Mrs. Swanson let out a cry and gathered me in a hug. “Oh, Tuck. You’re here. Where’s Emily?” Her eyes flared with fear, obviously afraid to ask.

“She’s okay,” I said. “She’s fine. She wrote you a note.” I took it from my pocket and handed it to Mrs. Swanson.

“Oh, thank you, God, thank you,” Emily’s mother said, looking over at her husband who gave her a nod, tears in his eyes. She opened the note and scanned it quickly, bringing two fingers to her lips as she read. When she was finished, she handed it to her husband. “Our girl is fine. She’s good. I told you Tuck would take care of her,” she said. She looked at me, smiling as tears shimmered in her eyes as well. “I told Phil there’s no one better to be with Emily. No one.” She hooked her arm through mine. “Come inside. I want to hear every detail about how you made it home.”

* * *

The Swansons’ exterior was riddled with bullet holes too, and a couple of the windows were boarded up. But the inside was undamaged and looked about the same as it had the last time I’d been there, what now felt like a hundred years ago. The Christmas tree that Mrs. Swanson had just been putting up when I’d been here last was still standing. My God, what day was it? The calendar had ceased having any meaning. Christmas had come and gone, and we hadn’t even noticed.

I told the Swansons about our plane crash, and the journey home from there, not able to relay every detail lest it take four hours to tell, and also, because some of those details belonged to Emily and me alone. My heart twisted when I thought of the moments that would only ever be ours and I missed her with a ferocity that nearly brought me to my knees.

Their expressions shifted through several obvious emotions as I described what we’d gone through and what we’d seen: horror, shock, sadness, relief. “The entire country,” Mrs. Swanson murmured. “It’s what we heard but didn’t think we could believe.” Mr. Swanson took her hand in his.

“What happened here?” I asked. “There were obviously lots of fires just like in other places. But the bullets? The blood?”

“The homes left standing were attacked, including ours. We joined forces with the neighbors still here and fought back. There aren’t many, but there are enough.” She glanced at her husband again, something unspoken moving between them. “We had to. There was no other choice.”

“Of course there wasn’t,” I said. “They obviously meant you harm.”

“Whatever they wanted, they didn’t get it,” Mr. Swanson said. “We’ve since set up lookouts and have eyes on anyone coming or going. It’s how I knew you were here.”

“You did well.”