Mica Laverty's body takes cues from his mind. A flash of movement and his brain sends the message: danger, danger, death. Heart sprints; nostrils flare. Gunpowder mixes with sand mixes with iron; his nose and lungs fill with it.
Danger, danger, death. The enemy could be anywhere... or everywhere.
It could be here. Here is a desert compound eighteen klicks southeast of T-4 Airbase. Sand gathers in the corner of an open window.
He blinks and here becomes a nursery in a two-story house in Coronado Island, California. There's sand, yes-beyond the open window, not within its creases. Beach sand next to a shimmering ocean instead of sand next to more sand and no water, only taupe earth set against eggshell blue sky. He's in a house and there's blood... maybe. He blinks and it's there, blinks again and it's gone.
A baby is crying.
He's supposed to do something but he's forgotten how to do it. There's this baby here in his crib but here where the crib is, there's instead a thin mattress and a man on the ground next to it and a girl on top of it. Her body is still. Too still, too small for so much blood. She isn't supposed to be here. He didn't know.
He didn't know, he didn't know, he didn't know.
His ears ring in D-flat. The baby's wails can't compete with the howling in his mind. It blocks out his own cries too. Maybe if he can't hear it, it isn't happening.
A flash of movement. Danger.
Mica is all hands-on deck, every muscle ready to fight. He needs to get ahead of this danger. The wind needs to stop blowing sand into his eyes and a dirge into his ears.
He's ready to strike when the movement slows from a flash to a blur to a distinguishable form. That form is a she-a she with eyes wide. Annoyed. She scoops up the child and holds him to her chest.
Amanda. Wyatt. His wife. His son.
Here. California. This is California. The coast, not the desert.
The flash that is now Amanda is pissed. "He needs to be fed. How long have you been standing there, Mica?"
Mica isn't sure if he's hearing her words or reading them on her lips. He's good at lip reading. Comes in handy when your eardrums have taken a beating and your buddy's arms don't want to work anymore. There's nothing wrong with his ears now, though. It's his brain that's the problem. Her question isn't complicated. He should be able to answer it, but he's already forgotten what it was.
"I didn't know."
"You didn't know... that your son, a foot away from you screaming his lunges out, needs something." She bounces Wyatt on her hip. "Where are you right now, Mica?"
He blinks. He's here. Now. That's always the answer. We are always where we are and the time is always now. Problem is, the past is the present and the future will be the same forever and ever.
The same bright blood dripping from the same narrow wrist.
Every time is now. Every place is here. Soon there will be enough blood to fill the desert.
Amanda doesn't want to hear about dead girls and blood, though. He can't bring himself to tell her about all of that anyways.
"I'm home."
Amanda's shoulders relax. "That's right. You're home. With me, with your son, with Rachel and Kaylee, and your mom. We all support you."
That's silly. A five-month-old baby and his wife's teenage sisters take more than they give. Besides, he doesn't need help. Or doesn't want to need help.
"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.
At least the drought will be over tomorrow, she thinks. It will make farmers and people who battle wildfires happy. People will be happy when she is not and that's a good thing. The world will keep spinning, but she hates the world for that; it can't even stop a day to help her figure out what went wrong.
Mica has suffered from his deployments, as has Amanda. He leaves one version of Mica and returns another. But it's always Mica-she tells herself this repeatedly. People change but they are still themselves. She won't accept the whole "you're not the man I married" line, not when she knew what she was getting herself into before she married him. Nonetheless, not knowing which version of her husband will be coming back from one of countless wars has resulted in her coping in unhealthy ways. Ways not in her marriage's best interest.
She doesn't want to think about that now, though. Not when the drought is over and her sisters are tethering her to the front lawn and there are strangers inside her home.
She thinks instead about the day Mica met their son. That day, the palpable excitement of families waiting to be reunited with their loved ones after a long deployment was absent. There weren't families, plural, only Amanda, Wyatt, and her sisters, and there wasn't excitement as much as there was fear.
They were the only ones waiting because Mica was alone, or not strictly alone. He marched in next to officials who hadn't been away from their families for eight months, who hadn't missed the birth of their child or that child being able to hold his head up on his own. They hadn't missed their wife and wondered how she would fair without him and with a new baby, all while applying to become a Navy SEAL and possibly forgetting she was married for a few fleeting weeks.
No one else but Mica.
His gait was stiff as he approached. She knew before he touched her that he was a new version of Mica. She would have to get to know this one and he would have to get to know her. He lifted his son so they were at eye level. She'd fretted that Wyatt would cry when this stranger took him, rough hands and the smell of an arid country on him. But Wyatt smiled his fat-cheeked baby smile and the stiffness in Mica's limbs softened. He brought his son to his shoulder. Mica was home and also eight thousand miles away and he was a new Mica. She could adapt. She could learn who this new man was. She could remember not to forget she was married-she would not make that mistake again. Mica would heal. Wyatt would help him heal. This new version of Mica, this scars on top of scars version-his family would put him back together.
On the day Mica met his son, Amanda's fear turned to steel resolve. Fire could be doused by water. A drought could end.
And now it has. Amanda is standing on the lawn, water pooling at her feet. The drought is over. She breaks then, tries to fall to the ground but her sisters hold her up. She tips her head back to the sky and lets the storm rage.
###
Mica's friend, Damon, doesn't want to talk about Syria. It's been weeks since he got back, and Mica's mind continues to fuse time like superglue webbing his fingers together. Damon was with him the day things went wrong, but no convincing will make him talk about it.
"What's to say?" Damon shrugs him off when Mica brings up the topic. "I don't remember any of it."
It's true, Damon was there but wasn't there. The girl who wouldn't move, their friend, Eddie, dying-Damon was already injured by this point, a whole chunk of his life erased as opposed to Mica, whose life is time jumbled up like clothes thrown into a washtub.
There's the fog of war, though, and then there's this. Something happened that shouldn't have. Mica needs help piecing it together. But most of the players are absent, dead, or in Damon's case, have compromised memories. It's as frustrating for Damon as it is for Mica. Damon has his own recovery to deal with, and Mica gets the impression his questions aren't helping with that.
"I think I have to take this to Captain Talbot."
Damon shakes his head. "You gotta let this lie, man. Eddie's not coming back, okay? He's dead no matter how much you pick at this. And that Yazidi girl? She wasn't your fault. You got your target. You did good that day."
Mica cringes. You did good killing that day.
Damon's living room closes in on Mica. His palms sweat. If he doesn't get out of here soon, his friend's condo is going to have a bay window overlooking the Syrian desert. He says his goodbyes. Damon's wife, Brianna, who is also Amanda's friend and a no-nonsense kind of person, grabs him by the arm on his way out.
"I don't blame you for being curious, Mica. You do what you need to do, no matter what Damon says. Just keep in mind." She releases his arm, pats it once, cocks her head like she's lecturing one of her kids. "Sometimes we value the truth more than we do the people who guard it. You have to decide which is more important."
Mica holds these words as he drives. He holds them all the way to his commanding officer's office. Not on the base. Talbot is at home today. Sunday. As soon as his wife, Cynthia, ushers him into the foyer, Talbot takes him under his arm, brings him to his oaken study, closes the door, like he already knows what Mica's going to ask him. Or maybe because he already knows what he's going to tell Mica.
Captain Scott Talbot guards the truth.
"You've been struggling with everything, haven't you, Mica?"
Mica's eye twitches. He forces himself to stare at the man sitting across from him. "Is it that obvious?"
Talbot chuckles. He thinks Mica is making a joke but it's a genuine question. Mica is trying to appear to others like he still understands time in a linear sense and if his captain can see he's failing at this, then everyone else can too.
Talbot places his hands on his desk and clasps his fingers together like he's about to pray for Mica. Mica doesn't want prayers, though, he wants answers.
"I'm struggling. Yes. I'm struggling. There are gaps. Relying on my own brain to fill them isn't easy. But... I think I know. Except, if we were only there to provide training... why... Things were... wrong. When Eddie died. They... you knew about..."
Maybe Mica is also a guardian of the truth. It's buried deep within him and he thought he could bring it out today, lay it on Talbot's desk, dissect it. But now all he can come up with are phrases that don't fit together. It's truth as seen through a colander held up to a solar eclipse. It reflects back crescent-shaped light surrounded by so much shadow. His brain is a colander now and only the smallest bits and pieces are draining through.
Talbot plays the stoic captain. He has been like a father to Mica, stern but wise. He will consider what truths Mica should guard. They may not be the truths he's seeking.
"Your wife, Amanda. I understand she's applied for BUDS training."
This isn't what he expected. Thrown off, Mica nods.
"Brave woman. I was for letting females in. If they can handle the training, let them become SEALs. Of course, few can handle it, but that's a different matter. Hardly any are accepted to BUDS in the first place."
Mica's eye twitching is beginning to unnerve him. He can't will it to stop just like he can't will Talbot to tell him what he wants instead of going on about Amanda and BUDS. "I came here for answers about Syria. What does my wife have to do with that?"
"She has nothing to do with it, but everything to do with you. I've watched you develop into a fine SEAL, Mica. Being a SEAL is about far more than physical strength-you know that. It's about strength of character. When we look at candidates, we look at who they are. We look for integrity."
"That's why I encouraged Amanda to apply." There's no need to for this conversation. He focuses on breathing deep, keeping himself in the present-the present in Talbot's office, not the present where California and Syria get superglued together.
The corners of Talbot's mouth turn down, the curve of his lips walking the line between truth teller and snake oil salesman. "I hate to be the messenger, but... I've been informed that Amanda was unfaithful to you."
"What? No, she..."
"I'm sorry, son. Hard as it is to hear, I thought it best to be direct."
Talbot says more things that Mica can't comprehend. When he does tune back in, he wishes he hadn't. "You know what this could mean for her career. If it came out, that is."
Mica can't extract this particular chapter of the Navy rule book from his head right now but he knows an affair is considered conduct unworthy of an officer.
Amanda... she wouldn't.
Mica clings to coherency as a dust storm rolls in. It's time for him to move out. Get ahead of it. Go. Go somewhere. Somewhere where a man he's trusted with his life wouldn't say things purposely to hurt and confuse him.
He misses more pieces of the conversation. The effort to stay in the present with Talbot is becoming Herculean.
"You're a good man, Mica. Amanda would make a good SEAL. None of this need come to light. None of it. All you must do is let it go. You understand?"
Mica leaves without answering because he does understand. He's gotten what he came for after all: truth packaged as a threat. Talbot wants them to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, guarding a poisonous truth, but only Mica's lungs will fill with sand when a storm hits during their watch.
Only Mica will be expected to drown in it.
###
Amanda reaches into the pocket of her jeans, runs her fingers over the folded half slip of paper tucked away there. Her sisters remain at her side as the rain falls and the first responders do their work, as NCIS agents photograph and collect evidence. The paper she hides is one bit of evidence they won't get.
She was careful, otherwise, not to contaminate the space. She called it in. She cleared her sisters and Wyatt out of the house before they could see. She messaged Brianna and couldn't bring herself to tell her why she needed her, just that she did.
She took the note. Mica's note. It was not meant for anyone but her. It answers nothing, anyways. She isn't satisfied, will never be satisfied with whatever NCIS decides. She's known since he came home that whatever happened in Syria has, like Mica himself, more than one version: the official account and the truth.
Mica didn't know or wouldn't say what that truth was. He didn't know she'd forgotten her marriage vows for a few weeks, or perhaps he did know, and that was why....
Why?
Five words, not addressed and not signed. The only thing his final message answers is the question of whether more questioning is necessary:
I forgive everyone but myself.
She repeats his words silently as his body, covered with a white sheet, is carried out on a stretcher.
Steel resolve.
This is Mica after his final deployment. This is the new version of her husband she must get to know by learning what he learned, by knowing what he knew, by discovering what he couldn't. She will learn who this man is who forgave someone for something, everyone for everything. Amanda will carry on his mission.
I forgive everyone but myself.
Everyone. This goes beyond her transgression, then. Everyone is forgiven except the one who'd done nothing wrong. No.
No.
Someone is to blame and Mica's death has set them free. She will shake the entire world apart before she lets that stand.