It had been a long time since she’d heard Laura Klein’s voice fill with such sincerity. It was a nice sound, but it wasn’t going to change her mind.
“There are more important things than money. I might be good at advertising, but I could be good at a lot of things. I think I was made for this.”
Laura looked over Dani’s resignation letter, a single page that rested in front of her. “And you think you were made to be a . . . college basketball coach?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Dani answered honestly. “But I’m certain that if I never try, I’ll always wonder. And that’s enough for me.”
Laura shook her head and laughed. “Are you sure that hair dye didn’t go to your head?”
Dani touched her short hair, offering Laura a small grin. She liked her hair, just like she liked what she saw in her future.
“And, if you don’t mind me asking,” Laura continued, “what are you wearing?”
Dani looked down. She wore a tight athletic shirt, sweatpants, and Air Jordans on her feet. She hadn’t felt this comfortable in years.
“I’ve got a game in an hour. Which is why I can’t stay here and keep explaining my decision,” Dani said. “I just wanted you to hear it straight from me.”
“You know, we’re going to be sunk without you.”
“You’ll be all right,” Dani said as they shook hands. “You’ve got Pete and the crew. They’re all great.”
“Sometimes I think they hate me.” Laura sighed.
“Give them a break every now and then,” Dani said kindly. “We’re all just doing the best we can.”
With that, she turned and limped out the door, carrying a box of her belongings with her.
“Dani!” Laura shouted, one last time.
When Dani looked back, she noticed Laura’s eyes had softened. Even the wrinkles on her face seemed to smooth out as she offered a nod of respect and mutual understanding.
“Good luck,” Laura said. “And for what it’s worth, I believe you’ll be a very good coach.”
WHEN DANI GOT home, she walked to the basketball court in Notting Hill where she’d spent the last three weeks coaching the boys and reveling in the sound she loved most. She still felt discomfort in her joints. They groaned more than ever, really.
But pain comes for you, body and soul, whether you’re ready or not, Dani thought as she jogged onto the court. For some people, pain arrives in a phone call that shatters the once-perfect window through which you’d seen the world. For others, pain grows into a poisonous plant, buried so deep, the only way to uproot it is to dig it out slowly. For others—for people like Dani—pain was a constant companion, nagging and persistent. You could numb the pain. Bury it again. Ignore it forever. But you couldn’t get rid of it. That was a war that would never be won.
A basketball flew through the air from a child to Dani and back again. She smiled, taking her first step toward the basket. It hurt. But she chose to enjoy the ache.
40
Winter 2007 // Ali‘i Beach Park, Oahu, Hawaii
Hannah lounged in a beach chair, reading the final few pages of East of Eden. In the book, the main character, Adam, was nearing his end while his son Caleb stood at his deathbed, begging for forgiveness.
Picking her eyes up from the page, Hannah looked out at the water, breathing in the scent of coconut and salt. The sun hovered above the horizon, casting long golden rays across the sand. The water looked like bright blue Kool-Aid, rolling and crashing with waves. Nature, again, reminded her of her size in the universe. But if humans were so small, why did they want life to matter so much?
Sarah Goodrich had e-mailed Hannah after the funeral with an offer. Their old basketball teammate was deployed to Afghanistan—her second deployment since graduating from West Point in 2001. But because she was deployed, her beachfront home on the North Shore of Oahu was currently unoccupied. In that e-mail, Sarah told Hannah the house’s lockbox code and said that she could go any time she wanted, no questions asked. And so, at the urging of Dani and Avery, the three of them had booked round-trip tickets using the last of Dani’s frequent-flier miles. There were perks to having a network as wide as the Army and a friend as wealthy as Dani. And if she was going to wake up at four in the morning anyway, she might as well wake up in Hawaii.
The grief counselor said that sleeplessness was a common symptom of grief—that it might take more than a year before she could sleep normally again. But Hannah didn’t want to be normal. If not sleeping was how she could keep Tim’s memory alive, then she hoped she’d never sleep a full night again. That was why she was out there, alone. Digging her feet into the warm sand. Watching the surf come in. She wanted to remember him.
Out in the distance, three tanned surfers sat on boards, bobbing up and down in the water, waiting for the right wave to ride. Hannah caught herself watching them, wondering if they were teenagers, or if they were older. It was hard to tell. Soon, one paddled hard in front of a growing swell. He stood on his board and glided seamlessly across the water until he crashed. When he emerged from the surf, he shook his long dark hair and gave his friends a wave of his pinky and thumb, the shaka. A girl throwing a Frisbee for her dog along the water’s edge noticed Hannah and smiled, as if to say, Isn’t this morning amazing?
It was amazing. And that was what made it so difficult. Tim had never been to Hawaii, and now he never would. Would every amazing moment she experienced now also feel like a loss? The grief counselor had said she would have to learn to hold grief and joy at the same time without minimizing either emotion. She wondered if she’d ever grow tired from the weight.
Tim would never learn to surf, although she could imagine his young body adapting to the waves with ease. And that was part of the sorrow, too: Tim would only ever have a young body. There would be no old Tim. No Tim the dad or Tim the grumpy Old Grad, visiting West Point for a class reunion, like her grandfather did when Hannah was young. Was her future already decided, even then? Would Tim the grandfather have told his granddaughter to choose a different school, just as Hannah’s grandfather had tried to do? She wasn’t sure. But despite it all, Hannah was still grateful she hadn’t listened to her grandfather all those years ago. She just wished the story had a different ending.
In light of a life, four years together was far too few. Soon, the time she’d spent with Tim would pale in comparison to her time without him. Inevitably, her memories would fade. She feared the day she wouldn’t be able to conjure his face in her mind. A flat, two-dimensional picture would never capture the sound of his laugh or the little wrinkle between his eyebrows when he was concentrating. Everything she had to remember him by was a shadow of the real thing. More than once, she’d let herself call his cell phone, just to hear the prerecorded voicemail message. At some point, that phone plan would be canceled. His voice would be deleted. It was more than she could handle.
She’d attended West Point, despite her grandfather’s fears, because she felt God telling her it was the right move. She’d met and married Tim for the same reason. Every leap of faith had been worth the risk. Until now.
She looked down at the page in front of her. Caleb begged his father, Adam, for a blessing. Hannah had never had to beg for anything in her life. But she knew that if she didn’t beg, her faith would grow cold and brittle, until it crumbled into dust.
Standing up from her chair, Hannah walked down the beach, letting the emotion well up inside her. For so many years, she’d followed a prescription that she’d trusted would result in a beautiful life. Girls don’t fight back. They don’t get angry. They don’t demand things—especially not from men. They are loyal and faithful and quiet and trusting. But slowly, surely, all of those rules had unraveled. It was time to release. To let go. This was why she’d come here. To let the sound of the ocean drown out the sound of her cries.
Soon, the water lapped up against her bare ankles. She remembered the salty taste of Tim’s mouth and the feel of his body next to hers in the water last s
ummer. And then she screamed.
She screamed that it wasn’t worth it.
That she hated God.
That she didn’t trust him.
That if this was what having faith meant, then she wasn’t sure she wanted it anymore.
She screamed of the betrayal and the fear and the loss. She screamed the same three words, over and over again, until her scream became a whisper.
“How could you?”
The wild waves pulled away from her feet and soon, quietness filled the space of her screaming. She left her shorts on the sand and dove under the water, feeling its cool, salty relief on her skin. When she emerged from under the water, the little cross necklace felt warm and wet in her hand.
EVENTUALLY, HANNAH CAME out of the water and walked back to her chair, dragging her feet through the sand. When she returned, Dani and Avery were sitting there, beside her things, holding an extra cup of coffee.
“You okay?” Avery asked.
“No,” Hannah said. “But I’m still here.”
“Good,” Dani said. She patted a place on the towel next to her, and Hannah lay down, putting her head on Dani’s lap. The sand was warm beneath her body.
THAT EVENING, BACK at Sarah’s bungalow, Hannah sat under the twinkle lights on the lanai, sipping something fruity. Sarah had styled every corner of the patio as though someone from HGTV were arriving any moment with a camera crew. The guest room had a plush queen-sized bed, which, despite her sadness, Hannah had still managed to make like the Army would require, hospital corners and everything, every morning of their vacation. Some habits were hard to break.
On the floor next to the bed, Hannah’s uniform sat pressed and ready. Her rucksack was fully packed with the same gear she’d brought home from Afghanistan two months earlier. It was time to go back.
Hannah was proud that Dani had decided to take the coaching job at the Citadel. The salary would force her to take a big step down in lifestyle, Hannah knew, but if anyone could adjust, Dani could. That girl was unstoppable, no matter where you put her. She wasn’t a shooting star; she was a solar panel, always absorbing energy and putting it back out into the world again. And Avery had changed, too. They’d been talking daily since Hannah had returned from Afghanistan. She was softer, kinder—and for the first time since Hannah had known her, Avery didn’t have a boyfriend. Baby steps. That was what had changed, Hannah realized. Avery had slowed down.
Tim’s death had spurred on those changes. That much was obvious. But Hannah found herself constantly wondering how it would change her. Would it make her bitter? Would it make her angry? Would she lose her faith in God or gain more? She was afraid of the person she might become in a world without Tim.
And what about her war? Colonel Markham had given her permission to take on a rear-detachment job at Fort Bragg for the remainder of the deployment. She didn’t have to go back. But she couldn’t imagine working at a desk while Private Murphy and the rest of the guys sweltered in Afghanistan without her. What kind of message would that send? It was important to show her soldiers and her friends, and, to be honest, herself, that life could continue. That she could still have a role and a purpose. That her breakable body housed an unbreakable soul.
She looked down at the tattoo on her wrist—an oak tree, deep roots and high branches, with two dates scribbled into its limbs: 6.19.04., the date of their wedding, and 11.13.06., the date of Tim’s death. The beginning and the end. Or the other way around, depending on how you looked at it. The tattoo was Avery’s idea. A breaking from the Hannah of before. A new Hannah had been born.
“Dinner’s ready.”
Avery came out to the patio holding a bowl of ahi tuna poke that she’d purchased from a shop on the way home from the beach. She placed it at the center of the patio table. Dani emerged from the kitchen, her hair back to a large, natural Afro. She added a bowl of mango, corn tortillas, and her famous avocado salsa to the assortment. With her strange restrictive diet, Dani had become quite the chef. Avery put a pitcher of margaritas on the table, and suddenly, a memory came to Hannah’s mind.
She’d made a pitcher for her grandmother back in high school, during an elective ceramics class. The first two pitchers she’d tried to make had fallen apart in the kiln. Both times, she hadn’t scored the handle deep enough for it to attach to the body of the vase. But her third attempt came out just as she’d imagined. Staring at her friends at this table, she realized that their lives were like that pitcher. They all had rough edges, but those places were necessary to forge deep connections. All the things they’d survived. All the ways they’d laughed and limped and cried together. It was like a knife had cut into them so they could latch together and never break apart, even when they were put through the fire. She’d wanted to bond that way to Tim, but looking up at her friends’ faces under the glow of the twinkle lights, Hannah knew she was equally lucky to be connected to them. Some people spent their whole lives avoiding pain. But by avoiding it, they avoided this too.
They’d all taken their seats when Dani placed her hands palms-up on the table, ready to pray. “Shall we?”
But just as they’d gripped hands and bowed their heads, Hannah’s phone began to vibrate on the table. The phone number was long and unrecognizable, like a military call coming from overseas.
“Sorry,” Hannah said, trying to turn it off. “It’s not important . . .”
“No, get it,” Avery replied. “We can wait.”
Hannah looked at her phone. That little piece of metal that connected her to the world. She’d been so scared to answer it. She’d ignored it and turned it off, and at one point considered throwing it out the window of a moving car. The ringer sounded like a wind chime blowing in the breeze. She couldn’t avoid it forever. She couldn’t escape beauty or the passage of time, any more than she could escape breathing. Whoever was calling needed her. And it was a good thing to be needed.
She could do this. She wouldn’t do it well. She wouldn’t do it perfectly. There would be more tears, she was certain. There would be more death and more life. There would be more screaming at the sky and wondering if Someone was listening. But whatever came her way, she knew she was still of use in the world—not because of her own ability, but because like a pitcher, scored and scarred, put through the fire, she was ready to be poured out.
Hannah took a deep breath. She picked up the phone, flipped it open, and pressed it against her ear.
She said hello.
It was a small act, to answer that call. But it wasn’t small to Hannah. In taking that breath—in saying hello—she told the world that she was still here. That she was still breathing. And in that way, it felt like a beginning.
Acknowledgments
The great thing about being a writer is that I’ll never have a band threaten to play me off stage when I’m trying to say thanks.
First and foremost, this book would not exist if it weren’t for my friend, mentor and creative consultant, Dionna McPhatter, who originally envisioned telling a story about the experiences of women at West Point, and entrusted me to do the job. From the beginning to end, she offered belief, encouragement, financial support, creative solutions, and a listening ear, and never failed to provide a hearty kick in the butt when I needed it. You inspire me in every way and I’m grateful God put you in my living room twenty years ago. The best is yet to come.
To my agent, Alison Fargis: I am forever grateful that you own a piece of real estate across the Hudson River from West Point. Thank you for pushing me to revise this manuscript into the novel it is today. Thanks also to Maria Ribas, who saw promise in my writing and introduced me to Stonesong.
I owe many thanks to my editor, Lucia Macro—your suggestions for this book helped tie up so many of my loose ends. And to the entire William Morrow team at HarperCollins—thank you for your kindness, enthusiasm, and prompt attention.
I am indebted to a long list of women who candidly shared their memories, feelings and experiences with me, without reservatio
n. Jen Wardynski, Jackie Asis, Charlsey Mahle, Mandy Psiaki, Katie del Castillo Vail, Haley Dennison Uthlaut, Tiffany Allen Archuletta, Abby Moore, Mallory Fritz Wampler, Jenny Jo Hartney, Ariel Gibson, Kristin Gatti, Caroline “Annie” Pestel, Mary Tobin, Jenn Menn, Sarah Travaglio. Thank you for your vulnerability, courage, and patience as I asked so many invasive questions.
West Point is a small community with roots that extend deep and wide. Thank you to the many cadets and families who made an impact on my life during my most formative childhood years—especially Laura Walker (Class of ’03), Tim Cunningham (Class of ’06), Emily Perez (Class of ’05), and John Ryan Dennison (Class of ’04)—strong men and women of character who were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To my parents, Bee and Laura. Mom, your wise counsel helped guide me during the years it took to write this book. Thank you for being one of my most early trusted readers, and for inspiring what I believe is the character at the heart of this book. Dad, your brilliance in engineering is the reason we lived at West Point in the first place. Thank you for your reflections on 9/11, for your selfless service to our country, and for always reminding me to “chip away at it.”
To the community of writers, artists and encouragers in Nashville and beyond. Thanks to Lauren Ledbetter whose hand-drawn illustration resides in the first few pages of this book. To Russ Ramsey, I finally did what you told me to do; now go write your memoir. Katherine Carpenter, you read the first words of this thing, and managed not to laugh—bless you. And many more thanks are due to Holly Sharp, Sarah and Andrew Trammell, Shelley Ellis, Amelia Cornish, Jamie Lidell, Joe Johnson, Lisa Burzynski, Kim Green, and Susannah Felts. And a huge thanks to the ragtag community of homeless creatives that find shelter (and caffeine) at Ugly Mugs in East Nashville.
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