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place she’d found?
    Tess nodded, “Yeah, I’m okay.”
    “Of course she’s okay!” Alice said, as if by not paying attention to Tess’s pain it would not exist. “She just needs to find herself again, to get moving.” Alice put down her fork and looked at Tess; her cheeks had become hollow, her skin deathly pale. “Right, Tess?” she asked hopefully.
    Tess nodded and forced down a few more bites. She leaned her chin in her palm and asked, “How do I do this?”
    “Eat?” Alice joked.
    Kevin gave her a disapproving look. She shrugged.
    “No. This…life?” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “How do I do it without him?”
    Kevin reached out and touched her arm.
    “We’ll figure it out,” Alice said with surety, although she had no idea how to go about helping Tess, or if she should be the one to do it—but she’d sure as hell try. Whenever Alice had been in crisis, her mother would tell her to push through it (whatever it was) and make it happen, and that’s just how she’d help Tess. She’d push Tess through this awful situation.
     
    After dinner, Alice washed the dishes while Kevin brought stacks of mail into the kitchen. Alice was secretly pleased when she noticed Tess inspecting the tabletops for water rings.
    “Tess, I’m really sorry about Beau,” Alice watched Tess move from inspecting the coffee table to inspecting the kitchen counter.
    “Oh, he’ll be okay,” Tess said as she settled onto a wooden chair.
    Alice shot a look of concern to Kevin.
    Tess caught the glance and cocked her head. The right side of her face showed a hint of a smile. “You know Beau, Kevin. He’ll be fine. He always is.”
    Alice knelt before Tess. “Tess, Beau’s gone. You know that, right?”
    Tess made a little laughing sound under her breath. “I know that.”
     
    They sorted through the mail in silence. The drawn tightness that had pulled Tess’s features down had softened. Tess found two successive unpaid bills and hoped the electricity wouldn’t be turned off. Thankfully, her mortgage was taken directly from their checking account. She wished Beau were there. He always had the patience to deal with the bills. Tess hated the time it took to get online and make sure the payments were being made to the right companies. Too many times she’d paid her Sunoco bill to Sprint, and her Direct TV bill to Dr. Roberts. She took a stack of bills into the den.
    Tess pulled her laptop onto her lap and realized that she’d been spending every evening in that exact position since Mr. Fulan had come to her house. Mr. Fulan . Just thinking about him brought the urge to hold her breath against his scent and made her stomach hurt. How could they tell her that Beau was dead if they didn’t even find his body? The Skype website greeted her, bright and welcoming. She clicked on BethesdaShooter, biting her lower lip and allowing hope to swell in her racing heart. The connection failed, and her shoulders dropped. “Oh, Beau,” she said quietly. “When are you coming back?” She rested her hand on her belly.
    “Tess?” Kevin said from the doorway. He spotted the light blue screen and went to sit next to her.
    Tess shrugged. “I thought he might be on.”
    “Tess, Beau is dead. He can’t be—”
    Tess interrupted, “Stop saying that! You don’t know . They never found him. Maybe he’s not…” She could not bring herself to say the word. How could she tell Kevin that she would know if Beau were gone? She’d feel it, like a dark abyss in her soul. She didn’t feel that emptiness. Beau’s presence still remained in her heart.
     
    Iraq
     
    The memory of twelve-year-old Samira, torn apart and bleeding between her legs on the night of her wedding, came rushing back to Suha. Her face reddened. She turned toward the injured man, her back to the children, and willed the images to leave her mind. Samira’s husband, the louse, had violated Samira roughly and left her in her marital bed to roam the streets with his