Athena left her shoes in the truck and rolled her pants up to her calves. She waded ankle deep into the surf with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Jake followed. The water was warmer than the air, and it felt good as it swirled over their feet. Neither made eye contact, choosing instead to watch the stars flicker between the clouds blowing overhead.

“I still can’t believe that I sent twenty-three husbands, fathers, and sons to their deaths,” she said after several minutes.

She walked back to the truck and sat in the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard and her legs clutched to her chest.

Jake sat in the driver’s seat but didn’t start the motor.

They sat in silence, staring out over the Gulf. It was twenty minutes before she spoke again, barely above a whisper.

“All day, I had our operations team radio the ship about the most trivial things—minor weather updates, service issues—anything I could think of.”

She sighed.

“I deluded myself when they stopped answering,” she continued. “I kept saying that they were only having communication problems, but in my heart I knew.”

She sighed again.

“I must be cursed,” she said. “So much death.”

They sat listening to the gentle surf. A warm breeze blew in from the sea.

“Sometimes I think I know more about death than I do about life,” Jake said.

She started to say something, but stopped.

“I watched my best friend die last year,” Jake said. “He was ten feet in front of me and there was nothing I could do.”

She shook her head. “How do you deal with it?”

“I try not to think about it, but sometimes it’s all I can think about . . . I don’t know if anyone ever gets over that kind of loss, but I try to focus on the positives—what my parents meant to me, what my friend and I accomplished.”

She looked back out to sea. “Life is hard.”

“It isn’t all bad. Humans are just wired to focus on the negative. It’s our survival instinct.”

The two of them stared into the night sky, looking for light among all the blackness.

“I feel as if I’m in some nightmarish fairy tale,” she said, “living this life of ridiculous luxury while I send honorable men to their deaths.”

“It’s not your fault,” Jake said. “I pushed.”

Athena looked at him.

“That’s kind of you to say, but I have a mind of my own.”

“The choices in front of you were terrible.”

“‘The greater good’ is wonderful in theory, but not when you’re the wives and children of men who will never come home.”