SURVIVORS

He drives. I slide down in the passenger seat, watching the sun’s light beginning to disrupt the dark from under the bill of my Mason Oil cap. The gun blast still feels terribly good. I can’t explain. He reaches across and takes my hand. I take his. We drive back to the cottage. Pilot is at the door, waiting, but it’s too early, and she settles back down by the stove. I put on my dog tags, my hip-long sweater; I brush my hair at a tiny mirror over the sink.

I still have streaks of Spanish green around my eyes. Luke stands with his back to me, facing the ocean. He turns. He’s wearing a Greetings from Hampton Beach T-shirt, the shirt he sleeps in sometimes.

I focus on the shirt, but he is saying something. I don’t want to listen. I know where we’re going. He says, “You and I are always going to have a gun.”

I stand like I did the first time I stayed, my palms against the wood of the door behind me.

I look into his tortured eyes. I know what he means. It’s in our history and will always be part of our story.

“You’re gonna break my heart if I ask you to stay,” he says, “if we stay together. We need to take care of ourselves. First.”

The first saves me.

He comes to me and places his hand on my back. I feel his fingers and hand press up my spine, like zipping a tight, tight dress.

I say, “Where will you go?”

He shrugs. “The place my family talks about.”

“The place out west with river rapids.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you could sleep,” I say, about out west.

He shoves his hair off his forehead. “Could stop by home.”

I wrap my arm around his ribs.

He wraps his arm around mine.

I also see Yiey’s face as she looks at us. It is tender.

The foghorn sounds. And again. And again. He straightens. The smell of the incense in my little shrine, although it’s not lit, is sharp and sweet.

I want to make plans with him. Call me. In one week. In six months. In seven years like you said. I say, “You’ll see your little sister. Mandy.” Maybe we both have a flash of her smile. I wipe tears off my face with both of my hands. He turns away.

I’m trying to leave him, but I have to tell him . . . I start to laugh and bend down and feel my hair fall down over me.

“You’re laughing.”

“I know you need to go. I know I need to leave you. But my crazy grandmother’s here.”

“She’s always here,” he says.

“Just let me say this. Something about being with you,” I say slowly, “helps me—makes me—look at my family. The crazy ones.”

“They’re not crazy,” he says.

Like us? I wonder.

He’s trying to help me go. He lifts my head. “We’re like this, your grandmother and me,” he says, holding up two fingers, tight, and I smile at him. “We tell stories like a couple lifers. I’m working on getting her into the bar at the VFW.” For a second I imagine my grandmother in her T-shirt and sarong wrapped around her hips on a bar stool with Vietnam vets and guys back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Sophea,” he says. “Strong girl.”

We look at each other.

This is the golden hour.

Tears are streaming down my cheeks. Pilot is curled in a ball by the stove. I put on my plaid jacket and cap. He watches.

“Pilot,” I whisper. She’s on her feet and to the door. Luke doesn’t stop me, but he doesn’t let me. He holds me with his eyes until I have my dog.

Pilot and I step into the snow.

Outside I bend over in grief. What have I done?

I look up at the moon. I force myself to follow it along the ocean.