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hair and polished boots. There was such vitality about them, it was easy to forget they trade in war.
    Clouds covered the sky for days, and a smell like burning rubber or wet animal fur, unidentifiable and vaguely sinister, hung over Fayetteville. People said it came from the tire factory outside town. Others pointed to the chicken processing plant. Either way, the smell filled my nose and clung to my skin. I needed a job: my savings were running low and I was obstinate about splitting everything. Miles offered to pick up the rent, to pay for utilities, to cover groceries, but my mother had always warned me about depending on a man. I was afraid that if he paid my share, I would owe more than I wanted to give.
    At an interview at a call center for a major cell phone company, more than twenty of us looked to fill a handful of spots. A woman thumbed my résumé and asked, “Don’t you think you’re a little overqualified for this job?”
    I looked at her squarely.
    â€œAre you hiring for other positions?” I said. “Because I didn’t see any advertised.”
    Most jobs in Fayetteville didn’t require a college degree. I applied to be a secretary, a bank teller, a receptionist—but it was always the same response. My savings disappeared, and when I saw an ad in the paper for a waitress at a nightclub, I slipped on my Parisian boots and headed to the seedy downtown district. The club appeared stark and dingy inthe daylight as I waited for my turn to speak to the manager. He looked me over as we sat on a pair of low chairs in the bar.
    â€œDo you have a problem working in an all-black nightclub?” he asked.
    â€œDo you have a problem hiring me?” I said.
    The manager smiled, stood, and shook my hand. I never heard back, which was all the answer I needed.
    I spent my mornings in bed and my afternoons at the public library. I checked out books and drove home to read on the back porch until the light faded into evening. I began to worry about what it would mean to be tied to the military. How would I navigate this life for the long haul? Where would my own dreams and ambitions fit in? When the brightness had disappeared from the day, I turned on the porch light and sat in the yellow glow, waiting for Miles to come home.
    On a Saturday afternoon Miles and I drove across town, up Bragg Boulevard and out the other side to the small communities that bordered the base. We pulled off the main road into a subdivision tucked behind a copse of pines.
    â€œWe’re here to see the Priestmans,” Miles said to the guard at the gate.
    The guard flipped through a sheaf of papers tacked to his clipboard.
    â€œThe Priestners?”
    Miles knitted his eyebrows together, considering. “It could be the Priestners.”
    The guard waved us through.
    â€œFollow the road around the lake to your left,” he said. “Take the first road on your right.”
    We pulled past the guardhouse and onto the road that wound toward the water.
    â€œThe Priestmans?” I said.
    Miles laughed. “I thought it was Priestman.”
    â€œWho is this guy?”
    â€œAnother pilot. A CW4. His wife’s Alpha Company’s FRG leader.”
    FRG: family readiness group. For the wives of the soldiers in the unit—not for the girlfriends like me. When we’d first gotten to Bragg, Miles had handed me a sheet of paper with the emergency contact information for the wives.
    â€œIn case something happens,” he said.
    I looked over the printout. “Would you mind giving whoever’s in charge of this list my number?”
    Miles said he would. But later he told me the FRG refused to add me to the list, even as a courtesy. Unless we were married, I was discovering, I had no status in the unit.
    We followed the lake into the subdivision. Wood frame houses lined the street and leafless dogwoods waited for spring in yards laid with pale yellow grass. In the driveway at the end of