Beyond the Point(103)

28


November 20, 2006 // Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Dani had arrived at Fayetteville Regional Airport late in the afternoon on Friday, feeling jet-lagged and exhausted. Inside the terminal, countless men in uniform had moved in and out with purpose—though it had been hard for Dani to tell who was coming and who was going. The men leaving held their wives close while their children cried. The men arriving did the same thing.

Avery had pulled up to the arrivals pickup lane in her rusty old Honda Civic, dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie. It had been more than a year since they’d seen one another, but Avery’s massive CD case of angry alternative nineties music still rested on the passenger seat. The sight of it had given Dani a sense of nostalgia and comfort. Cheekbones high, ankles exposed, Avery looked thinner than Dani had ever seen her, with her bright blond hair piled on top of her head. But even if their bodies had changed, Dani hoped their hearts would be found in the same place. It was time for the cult to make good on its promises.

“Thank God you’re here,” Avery had said, wrapping her arms around Dani’s neck. They didn’t cry—it was too surreal for that. Instead, they’d loaded Dani’s luggage in the trunk and drove down the highway in silence.

AN HOUR LATER, they’d sat staring at the Nesmiths’ front door, arguing about what to do. Two blue-star flags hung side by side in the window. The shrubs were slightly overgrown, the yard full of leaves. Inside, not a single light was on. It looked like it had been abandoned. Which, in a way, it had.

“I can’t do this,” Avery had said.

“We have to,” Dani replied. “She can’t go into the house with it like that. We have to turn on some lights. Turn on the heat.”

“He was the last person in there.” Avery held the key that Tim had given her in the palm of her hand. It was the color of her hair, Dani had noticed. Bright gold.

“He gave it to you in case something like this happened. Man up. We can do this. We don’t have a choice.”

With that, they’d walked to the front door. Avery carefully turned the key in the dead bolt, and then the door had opened, spilling sunlight all over the scene. Knowing that Hannah would come home from Afghanistan before he returned from Iraq, Tim had strung a banner across the stairwell with the words WELCOME HOME painted in big gold letters. There were multicolored balloons all over the floor.

“Oh God.” Avery had put her hands to her face.

Dani had exhaled loudly and kicked a blue balloon out of her way. She hadn’t expected this. Clearly, from the pained look on Avery’s face, neither had she. Together, they had slumped onto the bottom stair and kicked the balloons in silence. Avery had been wearing a pair of brown leather boots, Dani a brand-new pair of hot pink sneakers.

It didn’t seem fair that they were there, in Hannah’s house, while she was still stuck in the Middle East, alone with her grief. At the time, Dani wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. But sometimes, when tragedy strikes, you just have to act. And if Dani were in Hannah’s shoes, she wouldn’t want to crush the last of her husband’s breath out of the universe. There are some things a person just shouldn’t have to do.

“What are you doing?” Avery had shouted when Dani jumped up and started stomping on the balloons with her foot. “Stop! Shouldn’t we leave it?”

“I’m not leaving it like this.” Dani had spat back. “She shouldn’t”—pop!—“have to”—pop!—“do it.” Pop! Pop!

Haltingly, Avery had stood from the stairs and joined her. Together, they’d slammed their heels into rubber, sending the sound of gunshots throughout the house.

ON SUNDAY, HANNAH’S family had arrived in a rental van from the airport, looking like the flight had gone through severe turbulence, although Hannah’s sister, Emily, promised Dani the flight was fine. Dani knew that Hannah hated when people said she looked just like her mother, but the resemblance was striking. Lynn Speer had always looked young for her age, but as she’d approached the house, carrying her luggage, that no longer seemed true. The weight of grief had transformed her face. The skin underneath her eyes was thin and blue, like translucent paper. She had two deep wrinkles between her eyebrows. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. The sight of Lynn, like an aged version of Hannah, had made tears come to Dani’s eyes. They’d held each other on the sidewalk for a very long time, neither of them daring to say a word.

She’d received a long, warm hug from each member of Hannah’s family, ending with Hannah’s father, Bill. He’d looked just as he had a few years earlier, when she’d seen him at West Point’s graduation: tall, with a thick gray mustache and his signature University of Texas ballcap. He’d wrapped an arm around Dani’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. And though his body had felt sturdy, his voice had wavered.

“It’s going to be all right,” he’d said, sounding unconvinced. “It’s all going to be all right.”

But nothing was right. Hannah still had not boarded a flight out of Kuwait. Dani left London in such a hurry, and now, all she could do was sit around in silence, aching for the fact that the one person who needed to be in the comfort of her own home wasn’t.

Hannah’s family moved their luggage into the house, but tried not to touch or disturb a single thing. Tim had left Post-it notes everywhere, little surprises for his wife to find when she returned from her deployment. His handwriting hovered around every corner. You grow more beautiful every day—stuck to the mirror in the hall bathroom. RILY—waiting on Hannah’s bedside table. I like the way you smell after PT—a joke left on her sneakers in the closet. No one had dared move a single one, but Dani had begun to feel like she was avoiding a ghost.