembered searching her for some clue he might have missed, but he came up short. He could only see her as he always had—perfect, really—and that’s when he knew she never would be.
“What I’m trying to say is that of course I need you. More than you know,” he stood from the bench, forcing her to stop pacing. “If you don’t believe me, consider the fact that I’m doing all of this because I want to have another child. We can do this. We can do so much.”
Her jaw dropped. She tilted her chin slightly, but it could have been the earth slipping from its axis. His wife would never look at him from the same angle again. “You’re going to leave us again,” she said. Her breath had grown short, almost a pant. “And on top of that, you want more? You want—” she dropped her hand to her abdomen.
Miller could almost see it, the smooth, stretch-marked skin that had held their baby boy. The same skin that looked flat and gray in the empty months afterward. The humble smallness of their child, whom they held only once to say goodbye. He’d been mistaken. Family. The Guard. Home. Marriage. To him, everything connected.
“Nathan, my body failed us. Don’t you see that? Me. Something inside of me. The one thing I’m supposed to be able to do, have done before, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t.”
Before he could speak, she turned on her heels and headed for the car. As she reached for the door handle, Cissy wailed from the bottom of the slide. Tenley turned and dashed back to the playground, joining Miller in the sawdust. Cissy lay crumpled into a pile of pink corduroy pants and a purple down jacket at the bottom of the slide. She sniffled.
“Daddy’s here, Cissy. Can I take a look?” Miller inspected Cissy’s forehead and found a small goose egg forming against her skull. “You’re my tough girl,” he told her. “It’ll stop hurting in a few minutes. Are you ready to go home? We could make some hot chocolate when we get there.”
He looked at Tenley for a sign of softness, but all he saw was his own ignorance. Tenley did know what it was like to lose a life, and she knew it in a way he never could: cellular. He wanted to tell her the stillbirth wasn’t her fault, but if he did that, he’d have to forgive himself for Mercer too. The military hadn’t given him language for these kinds of sentiments. It had only given him language for leaving, and there was violence in it—this idea of deploying, touring, serving—all just another way of saying gone. He had done so much harm from so far away. But coming home had hurt them even more.
Cissy leaned her head against Tenley’s shoulder, a few tears drying on her round cheeks. Miller kissed the top of his daughter’s head, breathing in her smell of wet Cheerios and that soft, underscent of infants that faded with each trip back. He looked again at Tenley, her eyes watering, waiting. Those promises they’d made to one another growing more and more impossible to keep. Miller hugged Tenley and Cissy, wrapping them both in his arms, then turned toward the car to load up.
A few miles down the road, Miller steered into the driveway.
“Tenley, I’m sorry. I—”
But she wouldn’t have it. “How could you?” she said, her voice rattling and hoarse. “After everything,” she unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. “I’ve got to study,” she closed the door and walked briskly inside.
Miller stayed in the car for a long time. He stared at their house. Its white siding. Its rough stone foundation. The over-stuffed gutters. The curtains closed against the cold. He studied it all again, searching for something that made sense. He felt like an intruder in his own driveway. He wanted to feel something other than guilt, but there was only Cissy’s sleepy breathing from the backseat, whispering toward an uncertain future.
Twilight has fallen into navy darkness. Miller and Folson are the only two visible on base now, other than a few soldiers on guard in the towers.
“Is there even a way to do this marriage-during-deployment thing right?” Folson asks.
“I may not know what right is anymore.”
“I hear that, Sir. I hear that.”
They reach the rec hall and complete the loop, Folson fighting back a yawn. They’ve both made messes they haven’t found the edge of yet. So little time remains on this tour, even less energy. “No matter how things turn out with Becca, there is one thing I can never tell her,” Folson says.
Miller waits.
“That it’s easier here sometimes. All of this—the FOB, the war, Spartans—it’s just…easier.”
“I guess so,” Miller nods. “Not in terms of winning but in terms of clarity. The Spartans are all pointing in the same direction.”
He won’t tell Folson how impossible the senior officers have become. How the army brass seems to give orders for a different war than the one Miller and his men fight outside the wire.
“I need you solid on our way to Imar tomorrow.”
“What’s the mission?” Folson asks.
“Humanitarian, I know that much. Details haven’t been sent over yet. They’ll get around to it just as soon as they’re done polishing their medals. Should be relatively straightforward. Regardless, I know I’m going to need you at your best. Can you give me that, Folson, for one more mission?”
“Yes, Sir, I can. I can do that.”
Folson’s look seals the deal, and there it is—the relief Miller had been hoping for. When sleep comes, it’s perhaps his soundest in years.
Day Two
5
Nothing in this War
Rahim moves briskly down the stairs from his apartment. Early dawn illuminates the alley in lines of dusty yellow. He grabs his wheelbarrow and angles it onto the street. A shovel and bucket clang like angry bells inside the dented, metal bin. He walks to the edge of Imar, then departs the loop road and crosses a few dry creek beds to access the old two-track leading out of the valley. Onward, past the wrecked Jeep, past the shell casings, past the random patterns carved into the sand by wind and time. Sometimes, the vastness reminds Rahim how utterly small his efforts have become. How little consequence he believes his life carries. Weariness hits him in the chest, and he slows his gait. The day has hardly begun, but he can already feel it—that incessant tug of dissatisfaction. If he could do anything he wanted, this moment, he’d curl into the shade of a gaf tree and pass the day unnoticed. Yet he knows it’s a blessing that work gives him a way to survive, his brick-making tools as useless as a peace treaty these last few months. Even Badria, his oddball partner, can grasp the good fortune that’s come their way during wartime. No sense making bricks to rebuild houses anymore when the drought that has kept Imar dry for two springs means they’re somehow supposed to make something out of nothing.
A few kilometers from Imar, Rahim spots Badria alongside the two-track, leaning into a shallow dip in the land. In the distance, a nomadic clan dots a surrounding slope on one side of the valley. Beyond, Rahim imagines more of the same—only bigger, uninterrupted.