Part of why I asked was to make sense of my own feelings.
Frankie was the one who brought us together, after all. I wanted to talk to the only other person who knew how it felt to lose him in the same way I did. I wanted to know that there was still a common goal, even if our link was gone.
I looked at Luke. He was resting his chin on his hand, eyes drifting.
“Luke?” I said.
“Hm?” He blinked a few times. “Oh. It was sad.”
It was sad? “Is that it?” I asked.
Luke’s face transformed in an instant to anger. Angrier than I’d ever seen him. “What, you want me to cry? I can’t just turn it on and off. That’s not how grief works.”
“I know. But Frankie was my friend, too. I mean—I can relate. Believe me.”
He looked back out the window. “No, you can’t. You weren’t there.”
That one got me in the gut. Of course I wasn’t there. But I had been there in spirit, listening to him, writing to him. Bearing witness. If not being a true wife, then something like a friend.
I opened my mouth to respond, but stopped. This was bigger than this moment. I understood. He could stew. He could hurt. He could be angry at me now, even though I was trying to help. But not forever.
After the procession wove through Austin, Frankie was buried in Texas State Cemetery under a dull January sun. Beside me, Luke had remained hard-jawed in his dress blues. When the officers fired ceremonial shots, he twitched in his wheelchair.
Elena had tossed a turquoise necklace into the grave, one Frankie had given her before he left. Louise, a license plate that spelled FRNKIE and three white roses. George had dropped in a stack of Marvel comics. The three of them held one another and wept.
Christmas had been last week. I thought about standing up to speak with a few of his other friends, telling one of the many stories we’d shared as kids, but none of them was self-contained—if I was going to tell the story of the Barbie car, then I had to start with the Christmas of 1995 to give context, and if I told about Christmas of 1995, I’d have to compare it to the previous Christmas, the one where my mom caught us dressing in his parents’ clothes.
The nurse who had driven us to the funeral waited in the van, hooking and unhooking Luke in and out like a kid to a car seat, popping handfuls of Corn Nuts. I thought I saw him crack a smile as I struggled to push Luke’s chair through the grass of the cemetery.
“Bastard,” I’d muttered.
Luke either hadn’t heard or pretended not to hear.
Two hours later, Lieutenant Colonel Yarvis greeted us at the entrance to Brooke Army Medical Center, giving a cold nod to the nurse as he lowered Luke’s platform to the ground. “That guy’s a bastard,” Yarvis said as soon as we were rolling back to Luke’s room, out of earshot.
I decided I liked him.
“So,” Yarvis said, wheezing a bit as he settled across from us. “How long have you been married?”
“Four months,” I said.
“Five months,” Luke said at the same time.
“We got married in the middle of August,” I said, grabbing Luke’s hand, burying my nails into it. That seemed to wake Luke up. That’s better, you jerk. I’m sad, too, but we have a job to do. He cleared his throat.
Yarvis looked from me to Luke, back to me. “Well, I can’t imagine the separation was easy. I know my wife and I couldn’t stand to be apart in our first year, and it’s clear that Cassie being able to visit you has helped a lot.”
“I come when I can,” I said, hoping he’d change the subject soon. The truth was I’d been there only a handful of times. An hour and forty-five minutes was a long drive, and when I did visit, we sat in silence while Luke watched the Dallas Mavericks on TV and I worked on mixing songs on GarageBand.
Luke and I tried to smile at each other. It looked more like we had gotten headaches at the same time.
Yarvis stared at his clipboard. “You’ve made significant progress, Private Morrow, and the doctors say you’re ready to go home.”
We were quiet.
Home. Okay. It took a while for what exactly that meant to set in. Luke didn’t have a place, so “home” meant my home. What else could it mean? We were married. That was why people got married. Not to deceive the U.S. government into giving them money. Most people got married because they liked each other enough to share a home.
The silence stretched on until Luke cleared his throat. “Wow, we’re obviously speechless, here.”
“Yay!” I followed, lifting our clasped hands in a pathetic cheer.