Beyond the Point(125)

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.