In light of everything, it became painfully clear to Avery that she’d not been that kind of friend. Not in years. She’d grown envious of Dani’s travels and her wealth. She’d grown cold toward Hannah, too. God—she’d treated Hannah horribly. Her friend had been deployed for more than a year and Avery had done little more than send her an e-mail on her birthday. Kind, loyal, dependable Hannah. For years, Avery had taken advantage of her loyalty. She’d taken her for granted.
The clearest sign of her failure was that somehow, Dani had become the point person for every friend, acquaintance, and distant relative who wanted to express their condolences and find out how they could help. Avery lived down the street from the Nesmiths, and still, a girl who lived five time zones away had become the hub of all communication. It hurt to know that in the years since they’d graduated from West Point, she’d let her relationship with Hannah deteriorate that much. But the more Avery asked Dani what she could do, the less it seemed her friend had any answers. Just pray, Dani had typed in her last e-mail, sent from thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic.
Pray. For what? To whom?
Avery crawled into her freshly made bed with her cell phone and laptop, and tried to stop shivering. It was too horrible to imagine. From what Eric had heard through the 82nd Airborne Division newswire, Tim was killed by small-arms fire in a skirmish in Samarra. Two of his soldiers had been shot, and running to their aid, Tim found himself in the midst of the crossfire. The soldiers both survived. Tim bled out before the medical evacuation team could arrive.
Clenching her eyes closed, she tried to put those images out of her mind. The Tim she wanted to remember was the one at Thanksgiving—sitting at the table, rubbing his wife’s neck. Laughing. Clinking his glass against hers. Or the one senior year, getting on one knee in front of Hannah, surrounded by rose petals and candlelight. Or the one four weeks ago, who’d dropped a key in her hand and smiled, giving her one final salute. She couldn’t just sit here, thinking about him and worrying about Hannah. And so, in a rush of movement, Avery flipped open her laptop and began clicking quickly.
Flights from Austin, Texas, to Fayetteville, North Carolina, weren’t cheap at the last minute. Avery clicked through a list of options on several different screens. Hannah’s family would need to be here when Hannah finally got home. Then, scrolling through her phone contacts, Avery landed on Hannah’s sister’s name. Emily Speer Daniels.
Married with a two-year-old son named Jack, Emily was living in Austin with her husband. Avery had met them several times over the years: a few times at West Point, most recently at Hannah’s wedding. She didn’t know Emily all that well and it was possible that she was overstepping. But Avery couldn’t spend another moment without doing something for her friend.
Holding the phone up to her ear, Avery heard a few voices in the background before Emily answered.
“Avery. I’m so glad you called.”
“I just heard,” Avery said weakly. She paused, aware that the conversation might need to move slowly.
“Yeah.” Emily sighed heavily. “We’re all still in shock.”
“Have any of you heard from Hannah?”
“She’s still in Afghanistan. They still haven’t found a way to get her out of the FOB. Apparently, a sandstorm has shut everything down.”
“Have you guys decided when you might come to Fort Bragg?”
“No,” Emily replied. “We thought we’d wait to hear from Hannah. See when she wants us to come.”
Avery knew she needed to tread lightly here. It wasn’t her place to make plans for anyone else, but then again, she knew the Army well enough to know that it could be several more days before Hannah’s plans were finalized.
“I’ve been thinking,” Avery said. “I really think you need to be here as soon as possible. Things with the Army can move slow. And I don’t know when Hannah will get home, but I do know she’ll want you to be here when she does. I’m just a few streets down, and I’ve got a spare key. I’m not sure how Tim left things. So we can go get the house ready for her.”
Emily was silent for a while, considering what Avery had said.
“I took the liberty of looking up some flights,” Avery said. “I hope that’s okay.”
Emily gave a light laugh. “You’re amazing, Avery. Really.”
“It looks like there’s one leaving Austin on Sunday morning. I’ve shopped a bit, and it looks like a pretty good deal.” It was silent on the line, then Avery sat up in bed. The words that followed bubbled up from a place within her that she didn’t know existed. “Emily, I know this may sound crazy, but I want to pay for your flights. For you, your husband, and Jack. And for your parents, too.”
Avery tried to ignore the dollar signs adding up in her mind. She wasn’t even sure she had that much in her savings account.
“Oh, Avery,” Emily said, voice trembling. “You don’t have—”
“It’s not about the money. I want to.”
“We couldn’t possibly—”
“Please let me. I just need to do something. I’m sitting here going crazy by myself and it’s the least I can do.”
“Gosh,” Emily said. “I don’t know . . .”
“You don’t even have to tell your parents. Just tell them the Army paid for it,” Avery said, then chuckled. “It’s not a total lie. And it’s one less thing you have to do right now. Check it off your list.”
Avery waited a moment while Emily blew her nose.
“Ugh, I’m such a mess,” Emily said. “Okay. I think Sunday sounds good. Let’s do Sunday. But that’s five plane tickets. Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” Avery clicked “purchase” on the computer screen, then pinched the cell phone between her ear and shoulder to type with both hands. “Okay, tell me your full name . . .”
27
November 19, 2006 // Camp Buehring, Kuwait
No one ever tells you that when someone you love dies, you still have to eat.
You still have to brush your teeth and pack a bag and look at the clock and watch it ticking. No one tells you that grief feels like fear—it amps you up, making you want to run for your life, even though there’s nowhere to go, no place where death will be unreal. Grief chokes you and paralyzes you, making the most menial decisions feel impossibly huge.
“Who do you want to call?” the chaplain had asked.
She’d stared at him in utter confusion. Tim. She wanted to call Tim.
Who do you call when your husband dies and you’re twenty-four years old, alone in Afghanistan?
Who do you call when the only voice you want to hear no longer exists?
AS IF IT had chased Hannah all the way across Afghanistan, a sandstorm had arrived at FOB Sharana, hours after LTC Markham broke the news. Once again, everyone was shut up in their rooms, unable to move or operate. Trucks were halted. Helicopters grounded. Alone with her grief, Hannah waited. Two days later, the storm lifted. The chaplain told her to pack, which she’d already done, and a convoy transported Hannah eight hours from FOB Sharana to Bagram Airfield. From there, a helicopter flew her to Camp Buehring, Kuwait, where a silver-haired transportation officer told her to find a bunk in any female tent—that they’d get her on the first flight out with an available seat. Forty women slept in each tent, and for all those women knew, Hannah was going home on R & R, just like the rest of them. For all they knew, she just stayed in bed because she was lazy.
The next morning was a Sunday—the only reason Hannah knew this was because as she walked across Camp Buehring to the Mess Hall, she heard hymns coming from a tent nearby. Strong and harmonious, the voices sang a familiar song, but she didn’t let them draw her in. Instead, Hannah forced herself to eat a full breakfast—though now, stretched out on a bottom cot near the door of the bunkhouse, she couldn’t remember what she’d put on her plate. Everything tasted bitter. Everything tasted like nothing at all.
The mess hall tent had been decorated with orange a
ccordion-style pumpkins and brown streamers. Fake ivy hung from the rafters and twisted down tent poles. She hadn’t tasted a single thing as the meal slid down her throat. Is food really the only thing that keeps us alive? Hannah asked herself. If that was true, why couldn’t they revive Tim with a piece of bread and a cup of wine?
She couldn’t understand how a person could just end. The more her mind circled around that drain, the more she felt the beginning of a battle she would someday have to fight with God. But for now, she couldn’t sleep unless she held on to her cross necklace and prayed—begged—for a moment of rest, for a moment to forget. She took Tylenol PM in the highest possible dose. When it finally came, sleep was relief, but when she woke up, the nightmare began all over again.
Hannah cried through much of the second night at Camp Buehring, grateful for the girl in the bunk above her, whose snores muffled her sobs. She envied army wives who got to hear the worst news of their lives in the comfort of their own homes. There were three parts of her heart: One that wanted to get on a plane and run away from this place. Another part that wanted to dig a hole in the ground, get inside, and never get out. And the third, loudest part of her heart wanted a bomb to drop right on top of her—because that was the only thing that made sense. If he was gone, she wanted to be gone too.
IN THE MORNING, her cell phone rang.
Hannah stared at it for a long time, reading her sister’s name on the caller ID. If she didn’t answer, she could go on pretending for a few minutes that Tim was still alive, that there had been a mistake, that some other young soldier with the same name had been killed. That some other girl was about to hear news that would shatter her life. That Hannah could piece hers together again.
But the phone kept ringing.
She’d ignored every single call that she possibly could. She’d spoken to Tim’s parents from the satellite phone on FOB Sharana, and the ache in Margaret Nesmith’s voice sank Hannah’s heart so deeply, she already feared seeing them once she made it back to the States. Hannah was completely submerged in the grief of losing a husband; she couldn’t carry the weight of their loss, too. Tim was a husband. A son. A friend. He was a different person to everyone he knew—filling a thousand different roles. But Hannah could only grieve one Tim at a time.
Text messages from Dani and others kept pouring in, but Hannah couldn’t respond. She didn’t know what she would possibly say. But Emily had called three times in a row now. So finally, with a heavy arm, Hannah reached for the phone and spent the energy it took to open it and place it on her ear.
“Hey.” Her sister’s voice was so slow and soft. So unlike her normal voice. “Did you make it to Kuwait?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing now?”
“Sitting on my bunk.”
“Have you opened the letter?”
Hannah peered at the stack of books at the foot of her bunk. A Bible. East of Eden, with the corner of page three hundred dog-eared to hold her spot. Neither of which she had opened. In the middle of the Bible she could see the small white edge of a letter, acting like a bookmark. The chaplain had handed Hannah the letter just before she’d boarded the helicopter at Bagram Airfield. Covered in Tim’s signature all-caps handwriting, it was postmarked November 12. The day he’d left on a ten-day mission into Samarra. One day before insurgents opened fire, sending three bullets into the chest of a soldier in Tim’s platoon. Before her husband ran to stop the bleeding and sixteen shots ripped through his chest, ending his life. The day before her husband died, he’d written her a letter.
Every moment, it felt like an elephant was stepping on her chest. She couldn’t breathe. This isn’t your life, she told herself as she stared at the edge of the letter. This can’t be happening. She hadn’t had a moment alone since the chaplain had handed her the letter and she didn’t want to open it until she could scream and wail as loud as she wanted.
“Hannah?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Okay.”
Hannah placed the phone beside her head and listened to her sister breathing. Hot tears created a warm wet circle where her cheek met the pillow.
After some time had passed, Emily said, “Any update on when you’ll be back?”
The words made whatever was in Hannah’s stomach start to swirl. Like something was in the back of her throat, pushing on all sides of her esophagus. “No,” she said.
Silence.
“Okay. Well we’re trying to decide if we should stay at the house with you or get a hotel. Either way. Whatever you want.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hannah said. But even as the words came out of her mouth, she knew it did. She had an opinion. She just didn’t know what it was. She couldn’t find it in her head. But it was there.
“Okay. We’ll be here waiting for you when you get home.”
LIKE EVERY OTHER building, the transportation office was a series of small offices, all inside a large tent. Fans whirred and buzzed in every corner, and men passed Hannah in beige camouflage uniforms, unconcerned about her presence. They didn’t know what she was doing or why she was here, which made no sense. She felt like a part of her body had been ripped off. The fact that everyone didn’t stare seemed absolutely impossible. How could a loss that big be that invisible?
By the afternoon, no one had come to retrieve Hannah and send her home. She wondered if they’d forgotten about her, the war widow, in the back of the bunkhouse. Days could pass before they remembered. Weeks.
So pulling herself up, Hannah had walked across Camp Buehring, to the office of the man in charge of outgoing flight manifestos. After she’d waited for more than an hour outside of his office, Lieutenant Colonel Williams stepped out of his door and waved her inside.
“Sorry about the wait, Lieutenant Nesmith,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
The colonel leaned forward in his desk chair, brown eyes full of a sickeningly sweet emotion that Hannah realized she’d have to get used to: pity. He had three combat patches on his uniform, dark eyebrows, and steely eyes that seemed to look both at Hannah and beyond her.
“I understand you’re trying to get home,” he said. “Emergency leave.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t mean to bother you. I just want to know if there are any updates. I heard there’s a flight leaving tomorrow.”
“Unfortunately, there’s not an open seat.” He spoke so quickly, it felt like he’d slapped her across the face. “The R & R schedule has been set for months. You understand. These soldiers have plans with their families. I can’t schedule your flight without bumping someone else.”
Hannah felt her throat tighten, like she was being strangled by an invisible hand.
“But, sir, I really . . . I need to go home. Doesn’t emergency leave give me any precedence?”
Cruelty was staring grief in the face and pointing to a spreadsheet.
Hannah didn’t try to stop herself from crying. She let the tears fall onto her uniform, right in front of him. He could say no. But she couldn’t shield him from the pain of that denial. She was done following the rules. She wondered why she’d ever followed them in the first place.
“Please don’t make me beg for this. I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. I voluntarily put my life on hold. I left my family and friends behind. I dug the trenches and built the tents and led my soldiers. I haven’t complained. Not once. But now? Now that I actually have to grieve the war you asked me to wage? You say I have to wait? How can America ask me to sacrifice everything I have to give . . . everything . . .” Her voice broke. “And now to deny my request when I’m begging, begging to go home? Sir. It’s been a week. Please let me go home.”
“I wish there were something I could do,” he said, his eyes softening.
“There is, sir,” Hannah said. “You can put me on that plane.”
He sighed, looked at his computer, and began rubbing his temples.
“All right,” he said finally. “Let me see what I can do.”
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November 20, 2006 // Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Dani had arrived at Fayetteville Regional Airport late in the afternoon on Friday, feeling jet-lagged and exhausted. Inside the terminal, countless men in uniform had moved in and out with purpose—though it had been hard for Dani to tell who was coming and who was going. The men leaving held their wives close while their children cried. The men arriving did the same thing.
Avery had pulled up to the arrivals pickup lane in her rusty old Honda Civic, dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie. It had been more than a year since they’d seen one another, but Avery’s massive CD case of angry alternative nineties music still rested on the passenger seat. The sight of it had given Dani a sense of nostalgia and comfort. Cheekbones high, ankles exposed, Avery looked thinner than Dani had ever seen her, with her bright blond hair piled on top of her head. But even if their bodies had changed, Dani hoped their hearts would be found in the same place. It was time for the cult to make good on its promises.
“Thank God you’re here,” Avery had said, wrapping her arms around Dani’s neck. They didn’t cry—it was too surreal for that. Instead, they’d loaded Dani’s luggage in the trunk and drove down the highway in silence.
AN HOUR LATER, they’d sat staring at the Nesmiths’ front door, arguing about what to do. Two blue-star flags hung side by side in the window. The shrubs were slightly overgrown, the yard full of leaves. Inside, not a single light was on. It looked like it had been abandoned. Which, in a way, it had.
“I can’t do this,” Avery had said.
“We have to,” Dani replied. “She can’t go into the house with it like that. We have to turn on some lights. Turn on the heat.”
“He was the last person in there.” Avery held the key that Tim had given her in the palm of her hand. It was the color of her hair, Dani had noticed. Bright gold.
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