Mom and I move into the guest cottage in the Hamptons at my grandparents’ estate. They’re never home—always off on cathedral tours, European river cruises, spa weeks, their villa in Tuscany. Mom gives away her furs and jewelry and enrolls in nursing classes.

“I prayed every day back in Saigon that God would keep you safe,” she tells me the night we move in. “I prayed that He would deliver you back to me, and if He did I promised I would devote my life to service for others.”

She tells me that one day she was sitting on the veranda at Dad’s compound, and she had what she called a “vastation.” Bathed in heavenly light. Angel choir. Stuff like that. She was sure it was God answering her prayers, sealing the deal. A week later, I was rescued.

So she has to make good on her part of the bargain.

“What about Dad?” I ask.

“What about him?”

“Did you pray about him? I mean, was there any divine guidance or whatever for you and him, staying together or getting divorced and all that?”

“Not exactly,” Mom says, not catching on that I’m joking. Or at best just maybe half-serious. “I just felt that if your father was going to continue the course he’s on, it wouldn’t fit with the new direction I’m supposed to take in my life. And it’s not right for you, either. You need a father who will be here, and not a father who keeps choosing the war over his family.”

I’ve never heard Mom talk like this. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a conversation with her that involved much thought about, well, anything, except how it related to her. This new Mom is going to take some getting used to.

Geoff drives out every other weekend, and he and Mom actually get along with each other. On his third time down, I’m sitting on the veranda, not doing anything, when he throws a pair of swimming trunks in my lap. “Found these in your bedroom,” he says.

I hold them up with two fingers, then fling them back at him. “So?”

He tosses them at me again. “So we’re going swimming,” he says. “Gotta get you in shape for the swim team.”

I shake my head. “Never going to happen.” But he won’t take no for an answer and bugs me until I agree to at least go in with him. It’s a struggle wading through sand with my prosthesis, and by the time we get down to the water I’m dripping with sweat. I leave the prosthesis on the beach and lean on Geoff as I hop down to the ocean. We wade in together, but as soon as he lets me go, a wave knocks me down. More waves crash over me until I push off with my one leg and knife through the breakers to calmer water.

And the next thing I know, I’m swimming. I don’t really need my flutter kick to stay afloat, though once I start my freestyle stroke I miss being able to do it. Geoff keeps close, in case I have trouble. He doesn’t say that’s why he’s doing it, but I know.

The funny thing is that after all the physical therapy I did to build up my upper body strength, I can almost keep up with him, even just kicking with one leg. Geoff can’t believe it.

After ten minutes swimming parallel to the shoreline, we head back in.

“Dude, we’ve definitely got to get you on the swim team again when you come back to school,” Geoff says when we drag ourselves up onto dry land.

We’re toweling off back on the beach, and I’m trying to figure out how to reattach my leg without getting sand inside the prosthesis.

“I kind of don’t think I’ll be going back,” I say. “I’m planning to just do some night classes down here and get my GED.”

“That’s crazy,” he says. “We have senior year coming up. We’ll rule the school.”

“I doubt that,” I say. “And anyway, I don’t really want to be a walking freak show, people staring and everything.”

“That’s just temporary,” Geoff says. “People get used to anything. It’s just because it’s new and different. I hear girls dig guys with scars. They think you’re tough or something.”

“First, I don’t think that’s true. I think you made that up. And second, what I have isn’t just a scar.”

“So it’s a war wound,” he says. “That’s even cooler, if you think about it.”

I don’t say anything else. I always thought Geoff knew so much more about everything than me, knew how to talk to girls, knew how to win arguments, knew how to get along with teachers, his parents, just about everybody, while still being true to what he believed. I still think that about him. But today, sitting here at the beach, having this conversation, I realize there’s a gulf between us that we’ll never be able to close, or even fully cross. He thinks this is about meeting girls and fitting in. But I’m still having flashbacks, waking up in the middle of the night, caught up in dreams about the MPs murdered right in front of me in Cholon; Trang blown apart by the land mine; Le Phu, her face destroyed by a bear; the little boy who lost his hands, and his life, playing with a bouncing bomb. I’ve been beaten and tortured and shot. I lost my leg. And I don’t think I can say this to anybody, but I miss Phuong.