In the spring the armory had a family day. Evan asked if she would come. She asked if Grace would be a problem. He said Grace was the point. They went. She wore the cream knit because it still fit in the shoulders and because she was done hiding the year in darker clothes. A sergeant’s wife said the baby was beautiful. Megan said thank you. Evan held Grace for the picture the unit wanted and then handed her back when she fussed, and the handing back was public and plain. Nobody asked about a neighbor. The day was hot dogs and a bounce house Grace was too young for. They left before the awards. In the truck Megan said, “Thank you for not making me a story.” He said, “You already were one. I just didn’t tell it.” She took that. It was the most accurate thing he had said since the filter aisle.
Darren’s mother came from Buffalo in July and wanted to see the baby. She was a woman named Irene who believed in napkins and suspicion. She looked at Evan once, on the step, and said she was sorry for the trouble. He said the trouble had a name and the name was fine. Irene blinked. She went inside and held Grace too tightly and then correctly. She told Darren, in the car, that the wife had manners and he should keep his. He said he was trying. Irene said trying was a start and not a finish. He already knew. He wiped his boots anyway, Pat’s rule, even when Pat was not there. Rules that survived the person who made them were the ones Megan trusted.
By the time Grace was two she had a word for each of them and a refusal to nap that united the house more than any session with Helen. Evan built a gate for the stairs. Darren assembled a shelf for the books Pat sent. Megan read the same book four times in one afternoon and did not resent the fourth time. The book was about a truck. The truck went home. Grace slapped the page. Home was a picture of a garage. Megan looked at the picture and then at the actual hall, duffel long since unpacked, uniform in a bag for the cleaner, jacket on the side hook only on Tuesdays now. She did not explain the page. She turned it. The truck arrived. Grace was satisfied. Satisfaction was a low bar and a mercy.
Evan still dreamed the doorway. He told Helen, not Megan, that in the dream he never dropped the duffel, he just stood on the porch and the door did not open. Helen said the dream was a fear of not being let in, and also a fear of what was inside. He said he knew. He went home and let himself in with his key. Megan was at the table with applesauce on her sleeve. Grace was under the table. He got down on the floor. The dream did not survive the applesauce. That was not healing. It was a Tuesday. He had learned, slowly, that Tuesdays were the only scale that did not lie.