Trident

Ch. 1: The Only Easy Day was Yesterday

"Okay."

He's responded. One word, two syllables. He can't gage if it's enough of a reply to pacify her. Amanda's eyes are done being irritated. Instead, they are weighted with unease. That's almost worse. She shouldn't have to worry about him, same as he shouldn't have to need her to worry about him.

"You haven't taken your meds this morning, Mica." She walks behind and nudges him forward with the hand not holding onto Wyatt. "Go take them. Then come down for breakfast."

This bothers him too, that she must remind him to do something he's capable of doing on his own. He is capable. He hasn't forgotten, it's just that he woke up to a baby crying in a sundrenched home in the middle of the desert and there was blood and the acrid taint of gunpowder and ringing in his ears and bodies that should move but won't. He wakes every morning with a gun in his hand, which can't be because Amanda won't give him the combination to the gun safe. But it's still real in his head; a gun that makes bodies stop moving, a finger on a hand on an arm pulling the trigger again and again and again. He doesn't know what he was supposed to know.

Amanda will have to understand: it takes him a long time to come back from the desert every morning. It's a perilous journey, especially given how the past and present slow dance, limbs intertwined. Danger is in the peripheral space between those limbs, between knowing things and not knowing things, between guilt and acceptance. It's always lurking.

He can't stop a bullet but he'll be damned if he gets caught again not knowing it's coming for him.

###

Amanda Laverty stands on the yellow lawn in front of her house, staring at the front door. It's wide open, but she's to stay where she is. She can't go through the door of her own home; this is one of many things not sitting right with her. Her younger sisters cling to her sides. Somewhere off to her right, her friend, Brianna, is holding Wyatt. She should be holding her baby, but her arms are shaking. If her sisters weren't anchoring them down with the weight of their own trembling bodies, Amanda would vibrate until she floated off into the sky.

The sky. Even that expansiveness doesn't know what to do with Amanda right now. Its omnipresent clarity has been replaced by a grey veil. Rain has begun to fall; it mixes with salty tears on the faces of her sisters and makes its way down to the parched earth.

The street in front of her house is lined with vehicles. Strangers in uniforms go in and out of the house she's not allowed to go in or out of, and Amanda is standing like a lawn ornament adorned with two weeping girls thinking about how badly California needs this rain.

There's a drought. She's been careful to conserve water. When Mica was deployed, she limited herself to two-minute showers. She never took a bath even when she was pregnant and the doctor suggested it to ease the tension in her back. When her sisters moved in, she made them adhere to the same austerity measures. Since Mica's been back, though, she's had to bite her tongue. His showers last until the hot water runs out. Longer. Last week, she made her way into the steam-filled master bath. There Mica stood, body in the middle of a spray of freezing water, eyes set on some point half a world away.

Now the sky has opened and the whole town is a cold shower. She imagines Mica's eyes are still set on the desert horizon, on a sun that's always setting and never seems to want to rise.

She's supposed to be a pro at this. Mica too. They both chose the Navy and knew when they also chose each other that long separations would be a part of their lives together. Their shared ambition was a mutual attraction. Mica was beginning his training to become a Navy SEAL when they met and now she's on the path to join him. Because of Mica, she knows what she's getting herself into. She knows yesterday will be easier than tomorrow and until this moment, that's never frightened her.