Dear John

Twelve

Hours later, on that first lonely night back in Germany, I read the letter again, reliving our time together. It was easy; those memories had already begun to haunt me and sometimes seemed more real than my life as a soldier. I could feel Savannah’s hand in mine and watched as she shook the ocean water from her hair. I laughed aloud as I recalled my surprise when she rode her first wave to shore. My time with Savannah changed me, and the men in my squad remarked on the difference. Over the next couple of weeks, my friend Tony teased me endlessly, smug in the belief that he’d finally been proven right about the importance of female companionship. It was

my own fault for telling him about Savannah. Tony, however, wanted to know more than I was willing to share. While I was reading, he sat in the seat across from me, grinning like an idiot.

“Tell me again about your wild vacation romance,” he said.

I forced myself to keep my eyes on the page, doing my best to ignore him.

“Savannah, right? Sa-va-nnah. Damn, I love that name. Sounds so… dainty, but I’ll bet she was a tiger in the sack, right?”

“Shut up, Tony.”

“Don’t give me that. Haven’t I been the one watching out for you all this time? Telling you that you gotta get out? You finally listened, and now it’s payback time. I want the details.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“But you drank tequila, right? I told you it works every time.”

I said nothing. Tony threw up his hands. “Come on—you can tell me that much, can’t you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Because you’re in love? Yeah, that’s what you said, but I’m beginning to think you’re making the whole thing up.”

“That’s right. I made it up. Are we done?”

He shook his head and rose from his seat. “You are one lovesick puppy.”

I said nothing, but as he walked away, I knew he was right. I was head over heels crazy about Savannah. I would have done anything to be with her, and I requested a transfer to the States. My hard-bitten commanding officer appeared to give it serious consideration. When he asked why, I told him about my dad instead of Savannah. He listened for a while, then leaned back in his seat and said, “The odds aren’t good unless your dad’s health is an issue.” Walking out of his office, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for at least the next sixteen months. I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment, and the next time the moon was full, I left the barracks and wandered out to one of the grassy areas we used for soccer games. I lay on my back and stared at the moon, remembering it all and hating the fact that I was so far away.

From the very beginning, the calls and letters between us were regular. We e-mailed as well, but I soon learned that Savannah preferred to write, and she wanted me to do the same. “I know it’s not as immediate as e-mail, but that’s what I like about it,” she wrote me. “I like the surprise of finding a letter in the mailbox and the anxious anticipation I feel when I’m getting ready to open it. I like the fact that I can take it with me to read at my leisure, and that I can lean against a tree and feel the breeze on my face when I see your words on paper. I like to imagine the way you looked when you wrote it: what you were wearing, your surroundings, the way you held your pen. I know it’s a cliche and it’s probably off the mark, but I keep thinking of you sitting in a tent at a makeshift table, with an oil lamp burning beside you while the wind blows outside. It’s so much more romantic than reading something on the same machine that you use to download music or research a paper.”

I’d smiled at that. She was, after all, wrong about the tent and the makeshift table and the oil lamp, but I had to admit that it did paint a more interesting picture than the reality of the fluorescent-lit, government-issued desk inside my wooden barracks.

As the days and weeks wore on, my love for Savannah seemed to grow even stronger. Sometimes I’d sneak away from the guys to be alone. I would take out Savannah’s photograph and hold it close, studying every feature. It was strange, but as much as I loved her and remembered our time together, I found that as summer turned to autumn, then changed again to winter, I was more and more thankful for the photograph. Yes, I convinced myself that I could remember her exactly, but when I was honest with myself, I knew I was losing the specifics. Or maybe, I realized, I’d never noticed them at all. In the photo, for instance, I realized that Savannah had a small mole beneath her left eye, something I’d somehow overlooked. Or that, on close inspection, her smile was slightly crooked. These were imperfections that somehow made her perfect in my eyes, but I hated the fact that I had to use the picture to learn about them.

Somehow, I went on with my life. As much as I thought about Savannah, as much as I missed her, I had a job to do. Beginning in September—owing to a set of circumstances that even the army had trouble explaining—my squad and I were sent to Kosovo for the second time to join the First Armored Division on yet another peacekeeping mission while pretty much everyone else in the infantry was being sent back to Germany. It was relatively calm and I didn’t fire my gun, but that didn’t mean I spent my days picking flowers and pining for Savannah. I cleaned my gun, kept watch for any crazies, and when you’re forced to be alert for hours, you’re tired by nightfall. I can honestly say I could go two or three days without wondering what Savannah was doing or even thinking about her. Did this make my love less real? I asked myself that question dozens of times during that trip, but I always decided it didn’t, for the simple reason that her image would ambush me when I least expected it, overwhelming me with the same ache I had the day I’d left. Anything might set it off: a friend talking about his wife, the sight of a couple holding hands, or even the way some of the villagers would smile as we passed.

Savannah’s letters arrived every ten days or so, and they’d piled up by the time I got back to Germany. None was like the letter I’d read on the plane; mostly they were casual and chatty, and she saved the truth of her feelings until the very end. In the meantime, I learned the details of her daily life: that they’d finished the first house a little behind schedule, which made things tougher when it came to building the second house. For that one, they had to work longer hours, even though everyone involved had grown more efficient at their tasks. I learned that after they completed the first house, they had thrown a big party for the entire neighborhood and that they’d been toasted over and over as the afternoon wore on. I learned that the work crew had celebrated by going to the Shrimp Shack and that Tim had pronounced it to have the greatest atmosphere of any restaurant he’d been to. I learned that she got most of her fall classes with the teachers she’d requested and that she was excited to be taking adolescent psychology with a Dr. Barnes, who’d just had a major article published in some esoteric psychology journal. I didn’t need to believe that Savannah thought of me every time she pounded a nail or was helping to slide a window into place, or think that in the midst of a conversation with Tim, she would always wish it were me she was talking to. I liked to think that what we had was deeper than that, and over time, that belief made my love for her grow even stronger.

Of course, I did want to know that she still cared about me, and in this, Savannah never let me down. I suppose that was the reason I saved every letter she ever sent. Toward the end of each letter, there would always be a few sentences, maybe even a paragraph, where she would write something that made me pause, words that made me remember, and I would find myself rereading passages and trying to imagine her voice as I read them. Like this, from the second letter I received:

When I think of you and me and what we shared, I know it would be easy for others to dismiss our time together as simply a by-product of the days and nights spent by the sea, a “fling” that, in the long run, would mean absolutely nothing. That’s why I don’t tell people about us. They wouldn’t understand, and I don’t feel the need to explain, simply because I know in my heart how real it was. When I think of you, I can’t help smiling, knowing that you’ve completed me somehow. I love you, not just for now, but for always, and I dream of the day that you’ll take me in your arms again.

Or this, from the letter after I’d sent her a photograph of me:

And this, from a letter she’d written while I’d been in Kosovo:

Christmas that year was a dismal affair, but it’s always dismal when you’re far from home. It wasn’t my first Christmas alone during my years in the service. Every holiday had been spent in Germany, and a couple of guys in our barracks had rigged up a tree of sorts—a green tarp braced with a stick and decorated with blinking lights. More than half of my buddies had gone home—I was one of the unlucky ones who had to stay in case our friends the Russians got it in their heads that we were still mortal enemies—and most of the others trooped into town to celebrate Christmas Eve by getting bombed on quality German beer. I’d already opened the package Savannah had sent me—a sweater that reminded me of something Tim would wear and a batch of homemade cookies—and knew she’d already received the perfume I’d sent her. But I was alone, and as a gift to myself, I splurged on a phone call to Savannah. She hadn’t expected the call, and I replayed the excitement in her voice for weeks afterward. We ended up talking for more than an hour. I had missed the sound of her voice. I’d forgotten her lilting accent and the twang that grew more pronounced whenever she started speaking quickly. I leaned back in my chair, imagining that she was with me and listening as she described the falling snow. At the same time, I realized it was snowing outside my window as well, which, if only for an instant, made it feel as if we were together.

By January 2001, I had begun to count down the days to when I’d see her again. My summer leave was coming in June, and I’d be out of the army in less than a year. I’d wake up in the morning and literally tell myself that there were 360 days left, then 359 and 358 till I was out, but I’d see Savannah in 178, then 177 and 176 and so on. It was tangible and real, close enough to allow me to dream of moving back to North Carolina; on the other hand, it unfortunately made time slow down. Isn’t that the way it always is when you really want something? It reminded me of being a kid and the lengthening days as I waited for summer vacation. Had it not been for Savannah’s letters, I have no doubt that the wait would have seemed much longer.

My dad wrote as well. Not with the frequency of Savannah, but on his own regular monthly schedule. To my surprise, his letters were two or three times longer than the page or so I’d been used to. The additional pages were exclusively about coins. In my spare time, I’d visit the computer center and do a bit of research on my own. I’d search for certain coins, collect the history, and send the information back in a letter of my own. I swear, the first time I did that, I thought I saw tears on the next letter he sent me. No, not really—I know it was just my imagination since he never even mentioned what I’d done—but I wanted to believe that he pored over the data with the same intensity he used when studying the Greysheet.

In February, I was shipped off on maneuvers with other NATO troops: one of those “pretend we’re in a battle in 1944 exercises,” in which we were supposedly facing an onslaught of tanks through the German countryside. Kind of pointless, if you ask me. Those kinds of wars are long since over, gone the way of Spanish galleons blasting their close-range cannons and the U.S. Cavalry riding horseback to the rescue. These days, they never say who the enemies are supposed to be, but everyone knows it’s the Russians, which makes even less sense, since they’re supposed to be our allies now. But even if they weren’t, the simple fact is that they don’t have that many working tanks anymore, and even if they were secretly building thousands at some plant in Siberia with the intent of overrunning Europe, any advancing wave of tanks would most likely be confronted with air strikes and our own mechanized divisions instead of the infantry. But what did I know, right? The weather was miserable, too, with some freakishly angry cold front moving down from the arctic just as the maneuvers started. It was epic, with snow and sleet and hail and winds topping fifty miles an hour, making me think of Napoleon’s troops on the retreat from Moscow. It was so cold that frost formed on my eyebrows, it hurt to breathe, and my fingers would stick to the gun barrel if I touched it accidentally. It stung like hell getting them unstuck, and I lost a good bit of skin on the tips in the process. But I kept my face covered and my hand on the stock after that and marched through icy mud brought on by the endless snow showers, trying my best not to become an ice statue while we pretended to fight the enemy.

We spent ten days doing that. Half my men got frostbite, the other half suffered from hypothermia, and by the time we finished, my squad was reduced to just three or four men, all of whom ended up in the infirmary once we got back to base. Including me. The whole experience was just about the most ridiculous and idiotic thing the army ever made me do. And that’s saying something, because I’ve done a lot of idiotic things for good old Uncle Sam and the Big Red One. At the end, our commander walked through the ward, congratulating my squad on a job well done. I wanted to tell him that maybe our time would have been better spent learning modern war tactics or, at the very least, tuned in to the Weather Channel. But instead I offered a salute and an acknowledgment, being the good army grunt I am.

After that, I spent the next few uneventful months on base. Sure, we did the occasional class on weapons or navigation, and every now and then I’d wander into town for a beer with the guys, but for the most part I lifted tons of weights, ran hundreds of miles, and kicked Tony’s ass whenever we stepped into the boxing ring.

Spring in Germany wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be after the disaster we went through on maneuvers. Snow melted, flowers came out, and the air began to warm. Well, not really warm, but it rose above freezing, and that was enough for most of my buddies and me to throw on shorts and play Frisbee or softball outside. As June finally rolled around, I found myself getting antsy to return to North Carolina. Savannah had graduated and was already in summer school doing classes for her master’s degree, so I planned to travel to Chapel Hill. We would have two glorious weeks together—even when I went to see my dad in Wilmington, she planned to come with me—and I found myself feeling alternately nervous and excited and scared at the thought

Yes, we’d corresponded through the mail and talked on the phone. Yes, I’d gone out to stare at the moon on the first night it was full, and in her letters she told me she had, too. But I hadn’t seen her in nearly a year, and I didn’t have any idea how she’d react when we were face-to-face again. Would she rush into my arms when I got off the plane, or would her reaction be more restrained, perhaps a gentle kiss on the cheek? Would we fall into easy conversation immediately, or would we find ourselves talking about the weather and feeling awkward around each other? I didn’t know, and I’d lie awake at night imagining a thousand different scenarios.

Tony knew what I was going through, though he knew better than to call obvious attention to it. Instead, as the date approached, he slapped me on the back.

“Gonna see her soon,” he said. “You ready for that?”

“Yeah.”

He smirked. “Don’t forget to pick up some tequila on the way home.”

I made a face, and Tony laughed.

“It’s going to be just fine,” he said. “She loves you, man. She’s got to, considering how much you love her.”

Thirteen

In June 2001, I was given my leave and left for home immediately, flying from Frankfurt to New York, then on to Raleigh. It was a Friday evening, and Savannah had promised to pick me up at the airport before bringing me to Lenoir to meet her parents. She’d dropped that little surprise on me the day before the flight. Now, I had nothing against meeting her parents, mind you. I was sure they were wonderful people and all that, but if I had my way, I would rather have had Savannah all to myself at least for the first few days. It’s kind of hard to make up for lost time with the parents around. Even if we didn’t get physical—and knowing Savannah, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t, though I kept my fingers crossed—how would her parents treat me if I kept their daughter out until the wee hours, even if all we did was lie under the stars? Granted, she was an adult, but parents were funny when it came to their own kids, and I was under no illusions that they’d be understanding about the whole thing. She would always be their little girl, if you know what I mean.

But Savannah had had a point when she explained it to me. I had two weekends free, and if I planned to see my dad on the second weekend, I had to see hers the first weekend. Besides, she sounded so excited about the whole thing that all I could say was that I was looking forward to meeting them. Still, I wondered if I’d even be able to hold her hand, and I speculated about whether I could talk her into taking a little detour on the way to Lenoir.

As soon as the plane landed, my anticipation grew and I could feel my ticker booming. But I didn’t know how to act. Should I jog toward her as soon as I spotted her or stroll casually, cool and in control? I still wasn’t sure, but before I could dwell on it, I was in the cattle chute, moving up the aisle. I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder as I emerged from the ramp that accessed the terminal. I didn’t see her at first—too many folks milling around. When I scanned the area a second time, I saw her off to the left and realized instantly that all my worries had been pointless, for she spotted me and came running at full tilt. I barely had time to drop my duffel bag before she jumped into my arms, and the kiss that followed was like its own magic kingdom, complete with its special language and geography, fabulous myths and wonders for the ages. And when she pulled back and whispered, “I missed you so much,” I felt as if I’d been put back together after spending a year cut in half.

I don’t know how long we stood together, but when we finally began moving toward the baggage claim, I slipped my hand into hers knowing that I loved her not only more than the last time I’d seen her, but more than I would ever love anyone.

On the drive we talked easily, but we did make a small detour. After pulling into a rest stop, we made out like teenagers. It was great—let’s leave it at that—and a couple of hours later, we arrived at her house. Her parents were waiting on the porch of a neat, two-story Victorian. Surprising me, her mother hugged me as soon as I got close, then offered me a beer. I declined, mostly because I knew I’d be the only one drinking, but I appreciated the effort. Savannah’s mom, Jill, was a lot like Savannah: friendly, open, and a lot sharper than she first came across. Her dad was exactly the same, and I actually had a good time visiting with them. It didn’t hurt that Savannah held my hand the whole time and seemed completely at ease doing so. Toward the end of the evening, she and I went for a long moonlit walk. By the time we got back to the house, it felt almost as if we’d never been apart at all.

It went without saying that I slept in the guest room. I hadn’t expected otherwise, and the room was a lot better than most places I’d stayed, with classic furniture and a comfortable mattress. The air was stuffy, though, and I opened the window, hoping the mountain air would bring welcome cool. It had been a long day—I was still on German time—and I fell asleep immediately, only to wake up an hour later when I heard my door squeak open. Savannah, wearing comfy cotton pajamas and socks, closed the door behind her and started toward the bed, tiptoeing across the floor.

She held a finger to her lips to keep me quiet. “My parents would kill me if they knew I was doing this,” she whispered. She crawled into bed beside me and adjusted the covers, pulling them up to her neck as if she were camping in the arctic. I put my arms around her, loving the feel of her body against mine.

We kissed and giggled for most of the night, then she sneaked back to her room. I fell asleep again, probably before she reached her room, and awakened to the sight of sunlight streaming in the window. The smell of breakfast came wafting into the room, and I tossed on a T-shirt and jeans and went down to the kitchen. Savannah was at the table, talking with her mom while her dad read the paper, and I felt the weight of their presence when I entered. I took a place at the table, and Savannah’s mom poured me a cup of coffee before setting a plate of bacon and eggs in front of me. Savannah, who was sitting across from me already showered and dressed, was chipper and impossibly fresh-looking in the soft morning light.

“Did you sleep okay?” she asked, her eyes shining with mischief.

I nodded. “Actually, I had the most wonderful dream,” I said.

“Oh?” her mom asked. “What was it about?”

I felt Savannah kick me under the table. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. I have to admit that I enjoyed the sight of Savannah squirming, but enough was enough. I feigned concentration. “I can’t remember now,” I said.

“I hate when that happens,” her mother said. “Is breakfast okay?”

“It smells great,” I said. “Thank you.” I glanced at Savannah. “What’s on the agenda today?”

She leaned across the table. “I was thinking we might go horseback riding. Do you think you’d be up for that?”

When I hesitated, she laughed. “You’ll be fine,” she added. “I promise.”

“Easy for you to say.”

She rode Midas; for me, she suggested a quarter horse named Pepper, which her dad usually rode. We spent most of the day walking up trails, galloping through open fields, and exploring this part of her world. She’d prepared a picnic lunch, and we ate at a spot that overlooked Lenoir. She pointed out the schools she’d attended and homes of the people she knew. It dawned on me then that not only did she love it here, she never wanted to live anywhere else.

We spent six or seven hours in the saddle, and I did my best to keep up with Savannah, though that was close to impossible. I didn’t end up with my face planted in the dirt, but there were a few dicey moments here and there when Pepper acted up and it took everything I could do to hold on. It wasn’t until Savannah and I were getting ready for dinner that I realized what I’d gotten myself into, however. Little by little, I began to realize that my walking resembled waddling. The inside muscles of my legs felt as if Tony had pounded them for hours.

On Saturday night, Savannah and I went to dinner at a cozy little Italian place. Afterward, she suggested we go dancing, but by then I could barely move. As I limped toward the car, she adopted a concerned expression and reached out to stop me.

Leaning over, she grasped my leg. “Does it hurt when I squeeze right here?”

I jumped and screamed. For some reason, she found this amusing.

“Why’d you do that? That hurt!”

She smiled. “Just checking.”

“Checking what? I already told you—I’m sore.”

“I just wanted to see if little old me could make a big, tough army guy like you scream.”

I rubbed my leg. “Yeah, well, let’s not test that anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.”

“Well, I am,” she said. “But it is kind of funny, don’t you think? I mean, I rode just as long as you, and I’m fine.”

“You ride all the time.”

“I haven’t ridden in over a month.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Come on. Admit it. It was kind of funny, wasn’t it?”

“Not at all.”

On Sunday, we attended church with her family. I was too sore to do much else the rest of the day, so I plopped myself on the couch and watched a baseball game with her dad. Savannah’s mom brought in sandwiches, and I spent the afternoon wincing every time I tried to get comfortable while the game went into extra innings. Her dad was easy to talk to, and the conversation drifted from army life to teaching to some of the kids he coached and his hopes for their future. I liked him. From my seat, I could hear Savannah and her mom chatting in the kitchen, and every now and then, Savannah would come into the living room with a basket of laundry to fold while her mother started another load in the washing machine. Though technically a college graduate and an adult, she still brought her dirty clothes home to Mom.

That night, we drove back to Chapel Hill, and Savannah showed me her apartment. It was sparse in the furniture department, but it was relatively new, and it had both a gas fireplace and small balcony that offered a view of the campus. Despite the warm weather, she got the fire going, and we snacked on cheese and crackers, which, aside from cereal, was about all she had to offer. It felt indescribably romantic to me, though I’d come to realize that being alone with Savannah always struck me as romantic. We talked until nearly midnight, but Savannah was quieter than usual. In time, she wandered to the bedroom. When she didn’t return, I went to find her. She was sitting on the bed, and I stopped in the doorway.

She squeezed her hands together and drew a long breath. “So…,” she began.

“So…,” I responded when she remained silent.

She drew another long breath. “It’s getting late. And I’ve got an early class tomorrow.”

I nodded. “You should probably get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” she said. She nodded as if she hadn’t considered it and turned toward the window. Through the blinds, I could see shafts of light streaming in from the parking lot. She was cute when she was nervous.

“So…,” she said again, as if speaking to the wall.

I held up my hands. “Why don’t I sleep on the couch, okay?”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all,” I said. Actually, it wasn’t what I preferred, but I understood.

Still staring toward the window, she made no move to get up. “I’m just not ready,” she said, her voice soft. “I mean, I thought I was, and part of me really wants to. I’ve been thinking about it for the last few weeks, and I made up my mind and it just seemed right, you know? I love you and you love me, and this is what people do when they’re in love. It was easy to tell myself when you weren’t here, but now…” She trailed off.

“It’s okay,” I said.

At last she turned toward me. “Were you scared? Your first time?”

I wondered how best to answer that. “I think it’s different for men and women,” I said.

“Yeah. I suppose so.” She pretended to adjust the blankets. “Are you mad?”

“Not at all.”

“But you’re disappointed.”

“Well…,” I admitted, and she laughed.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“There’s no reason to apologize.”

She thought about it. “Then why does it feel like I have to apologize?”

“Well, I am a lonely soldier,” I pointed out, and she laughed again. I could still hear the nervousness in it.

“The couch isn’t very comfortable,” she fretted. “And it’s small. You won’t be able to stretch out. And I don’t have any extra blankets. I should have grabbed a couple from home, but I forgot.”

“That is a problem.”

“Yeah,” she said. I waited.

“I suppose you could sleep with me,” she ventured.

I waited while she continued her own internal debate. Finally she shrugged. “You want to give it a try? Just sleeping, I mean?”

“Whatever you say.”

For the first time, her shoulders relaxed. “Okay, then. We’ve got that settled. Just give me a minute to change.”

She rose from the bed, crossed the room, and opened a drawer. The pajamas she chose were similar to the ones she’d worn at her parents’, and I left her to go back to the living room, where I slipped on some of my workout shorts and a T-shirt. By the time I returned, she was already under the covers. I went to the other side and crawled in beside her. She shuffled the covers before turning out the light, then lay on her back, staring toward the ceiling. I lay on my side, facing her.

“Good night,” she whispered.

“Good night.”

I knew I wouldn’t sleep. Not for a while, anyway. I was too… worked up for that. But I didn’t want to toss and turn, in case she could.

“Hey,” she finally whispered again.

“Yes?”

She rolled over to face me. “I just want you to know this is my first time that I’ve ever slept with a man. All night, I mean. That’s a step closer, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a step closer.”

She brushed my arm. “And now if anyone asks, you’ll be able to tell them that we’ve slept together.”

“True,” I said.

“But you won’t tell anyone, will you? I mean, I don’t want to get a reputation, you know.”

I stifled a laugh. “I’ll keep it our little secret.”

The next few days fell into an easy, relaxing pattern. Savannah had classes in the morning and usually finished up a little after lunch. Theoretically, I suppose it gave me the opportunity to sleep in—something that all army recruits dream about when they talk about going on leave—but years of rising before dawn was a habit impossible to break. Instead, I woke before she did and would start a pot of coffee before trotting down to the corner to pick up the newspaper. Occasionally, I grabbed a couple of bagels or croissants; other times, we simply had cereal at the house, and it was easy to view our little routine as a preview of the first years of our future life together, effortless bliss that was almost too good to be true.

Or, at least, I tried to convince myself of that. When we stayed with her parents, Savannah was exactly the girl I remembered. Same thing on our first night alone. But after that… I began to notice differences. I guess I hadn’t fully realized that she was living a life that seemed complete and fulfilling, even without me. The calendar she kept on the refrigerator door listed something to do almost every day: concerts, lectures, half a dozen parties for various friends. Tim, I noted, was penciled in for the occasional lunch as well. She was taking four classes and teaching another as a graduate assistant, and on Thursday afternoons, she worked with a professor on a case study, one she was sure would be published. Her life was exactly the way she’d described it in her letters, and when she returned to the apartment, she’d tell me about her day while she made herself something to eat in the kitchen. She loved the work she was doing, and the pride in her tone was evident. She would talk animatedly while I listened, and I asked just enough questions to keep the flow of conversation going.

Nothing unusual in that, I admitted. I knew enough to realize that it would have been a bigger problem if she’d said nothing about her day at all. But with every new story, I’d get this sinking feeling, one that made me think that as much as we’d kept in touch, as much as we cared about each other, she’d somehow zigged while I had zagged. Since I’d last seen her, she’d completed her degree, tossed her cap into the air at commencement, found work as a graduate assistant, and moved into, and furnished, her own apartment. Her life had entered a new phase, and while I suppose it was possible to say the same thing about me, the simple fact was that nothing much had changed on my end, unless you counted the fact that I now knew how to assemble and disassemble eight types of weapons instead of six and I’d increased my bench press by another thirty pounds. And, of course, I’d done my part in giving the Russians something to think about if they were debating whether or not to invade Germany with dozens of mechanized divisions.

Don’t get me wrong. I was still head over heels for Savannah, and there were times when I still sensed the strength of her feelings for me. Lots of times, in fact. For the most part, it was a wonderful week. While she was gone, I’d walk the campus or jog around the sky blue track near the field house, taking advantage of some much needed downtime. Within a day I’d found a gym that would allow me to work out for the time I was there, and because I was in the service, they didn’t even charge me. I’d usually be finished working out and showering by the time Savannah got back to the apartment, and we’d spend the rest of the afternoon together. On Tuesday night, we joined a group of her classmates for dinner in downtown Chapel Hill. It was more fun than I’d thought it would be, especially considering I was hanging out with a bunch of summer school eggheads and most of the conversation centered on the psychology of adolescents. On Wednesday afternoon, Savannah gave me a tour of her classes and introduced me to her professors. Later that afternoon, we met up with a couple of people I’d been introduced to the night before. That evening, we picked up some Chinese food and sat at the table in her apartment. She was wearing one of those strappy tank tops that accentuated her tan, and all I could think was that she was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen.

By Thursday, I wanted to spend some one-on-one time with her and decided to surprise her with a special night out. While she was in class and working on the case study, I went to the mall and dropped a small fortune on a new suit and tie and another small fortune on shoes. I wanted to see her dressed up, and I made dinner reservations at this restaurant the shoe salesman had told me was the best in town. Five stars, exotic menu, nattily dressed waiters, the whole shebang. Granted, I didn’t tell Savannah about it beforehand—it was supposed to be a surprise, after all—but as soon as she walked in the door, I found out she’d already made plans to spend another evening with the same friends we’d seen during the last couple of days. She sounded so excited about it that I never bothered to tell her what I’d planned.

Still, I wasn’t just disappointed, I was angry. To my way of thinking, I was more than happy to spend an evening with her friends, even an additional afternoon. But almost every day? After a year apart, when we had so little time left together? It bothered me that she didn’t seem to share the same desire. For the past few months, I’d been imagining that we’d spend as much time together as we could, making up for our year apart. But I was coming to the conclusion that I might have been mistaken. Which meant… what? That I wasn’t as important to her as she was to me? I didn’t know, but given my mood, I probably should have stayed at the apartment and let her go by herself. Instead I sat off to the side, refused to take part in the conversation, and pretty much stared down everyone who looked my way. I’ve become good at intimidation over the years, and I was in rare form that night. Savannah could tell I was angry, but every time she asked if something was bothering me, I was at my passive-aggressive best in denying that anything was wrong at all.

“Just tired,” I said instead.

She tried to make things better, I’ll give her that. She reached for my hand now and then, flashed a quick smile my way when she thought I’d see it, and plied me with soda and chips. After a while, though, she got tired of my attitude and pretty much gave up. Not that I blame her. I’d made my point, and somehow the fact that she started getting angry with me left me feeling flush with tit-for-tat satisfaction. We barely talked on the way home, and when we got into bed, we slept on opposite sides of the mattress. In the morning I was over it, ready to move on. Unfortunately, she wasn’t. While I was out getting the paper, she left the apartment without touching breakfast, and I ended up drinking my coffee alone.

I knew I’d gone too far, and I planned to make it up to her as soon as she got home. I wanted to come clean about my concerns, tell her about the dinner I’d planned, and apologize for my behavior. I assumed she’d understand. We’d put it all behind us over a romantic dinner out. It was just what I thought we needed, since we would be leaving for Wilmington the next day to spend the weekend with my dad.

Believe it or not, I wanted to see him, and I figured he was looking forward to my visit, too, in his own way. Unlike Savannah, Dad got a pass when it came to expectations. It might not have been fair, but Savannah had a different role to play in my life then.

I shook my head. Savannah. Always Savannah. Everything on this trip, everything about my life, I realized, always led back to her.

By one o’clock, I’d finished working out, cleaned up, packed most of my things, and called the restaurant to renew my reservation. I knew Savannah’s schedule by then and assumed that she would be rolling in any minute. With nothing else to do, I sat on the couch and turned on the television. Game shows, soap operas, infomercials, and talk shows were interspersed with commercials from ambulance-chasing lawyers. Time dragged as I waited. I kept wandering out on the patio to scan the parking lot for her car, and I checked my gear three or four times. Savannah, I thought, was surely on the way home, and I occupied myself with clearing out the dishwasher. A few minutes later, I brushed my teeth for the second time, then peeked out the window again. Still no Savannah. I turned on the radio, listened to a few songs, and changed the station six or seven times before turning it off. I walked to the patio again. Nothing. By then, it was coming up on two o’clock. I wondered where she was, felt the remnants of anger starting to rise again, but forced them away. I told myself that she probably had a legitimate explanation and repeated it again when it didn’t take hold. I opened my bag and pulled out the latest from Stephen King. I filled a glass with ice water, made myself comfortable on the couch, but when I realized I was reading the same sentence over and over, I put the book aside.

Another fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. By the time I heard Savannah’s car pulling into the lot, my jaw was tight and I was grinding my teeth. At a quarter past three, she pushed open the door. She was all smiles, as if nothing were wrong.

“Hey, John,” she called out. She went to the table and started unloading her backpack. “Sorry I was late, but after my class, a student came up to tell me that she loved my class, and because of me, she wanted to major in special education. Can you believe that? She wanted advice on what to do, what classes to take, what teachers were the best… and the way she listened to my answers…” Savannah shook her head. “It was… so rewarding. The way this girl was hanging on everything I was saying… well, it just makes me feel like I was really making a difference to someone. You hear professors talk about experiences like that, but I never imagined that it would happen to me.”

I forced a smile, and she took it as a cue to go on.

“Anyway, she asked if I had some time to really discuss it, and even though I told her I only had a few minutes, one thing led to another and we ended up going to lunch. She’s really something—only seventeen, but she graduated a year early from high school. She passed a bunch of AP exams, so she’s already a sophomore, and she’s going to summer school so she can get even further ahead. You have to admire her.”

She wanted an echo of her enthusiasm, but I couldn’t muster it.

“She sounds great,” I said instead.

At my answer, Savannah seemed to really look at me for the first time, and I made no effort to hide my feelings.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I lied.

She set her backpack aside with a disgusted sigh. “You don’t want to talk about it? Fine. But you should know that it’s getting a little tiring.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She whirled toward me. “This! The way you’re acting,” she said. “You’re not that hard to read, John. You’re angry, but you don’t want to tell me why.”

I hesitated, feeling defensive. When I finally spoke, I forced myself to keep my voice steady. “Okay,” I said, “I thought you’d be home hours ago….”

She threw up her hands. “That’s what this is about? I explained that. Believe it or not, I have responsibilities now. And if I’m not mistaken, I apologized for being late as soon as I walked in the door.”

“I know, but…”

“But what? My apology wasn’t good enough?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what is it?”

When I couldn’t find the words, she put her hands on her hips. “You want to know what I think? You’re still mad about last night. But let me guess—you don’t want to talk about that either, right?”

I closed my eyes. “Last night, you—”

“Me?” she broke in, and began shaking her head. “Oh no—don’t blame me for this! I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t the one who started this! Last night could have been fun—would have been fun—but you had to sit around acting as if you wanted to shoot someone.”

She was exaggerating. Or then again, maybe she wasn’t. Either way, I kept quiet.

She went on. “Do you know that I had to make excuses for you today? And how that made me feel? Here I was, singing your praises all year long, telling my friends what a nice guy you were, how mature you were, how proud I am of the job you’re doing. And they ended up seeing a side of you that even I’ve never seen before. You were just… rude.”

“Did you ever think that I might have been acting that way because I didn’t want to be there?”

That stopped her, but only for an instant. She crossed her arms. “Maybe the way you acted last night was the reason I was late today.”

Her statement caught me off guard. I hadn’t considered that, but that wasn’t the point.

“I’m sorry about last night—”

“You should be!” she cried, cutting me off again. “Those are my friends!”

“I know they’re your friends!” I snapped, pushing myself up from the couch. “We’ve been with them all week!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. Maybe I wanted to be alone with you. Did you ever think of that?”

“You want to be alone with me?” she demanded. “Well, let me tell you, you’re sure not acting like it. We were alone this morning. We were alone when I walked in the door just now. We were alone when I tried to be nice and put this all behind us, but all you wanted to do is fight.”

“I don’t want to fight!” I said, doing my best not to shout but knowing I’d failed. I turned away, trying to keep my anger in check, but when I spoke again, I could hear the ominous undercurrent in my voice. “I just want things to be like they were. Like last summer.”

“What about last summer?”

I hated this. I didn’t want to tell her that I no longer felt important. What I wanted was akin to asking someone to love you, and that never worked. Instead, I tried to dance around the subject.

“Last summer, it just felt like we had more time together.”

“No, we didn’t,” she countered. “I worked on houses all day long. Remember?”

She was right, of course. At least partially. I tried again. “I’m not saying it makes much sense, but it seems like we had more time to talk last year.”

“And that’s what’s bothering you? That I’m busy? That I have a life? What do you want me to do? Ditch my classes all week? Call in sick when I have to teach? Skip my homework?”

“No…”

“Then what do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re willing to humiliate me in front of my friends?”

“I didn’t humiliate you,” I protested.

“No? Then why did Tricia pull me aside today? Why did she feel the need to tell me that we had nothing in common and that I could do a lot better?”

That stung, but I’m not sure she realized how it came across. Anger sometimes makes that impossible, as I was well aware.

“I just wanted to be alone with you last night. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

My words had no effect on her.

“Then why didn’t you tell me that?” she demanded instead. “Say something like ‘Would it be okay if we do something else? I’m not really in the mood to hang out with people.’ That’s all you would have had to say. I’m not a mind reader, John.”

I opened my mouth to answer but said nothing. Instead, I turned away and walked to the other side of the room. I stared out the patio door, not angered so much by what she’d said, just… sad. It struck me that I had somehow lost her, and I didn’t know whether it was because I’d been making too much of nothing or because I understood all too well what was really happening between us.

I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I was never good at talking, and I realized that what I really wanted was for her to cross the room and put her arms around me, to say that she understood what was really bothering me and that I had nothing to worry about.

But none of those things happened. Instead I spoke to the window, feeling strangely alone. “You’re right,” I said. “I should have told you. And I’m sorry about that. And I’m sorry about the way I acted last night, and I’m sorry about being upset that you were late. It’s just that I really wanted to see you as much as I could this trip.”

“You say that like you don’t think I want the same thing.”

I turned around. “To be honest,” I said, “I’m not sure you do.”

With that, I headed for the door.

I was gone until nightfall.

I didn’t know where to go or even why I left, other than that I needed to be alone. I started for campus beneath a sweltering sun and found myself moving from one shade tree to the next. I didn’t check to see if she was following; I knew that she wouldn’t be.

In time, I stopped and bought an ice water at the student center, but even though it was relatively empty and the cool air refreshing, I didn’t stay. I felt the need to sweat, as if to purify myself from the anger and sadness and disappointment I couldn’t shake.

One thing was certain: Savannah had walked in the door ready for an argument. Her answers had come too quickly, and I realized that they seemed less spontaneous than rehearsed, as if her own anger had been simmering most of the day. She’d known exactly how I would be acting, and though I might have deserved her anger based on the way I’d acted last night, the fact that she hadn’t appeared to care about her own culpability or my feelings gnawed at me for most of the afternoon.

Shadows lengthened as the sun began to go down, but I still wasn’t ready to go back. Instead, I bought a couple of slices of pizza and a beer from one of those tiny storefront places that depended on students to survive. I finished eating, walked some more, and finally began the trek back to her apartment. By then it was nearly nine, and the emotional roller coaster I’d been on left me feeling drained. Approaching the street, I noticed Savannah’s car was still in the same spot. I could see a lamp blazing from inside the bedroom. The rest of the apartment was black.

I wondered whether the door would be locked, but the knob turned freely when I tried. The bedroom door was halfway closed, light spilled down the hallway, and I debated whether to approach or stay in the living room. I didn’t want to face her anger, but I took a deep breath and made my way down the short hallway. I poked my head in. She was sitting on the bed in an oversize shirt, one that reached to midthigh. She looked up from a magazine, and I offered a tentative smile.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

I crossed the room and sat on the edge of bed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For everything. You were right. I was a jerk last night, and I shouldn’t have embarrassed you in front of your friends. And I shouldn’t have been so angry that you were late. It won’t happen again.”

She surprised me by patting the mattress. “Come here,” she whispered.

I moved up the bed, leaned against the bed frame, and slipped my arm around her. She leaned against me, and I could feel the steady rise and fall of her chest.

“I don’t want to argue anymore,” she said.

“I don’t either.”

When I stroked her arm, she sighed. “Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere, really,” I said. “Just walked the campus. Had some pizza. Did a lot of thinking.”

“About me?”

“About you. About me. About us.”

She nodded. “Me too,” she said. “Are you still mad?”

“No,” I said. “I was, but I’m too tired to be mad anymore.”

“Me too,” she repeated. She lifted her head to face me. “I want to tell you something about what I was thinking while you were gone,” she said. “Can I do that?”

“Of course,” I said.

“I realized that I’m the one who should have been apologizing. About spending so much time with my friends, I mean. I think that’s why I got so mad earlier. I knew what you were trying to say, but I didn’t want to hear it because I knew you were right. Partly, anyway. But your reasoning was wrong.”

I looked at her uncertainly. She went on.

“You think that I made you spend so much time with my friends because you weren’t as important to me as you used to be, right?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “But that’s not the reason. It’s really the opposite. I was doing that because you’re so important to me. Not so much because I wanted you to get to know my friends, or so they could get to know you, but because of me.”

She halted uncertainly.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

“Do you remember when I told you that I draw strength from being with you?”

When I nodded, she skated her fingers along my chest. “I wasn’t kidding about that. Last summer meant so much to me. More than you can ever imagine, and when you left, I was a wreck. Ask Tim. I barely worked on the houses. I know I sent you letters that made you think all was well and good, but it wasn’t. I cried every night, and every day I’d sit at the house and keep imagining and hoping and wishing that you’d come strolling up the beach. Every time I saw someone with a crew cut, I’d feel my heart start beating faster, even though I knew it wasn’t you. But that was the thing. I wanted it to be you. Every time. I know that what you do is important, and I understand that you’re posted overseas, but I don’t think I understood how hard it was going to be once you weren’t around. It seemed like it was almost killing me, and it took a long time to even begin to feel normal again. And on this trip, as much as I wanted to see you, as much as I love you, there’s this part of me that’s terrified that I’m going to go to pieces again when our time is up. I’m being pulled in two directions, and my response was to do anything I could so I wouldn’t have to go through what I did last year again. So I tried to keep us busy, you know? To keep my heart from being broken again.”

I felt my throat tighten but said nothing. In time, she went on.

“Today, I realized that I was hurting you in the process. That wasn’t fair to you, but at the same time, I’m trying to be fair to me, too. In a week, you’ll be gone again, and I’m the one who’s going to have to figure out how to function afterwards. Some people can do that. You can do that. But for me…”

She stared at her hands, and for a long time it was quiet.

“I don’t know what to say,” I finally admitted.

Despite herself, she laughed. “I don’t want an answer,” she said, “because I don’t think there is one. But I do know that I don’t want to hurt you. That’s all I know. I just hope I can find a way to be stronger this summer.”

“We could always work out together,” I joked halfheartedly, and was gratified to hear the sound of her laugh.

“Yeah, that’ll work. Ten chin-ups and I’ll be good as new, right? I wish it were that easy. But I’ll make it. It might not be easy, but at least it’s not going to be a full year this time. That’s what I kept reminding myself today. That you’ll be home for Christmas. A few more months and all this will be over.”

I held her then, feeling the warmth of her body against my own. I could feel her fingers through the thin fabric of my shirt and felt her tug gently, exposing the skin of my stomach. The sensation was electric. I savored her touch and leaned in to kiss her.

There was a different kind of passion to her kiss, something vibrant and alive. I felt her tongue against my own, conscious of the way her body was responding, and breathed deeply as her fingers began to drift toward the snap on my jeans. When I slid my hands lower, I realized that she was naked beneath the shirt. She undid the snap, and though I wanted nothing more than to continue, I forced myself to pull back, to stop before this went too far, to prevent something I still wasn’t sure she was ready for.

I sensed my own hesitation, but before I could dwell on it, she suddenly sat up and slipped off her shirt. My breaths quickened as I stared at her, and all at once, she leaned forward and lifted my shirt. She kissed my navel and my ribs, then my chest, and I could feel her hands begin to tug at my jeans.

I stood up from the bed and pulled off my shirt, then let my jeans fall to the floor. I kissed her neck and shoulders and felt the warmth of her breath in my ear. The sensation of her skin against mine was like fire, and we began to make love.

It was everything I had dreamed it would be, and when we were finished, I wrapped my arms around Savannah, trying to record the memory of every sensation. In the dark, I whispered to her how much I loved her.

We made love a second time, and when Savannah finally fell asleep, I found myself staring at her. Everything about her was exquisitely peaceful, but for some reason, I couldn’t escape a nagging sense of dread. As tender and exciting as it had been, I couldn’t help wondering whether there had been a trace of desperation in our actions, as if we were both clinging to the hope that this would sustain our relationship through whatever the future would bring.

Fourteen

Our remaining time together on my leave was much as I had originally hoped. Aside from the weekend with my father—during which he cooked for us and spoke endlessly about coins—we were alone as much as possible. Back in Chapel Hill, once Savannah was finished with her classes for the day, our afternoons and evenings were spent together. We walked through the stores along Franklin Street, went to the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, and even spent a couple of hours at the North Carolina Zoo. On my second to last evening in town, we went to dinner at the fancy restaurant the shoe salesman had told me about. She wouldn’t let me peek while she was getting ready, but when she finally emerged from the bathroom, she was positively glamorous. I stared at her in between bites, thinking how lucky I was to be with her.

We didn’t make love again. After our night together, I woke the next morning to find Savannah studying me, tears running down her cheeks. Before I could ask what was wrong, she put a finger to my lips and shook her head, willing me not to speak.

“Last night was wonderful,” she said, “but I don’t want to talk about it.” Instead, she wrapped herself around me and I held her for a long time, listening to the sound of her breath. I knew then that something had changed between us, but at the time, I didn’t have the courage to find out what.

On the morning I left, Savannah drove me to the airport. We sat at the gate together, waiting for my flight to be called, her thumb tracing small circles on the back of my hand. When it was time for me to board the plane, she fell into my arms and started to cry. When she saw my expression, she forced a laugh, but I could hear the sorrow in it.

“I know I promised,” she said, “but I can’t help it.”

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “It’s only six months. With all that’s going on in your life, you’ll be amazed how fast that goes.”

“Easy to say,” she said, sniffling. “But you’re right. I’m going to be stronger this time. I’ll be okay.”

I scrutinized her face for signs of denial but saw none.

“Really,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

I nodded, and for a long moment we simply stared at each other.

“Will you remember to watch for the full moon?” she asked.

“Every single time,” I promised.

We shared one last kiss. I held her tight and whispered that I loved her, then I forced myself to release her. I slung my gear over my shoulder and headed up the ramp. Peeking over my shoulder, I realized that Savannah was already gone, hidden somewhere in the crowd.

On the plane, I leaned back in the seat, praying that Savannah had been telling the truth. Though I knew she loved and cared for me, I suddenly understood that even love and caring weren’t always enough. They were the concrete bricks of our relationship, but unstable without the mortar of time spent together, time without the threat of imminent separation hanging over us. Although I didn’t want to admit it, there was much about her I didn’t know. I hadn’t realized how my leaving last year had affected her, and despite anxious hours thinking about it, I wasn’t sure how it would affect her now. Our relationship, I felt with a heaviness in my chest, was beginning to feel like the spinning movement of a child’s top. When we were together, we had the power to keep it spinning, and the result was beauty and magic and an almost childlike sense of wonder; when we separated, the spinning began inevitably to slow. We became wobbly and unstable, and I knew I had to find a way to keep us from toppling over.

I’d learned my lesson from the year before. Not only did I write more letters from Germany during July and August, but I called Savannah more frequently as well. I listened carefully during the calls, trying to pick up any signs of depression and longing to hear any words of affection or desire. In the beginning, I was nervous before making those calls; by the end of the summer, I was waiting for them. Her classes went well. She spent a couple of weeks with her parents, then began the fall semester. In the first week of September, we began the countdown of days I had left until my discharge. There were one hundred to go. It was easier to talk of days rather than weeks or months; somehow it made the distance between us shrink to something far more intimate, something that both of us knew we could handle. The hard part was behind us, we reminded each other, and I found that as I flipped the days on the calendar, the worries I’d had about our relationship began to diminish. I was certain there was nothing in the world that could stop us from being together.

Then came September 11.

Fifteen

This I am sure of: The images of September 11 will be with me forever. I watched the smoke billowing from the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and saw the grim faces of the men around me as they watched people jump to their deaths. I witnessed the buildings’ collapse and the massive cloud of dust and debris that rose in their place. I felt fury as the White House was evacuated.

Within hours, I knew that the United States would respond to the attack and that the armed services would lead the way. The base was put on high alert, and I doubted there was ever a time that I was prouder of my men. In the days that followed, it was as if all personal differences and political affiliations of any kind melted away. For a short period of time, we were all simply Americans.

Recruiting offices began to fill around the country with men wanting to enlist. Among those of us already enlisted, the desire to serve was stronger than ever. Tony was the first of the men in my squad to reup for an additional two years, and one by one, every other man followed his lead. Even I, who was expecting my honorable discharge in December and had been counting the days until I could go home to Savannah, caught the fever and found myself reenlisting.

It would be easy to say that I was influenced by what was going on around me and that was the reason I made the decision I did. But that’s just an excuse. Granted, I was caught up in the same patriotic wave, but more than that, I was bound by the twin ties of friendship and responsibility. I knew my men, I cared about my men, and the thought of abandoning them at a time like this struck me as impossibly cowardly. We’d been through too much together for me to even contemplate leaving the service in those waning days of 2001.

I called Savannah with the news. Initially, she was supportive. Like everyone else, she’d been horrified by what had happened, and she understood the sense of duty that weighed on me, even before I tried to explain it. She said she was proud of me.

But reality soon set in. In choosing to serve my country, I’d made a sacrifice. Though the investigation into the perpetrators was completed quickly, 2001 drifted to an uneventful close for us. Our infantry division played no role in the overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, a disappointment to everyone in my squad. Instead, we spent most of winter and spring drilling and preparing for what everyone knew was the future invasion of Iraq.

It was, I suppose, around this time that the letters from Savannah began to change. Where once they came weekly, they started arriving every ten days, and then, as the days began to lengthen, they came only every other week. I tried to console myself with the fact that the tone of the letters hadn’t changed, but in time even that did. Gone were long passages in which she described the way she envisioned our life together, passages that in the past had always filled me with anticipation. We both knew that dream was now two years distant. Writing about a future so far off reminded her of how long we had to go, something painful for both of us to contemplate.

As May swept in, I consoled myself that at least we would be able to see each other on my next leave. Fate, however, conspired against us again just a few days before I was to return home. My commanding officer requested a meeting, and when I presented myself in the office, he instructed me to take a seat. My dad, he told me, had just suffered a major heart attack, and he’d already gone ahead and granted the additional emergency leave. Instead of heading to Chapel Hill and two glorious weeks with Savannah, I traveled to Wilmington and spent my days by my dad’s bedside, breathing in the antiseptic odor that always made me think less of healing than of death itself. When I arrived, my dad was in the intensive care unit; he stayed there most of my leave. His skin had a grayish pallor, and his breathing was rapid and weak. For the first week, he drifted in and out of consciousness, but when he was awake, I saw emotions in my father that I’d seen only rarely and never in combination: desperate fear, momentary confusion, and a heartbreaking gratitude that I was beside him. More than once, I reached for his hand, another first in my life. Because of a tube inserted into his throat, he couldn’t speak, so I did all the talking for us. Though I told him a little of what was going on back on base, I spoke to him mainly about coins. I read him the Greysheet; when that was done, I went to his house and retrieved the old copies he kept filed in his drawer and read those to him as well. I researched coins on the Internet—at sites like David Hall Rare Coins and Legend Numismatics—and recited what was being offered as well as the latest prices. The prices amazed me and I suspected that my father’s collection, despite the fall in coin prices since gold was in its heyday, was probably ten times as valuable as the house he’d owned outright for years. My father, unable to master the art of even simple conversation, had become richer than anyone I knew.

My dad was uninterested in their value. His eyes would dart away whenever I mentioned it, and I soon remembered what I’d somehow forgotten: that to my dad, the pursuit of the coins was far more interesting than the coins themselves, and to him each coin was representative of a story with a happy ending. With that in mind, I racked my brain, doing my best to remember those coins that we had found together. Because my dad kept exceptional records, I would scan those before going to sleep, and little by little, those memories came back. The following day, I would recall for him stories of our trips to Raleigh or Charlotte or Savannah. Despite the fact that even the doctors weren’t sure whether he was going to make it, my dad smiled more in those weeks than I ever remember him doing. He made it back home the day before I was set to leave, and the hospital made arrangements for someone to look in on him while he continued to recover.

But if my stay in the hospital strengthened my relationship with my dad, it did nothing for my relationship with Savannah. Don’t get me wrong—she joined me as often as she could, and she was both supportive and sympathetic. But because I spent so much time in the hospital, it did little to heal the fissures that had begun to form in our relationship. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I even wanted from her: When she was there, I felt as if I wanted to be alone with my dad, but when she wasn’t, I wanted her by my side. Somehow, Savannah navigated this minefield without reacting to any stress I redirected her way. She seemed to know what I was thinking and anticipate what I wanted, even better than I did.

Still, what we needed was time together. Time alone. If our relationship was a battery, my time overseas was continually draining it, and we both needed time to recharge. Once, while sitting with my dad and listening to the steady beep of the heart monitor, I realized that Savannah and I had spent only 4 of the last 104 weeks together. Less than 5 percent. Even with letters and phone calls, I would sometimes find myself staring into space, wondering how we’d survived as long as we had.

We did make it out for occasional walks, and we dined together twice. But because Savannah was teaching and taking classes again, it was impossible for her to stay. I tried not to blame her for that, except when I did, and we ended up arguing. I hated that, as did she, but neither of us seemed to be able to stop it. And though she said nothing, and even denied it when confronted, I knew the underlying issue was the fact that I was supposed to be home for good and wasn’t. It was the first and only time that Savannah ever lied to me.

We put the argument behind us as best we could, and good-bye was another tearful affair, though less so than the last time. It would be comforting to think that it was because we were getting used to it, or that we were both growing up, but as I sat on the plane, I knew that something irrevocable had changed between us. Fewer tears had been shed because the intensity of the feeling between us had waned.

It was a painful realization, and on the night of the next full moon, I found myself wandering out onto the deserted soccer field. And just as I’d promised, I remembered my time with Savannah on my first leave. I thought my of second leave as well, but strangely, I didn’t want to think about the third leave, for even then I think I knew what it portended.

As the summer wore on, my dad continued to improve, albeit slowly. In his letters, he wrote that he’d taken to walking around the block three times a day, every day, each journey lasting exactly twenty minutes, but even that was hard on him. If there was a positive side to all this, it was that it gave him something to build his days around now that he was retired-something aside from coins, that is. In addition to sending letters even more frequently, I began to phone him on Tuesdays and Fridays at exactly one o’clock his time, just to make sure he was okay. I listened for any signs of fatigue in his voice and reminded him constantly about eating well, sleeping enough, and taking his medication. I always did most of the talking. Dad found phone conversations even more painful than face-to-face communication and always sounded as if he wanted nothing more than to hang up the phone as quickly as he could. In time, I took to teasing him about this, but I was never sure if he knew I was kidding. This amused me, and I sometimes laughed; though he didn’t laugh in response, his tone would immediately lighten, if only temporarily, before he lapsed back into silence. That was okay. I knew he looked forward to the calls. He always answered on the first ring, and I had no trouble imagining him staring at the clock and waiting for the call.

August turned to September, then October. Savannah finished her classes at Chapel Hill and moved back home while she began hunting for a job. In the newspapers, I read about the United Nations and how European countries wanted to find a way to keep us from going to war with Iraq. Things were tense in the capitals of our NATO allies; on the news, there were demonstrations from the citizens and forceful proclamations from their leaders that the United States was about to make a terrible mistake. Meanwhile, our leaders tried to change their minds. I and everyone in my squad just kept going about our business, training for the inevitable with grim determination. Then, in November, my squad and I went back to Kosovo again. We weren’t there long, but it was more than enough. I was tired of the Balkans by then, and I was tired of peacekeeping, too. More important, I and everyone else in the service knew that war in the Middle East was coming, whether Europe wanted it or not.

During that time, the letters from Savannah still came somewhat regularly, as did my phone calls to her. Usually I’d call her before dawn, as I always had—it was around midnight her timeand though I’d always been able to reach her in the past, more than once she wasn’t home. Though I tried to convince myself she was out with friends or her parents, it was difficult to keep my thoughts from running wild. After hanging up the phone, I sometimes found myself imagining that she’d met another man she cared about. Sometimes I would call two or three more times in the next hour, growing angrier with every ring that went unanswered.

When she would finally answer, I could have asked her where she’d been, but I never did. Nor did she always volunteer the information. I know I made a mistake in keeping quiet, simply because I found it impossible to banish the question from my mind, even as I tried to focus on the conversation at hand. More often than not, I was tense on the phone, and her responses were tense as well. Too often our conversations were less a joyous exchange of affection than a rudimentary exchange of information. After hanging up, I always hated myself for the jealousy I’d been feeling, and I’d beat myself up for the next couple of days, promising that I wouldn’t let it happen again.

Other times, however, Savannah came across as exactly the same person I remembered, and I could tell how much she still cared for me. Throughout it all, I loved her as much as I always had, and I found myself aching for those simpler times in the past. I knew what was happening, of course. As we were drifting apart, I was becoming more desperate to save what we once had shared; like a vicious circle, however, my desperation made us drift apart even further.

We began to have arguments. As with the argument we had in her apartment on my second leave, I had trouble telling her what I was feeling, and no matter what she said, I couldn’t escape the thought that I was being baited by her or that she wasn’t even attempting to alleviate my concerns. I hated these calls even worse than I hated my jealousy, even though I knew the two were intertwined.

Despite our troubles, I never doubted that we would make it. I wanted a life with Savannah more than I ever wanted anything. In December, I began calling more regularly and did my best to keep my jealousy in check. I forced myself to be upbeat on the phone, in the hope that she would want to hear from me. I thought things were getting better, and on the surface they were, but four days before Christmas, I reminded her that I’d be home in a little less than a year. Instead of the excited response I expected, she grew quiet. All I could hear was the sound of her breathing.

“Did you hear me?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, her tone soft. “It’s just that I’ve heard that before.”

It was the truth, and we both knew it, but I didn’t sleep well for nearly a week.

The full moon fell on New Year’s Day, and though I went out to stare at it and remembered the week when we fell in love, those images were fuzzy, as if blurred by the overwhelming sadness I felt inside. On the walk back, dozens of men were clustered in circles or leaning against buildings while smoking cigarettes, as though they had no cares at all. I wondered what they thought when they saw me walking by. Did they sense that I was losing all that mattered to me? Or that I wished again that I could change the past?

I don’t know, and they didn’t ask. The world was changing fast. The orders we’d been waiting for were given the following morning, and a few days later, my squad found itself in Turkey as we began preparing to invade Iraq from the north. We sat in meetings where we learned our assignments, studied the topography, and went over battle plans. There was little free time, but when we did venture outside of camp, it was hard to ignore the hostile glares of the populace. We heard rumors that Turkey was planning to deny access to our troops for use in the invasion and that talks were under way to make sure they wouldn’t. We’d long ago learned to listen to rumors with a grain of salt, but this time the rumors were accurate, and my squad and others were sent to Kuwait to start all over.

We landed in midafternoon under a cloudless sky and found ourselves surrounded by sand on every side. Almost immediately we were loaded on a bus, drove for hours, and ended up in what was essentially the largest tent city I’d ever seen. The army did its best to make it comfortable. The food was good and the PX had everything you might need, but it was boring. Mail delivery was poor—I received no letters at all—and the lines for the phone were always a mile long. In between drills, my men and I either sat around trying to guess when the invasion would start or practiced getting into our chemical suits as quickly as we could. The plan was for my squad to augment other units from different divisions on a hard push to Baghdad. By February, after what already felt like a zillion years in the desert, my squad and I were as ready as we’d ever be.

At that point, a lot of soldiers had been in Kuwait since mid-November, and the rumor mill was in full swing. No one knew what was coming. I heard about biological and chemical weapons; I heard that Saddam had learned his lesson in Desert Storm and was retrenching the Republican Guard around Baghdad, in the hope of making a bloody last stand. On March 17, I knew there would be war. On my last night in Kuwait, I wrote letters to those I loved, in case I didn’t make it: one to my father and one to Savannah. That evening, I found myself part of a convoy that stretched a hundred miles into Iraq.

Fighting was sporadic, at least initially. Because our air force dominated the skies, we had little to fear overhead as we rolled up mainly deserted highways. The Iraqi army, for the most part, was nowhere to be seen, which only increased the tension I felt as I tried to anticipate what my squad would face later in the campaign. Here and there, we’d get word of enemy mortar fire, and we’d scramble into our suits, only to learn it was a false alarm. Soldiers were tense. I didn’t sleep for three days.

Deeper in Iraq, skirmishes began to break out, and it was then I learned the first law associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom: Civilians and enemies often looked exactly alike. Shots would ring out, we’d attack, and there were times we weren’t even sure who we were shooting at. As we reached the Sunni Triangle, the war began to intensify. We heard about battles in Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tikrit, all being fought by other units in other divisions. My squad joined the Eighty-second Airborne in an assault on Samawah, and it was there that my squad and I had our first taste of real combat.

The air force had paved the way. Bombs, missiles, and mortars had been exploding since the day before, and as we crossed the bridge into the city, my first thought was amazement at the stillness. My squad was assigned to an outlying neighborhood, where we were to move from house to house to help clear the area of the enemy. As we moved, images came quickly: the charred remains of a truck, the driver’s lifeless body beside it; a partially demolished building; ruins of cars smoking here and there. Sporadic rifle fire kept us on edge. As we patrolled, civilians occasionally rushed out with their arms up, and we tried our best to save the wounded.

By early afternoon, we were getting ready to head back, but we were assaulted by heavy fire coming from a building up the street. Pinned against a wall, we were in a precarious position. Two men covered while I led the rest of my squad through the shooting gallery to a safer spot on the other side of the street; it struck me as almost miraculous that no one was killed. From there, we sank a thousand rounds into the enemy’s position, laying absolute waste to it. When I thought it was safe, we began our approach to the building, moving cautiously. I used a grenade to blast open the front door. I led my men to the door and poked my head in. Smoke was heavy, and sulfur hung in the air. The interior was destroyed, but at least one Iraqi soldier had survived, and as soon as we were close, he began shooting from the crawl space beneath the floor. Tony got clipped in the hand, and the rest of us responded with hundreds of rounds. The sound was so loud that I couldn’t hear myself screaming, but I kept my finger squeezed, aiming everywhere from the floor to the walls to the ceiling. Chips of plaster and brick and wood were flying as the interior was decimated. When we finally stopped firing, I was sure that no one could have survived, but I threw another grenade into an opening that led to the crawl space just to make sure, and we braced outside for the explosion.

After twenty minutes of the most intense experience of my life, the street was quiet, except for the ringing in my ears and the sounds of my men as they puked or cussed or rehashed the experience. I wrapped Tony’s hand, and when I thought everyone was ready, we began backing out the way we’d come. In time, we made our way to the railroad station, which our troops had secured, and we collapsed. That night, we received our first batch of mail in almost six weeks.

In the mail, there were six letters from my father. But from Savannah there was only one, and in the dim light, I began to read.