Two months after divorcing my wife because I believed our shattered marriage was destroying us both, I found her alone in a Chicago hospital.

Chapter 2

The sentence stayed in the air between us and refused to become meaning.

I heard every word. I understood every word. But they would not assemble themselves into something a man could survive, the way orders in a language you studied years ago refuse to become real when a stranger shouts them at you in the dark.

“What other reason?” I asked.

Sophie opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

Her fingers closed around the sleeve of my service uniform — the wool still carrying ten hours of base air and the faint chemical bite of aircraft fuel — and she held on with a strength that did not belong to the body standing in front of me.

Then her grip loosened.