They had married at twenty-four and twenty-one in a VFW hall because Evan’s father had wanted a flag in the room and Megan had wanted a dress she could sit down in. Evan was already in. The first deployment was nine months and she had met him at this same door with a sign she was embarrassed by before he was up the walk. He had laughed at the sign and kissed her against the frame and the duffel had stayed in the hall until morning. That was the doorway she had meant to get again. The sign was in the attic. She had not made a new one. Some refusals are advance warnings a person does not read.
The second deployment stretched. Leave canceled in month eight. A video call on a bad connection where he said he could not talk about the work and she said the gutters were clean and both of them pretended that was a marriage. He sent money. She paid the mortgage. She ate dinner over the sink. The house got quiet in a way that was not peace. Quiet was an empty chair and a furnace that knocked at two in the morning.
Darren Ellis lived two doors down with his sister’s old Civic in the drive and a job at the water plant. He had helped Evan push a mower onto a trailer once, before the deployment, and they had talked about the Bills for ten minutes. That was the whole friendship. After Evan left, Darren’s sister asked Megan if she needed anything, and Darren came with a shovel the week of the ice storm because the sister had said the walk was a sheet. Megan made coffee. He drank it standing up. He did not sit on the sofa that first day. Sitting came in February, when the furnace knocked and he knew a man at a supply house and the house was twelve degrees and she was in a coat in her own kitchen.