She looked at his rolled-up shirtsleeves and bad tie, a rodent-brown with butter zigs.

“My CO—” she began.

“You don’t have a CO anymore,” he said. “You don’t have a uniform. And you aren’t going to be living with your wingman’s wife and kids.”

She tried to cover her surprise at the mind reading.

“It’s you,” he said. “The other candidate was let go this morning.”

“But—”

“It just wasn’t a good fit,” he said.

She held back a few times, questions hard to stifle, to get him to say more. But he was done. He stood up. “Halliday will explain some things to you,” he said, looking at his watch, a drugstore cheapie. “And, Mary,” he said, his fatigue lifting at her name, then slumping back, “next time we meet, try to be more talkative.” He smiled at her, poor boy’s mouth of bad teeth not reaching, in its effort at warmth, his eyes, unsold. And in that moment it started—her interest, small at the very first, in getting to him.

Walter Reed had Velcro-cuffed Frank’s wrists. His muscles had smoothed flat. His milky head was shaved. One side of it was dented like a dropped can of soup. His cheeks had thinned down, so his ears got big. His chin seemed collapsed; now he had an overbite. In wheezes, support hose inflated and deflated on his calves, to aid circulation. The mattress cover, waterproof, air-filled, made a similar panting to stave off bedsores. A bag of urine hung on a hook on his bed’s chrome bars.

Clara was on a chair upholstered in banana-yellow vinyl, reading a crafts magazine. Angela, wedged into the same chair as Mom, was watching Idol on the high-mount television. Trevor was knocked out in a stroller, quilted baby bags looped on the handgrip. Mary wished she were a believer, she so wanted to pray them into disappearing, especially the moppets. Please, please, she entreated, could you just get out?

Hold up. Take it easy. Play nice.

“Mary.” Clara dropped the magazine and inadvertently dragged up Angela, who popped out a whine, turned up the sound on the set, and woke Trevor, now snuffling. “How long have you been standing there?” Clara was about to come hug her, but she stopped mid-room. She clasped her hands together in front of her waist like a nun.

“Long enough,” Mary said, the words coming out cooler than she intended.

Angela turned her head from the set and worried her gaze to Mary. “Mommy,” she said, pulling it out in a ticky-tacky crescendo.

“I wish you’d called,” Clara said. “I wanted to bring you up here.”

“Day went different than I’d expected it to,” Mary said.

“Oh, Mary.”

“Clara, I don’t think—”

“All right, you’re right. You’re so right. Angela,” Clara said, stern. “Angela.”