“I have to be alone a lot. If I’m not, I feel like my brain is breaking down. I feel like it’s going to explode. You see me when the animals are sick or hurt. I put on who I want to be for you. It’s not like I’m lying to you about who I am, but I’m only allowing you to see part of me, not all of me, certainly not the tearful, deeply scarred person that I am, that I hide from everyone else. I can function at work, then I come home, take care of my animals, talk to my animals as if they’re human, like Sundance.” Sundance heard me say his name and tried to get on my lap again, but I didn’t let him. “I hide in my books for hours so I don’t have premonitions. I have insomnia. Sometimes I fight depression and anxiety. It’s not pretty, it’s not easy.”

“Look, Evie. I was in a war. You want a mess? I’m a mess. I have flashbacks and nightmares from my time in the army. You know this. I have regrets. I hate myself for what I did over there sometimes. Sometimes I believe that everything we did over there in Iraq was wrong. When bodies are strewn all over the ground, dead, the mothers are crying on both sides. Other times I believe we did the right thing. We wanted to get rid of a dangerous man. But the politicians, usually old and white who have often never served, start the wars but don’t fight them. We do. My buddies did. My memories haunt me. I have to willfully pull myself together, pull myself out of Iraq and what I saw, the injuries, the deaths, and blood, and what I did when I was following orders, or giving my men orders. War screws people up.

“I’m screwed up. I have let you see the part of me that I want you to see, too. But I haven’t let you see all of me, not the part of me that is still struggling, years later, with the war. We’re both wrecks who are trying hard to be normal. To feel normal.”

“I can’t do it, Marco.” I felt this well of unbearable sadness. “I’m sorry.”