Her latest letter was written on scented stationary and made me think Charlie had become overly sentimental. But I had always been the harder one, while Charlie had once been the kind of woman who dotted her i’s with hearts

An interview from that morning played.  I’d seen it three times.  A man coated in a fine ash gestured and pointed.  The powder outlined the creases in his lips and palms, dusted the bushy brows above his shining eyes.  The camera zoomed out to include the twisted and crumpled metal, the American flag curling in the man’s back pocket.

Mom squeezed my knee.  “Let’s get it over with.”

Gregg sprawled across the hardwood floor like a lizard prone against the side of a child’s mesh-wire cage. Snores rumbled from his mouth. A fine film of moisture coated his skin. He could have been anywhere from his mid-thirties to almost fifty. His face was so puffy, so white and distended, it made any narrower estimate of his age impossible. His hair was curly. His eyes were closed. His boyfriend, Jack, reached down to pick up the cell phone flipped open in Gregg’s hand.

They had been in the jungle for a week and Thailand for three weeks before that. It was their first trip abroad together, a great adventure away from their families. A chance to be free and to be together. They were eighteen and told each other they were in love.

The son keeps chanting, “threeeeee, twooooooo, wunnnnnn, fire!” twenty or thirty times; he’s a record with a deep scratch. When his launcher misfires, he shrieks, “backfire,” or “watch out!” and runs in thrilled circles around the yard throwing plastic army men or mini metal dump trucks. His kid sister has a friend over, and this girl’s getting nervous. Little sis suggests they escape the searing sun by returning inside. As she passes him, the boy grabs his sister’s pigtail—demanding they keep playing his game of shifting rules.

 My own children will remember me fixing the DVD player with a butter knife, or making a duster out of an old sock, a pole and some duct tape.

Sit on the dock before sunrise. Watch Peter dump lobster traps off the stern of his boat. Before the sky brightens (before he can see you), sneak back up to the hotel to start your shift in the kitchen.

I despise my barber.

I sit down in his old style chair and I tell him what I want done to me. He runs his hands through what he’ll be dealing with, frowns casually in acknowledgement of my wishes, and goes about his work. Then I sit there, staring at myself in the mirror, for the next half an hour.

The sun was proud that day, the sort of sun that you can feel stroking your face and prickling your back. They walked onwards, further along the same road they had driven down the previous night, flanked by trees that funneled them down the road and shielded them from view.

She surveyed the room. There were bright yellow squares where photographs hung, hiding the paint from years of sunlight. She spotted the loose floorboard where an old cedar box used to hide, holding the most secretive possessions.