My family forced me, five months pregnant and grieving my husband, into a freezing garage on Thanksgiving morning—then a soldier stepped out of a convoy, saluted me, and said, “Colonel Ellison.”

Chapter 2

They came in a packet of perfume and noise, Natalie first with a travel mug, then Philip behind her, swinging the keys to his European car around one finger and grinning at nothing, then my father, Walter, who brought the newspaper he would hide behind for the rest of the morning, and finally my mother, Dorothy, carrying a scarf she did not need because she had decided to be cold-natured twenty years ago and never reconsidered.

They filled the house like water filling a cup, spreading into corners, touching things. Natalie ran a finger along the kitchen island Evan had built from oak he had hauled in the bed of his own truck. Philip opened the refrigerator and shut it, opened the pantry and shut it, opened the back door and looked at the yard as if cataloguing what he would soon own.

“Is this the guest bath?” Natalie asked, pausing at the half-bath Evan had tiled in his last leave, and when I said no it was the hall bath, she said, “Well. It’ll do.”