She’d been two the day the truck drove onto the Marine barracks in Beirut and crashed into the lobby. The truck’s only obstacles: concertina wire and sentries with unloaded rifles. Condition Four: no magazines, no chambered rounds. Not that it would have made a difference. The force of the detonation lifted the building off its foundations, and gravity slammed it back to Earth, crushing those inside. The fireball killed the rest. A good rule of thumb, Jenn had found: the brutality of a thing was directly proportional to how often the word “instantaneous” was used. Her father hadn’t suffered—the most comfort that could be offered. The same could not be said of her mother.

What little Jenn remembered of her mom was hard. Beth Charles had been a small, practical woman. After her husband’s funeral, she drove straight to the liquor store. Never a drinker, she settled on vodka because mouthwash masked the smell when she was on duty. She hadn’t hit Jenn often. And never too hard. Only the one scar, behind her ear, but that had been an accident. Jenn remembered being really afraid only a few times. Mostly when the gun came out at night. Her mom would strip and clean it on the coffee table with the television up so loud that Jenn slept with a pillow over her head.

After the wreck, Jenn went to live with her grandmother. She ran her tongue over her teeth.

“I’m very sorry,” Gibson said.

“Why did you call her Bear?”

Gibson laughed and took a bite of pie. “She was a full-body hugger. Wrap her arms around you and squeeze for all she was worth. Whenever she saw my father, she’d take a running start at him, and he’d yell, ‘Bear hug, incoming!’ Became kind of a thing. Suited her. Also, she was always hibernating somewhere with a book. I think I was the only one who actually called her Bear, though.”

“What was she like?”

“Bear? She was my sister, you know? I mean, not my sister sister, but we grew up together. We didn’t have a whole lot in common, but she was just good. Really good. She was one of those kids that made other parents jealous. Like why couldn’t their kids be more like her? She was easy, polite. Kind to everyone. Totally unspoiled. But really stubborn too.” Gibson laughed at a private memory. “When she decided something was going to be a certain way, it was a lost cause to resist. Trust me.”

“When did she start to change?”