Caden put the car in a garage a block away. Apparently he’d bought the spot years ago. It required a mortgage and operating fees. Where I grew up, you parked in a lot someone else owned, your own driveway, or on the street.

  This was my new normal.

  On the walk along Columbus Avenue, I felt as if I were wearing a camo clown suit. Caden put his arm around me and kissed my temple as we waited at the light. The crowd crossed before the light changed to green, but I followed my husband.

  “We’re on 87th between Columbus and Amsterdam,” he said. “Avenues run north-south, streets run east-west.”

  “Got it.” We turned onto a narrow, tree-lined street. “This is a nice block.”

  “It is.”

  The houses were stone and connected to each other on the sides. Some were slightly set back from the street to accommodate a stoop and a few steps down to a garden apartment.

  He stopped by one such house and held his hand out while the other took my duffel off his shoulder. “Here we are.”

  I looked up. Garden apartment. Three stories. An attic with stone carvings around the leaded windows. “Is it all yours?”

  He threw the duffel up the steps. It made it halfway. “It’s all ours.”

  He picked me up in his arms before carrying me up the stoop. I squeaked in surprise. We laughed as he tried to unlock the door without dropping me, and when he managed to do it, I cheered.

  He retrieved my bag and dropped it in the foyer. We were at the base of a flight of stairs. Everything was polished dark wood carved at the corners. A beveled mirror was set into a frame with three brass hooks under it. I took off my cap and let my hair fall.

  I was fully overwhelmed. He took my cap and put it on a hook before taking my face in his hands and kissing me.

  “I have your back,” he whispered. “Okay?” I nodded, and he kissed me again. “Say it for me.”

  “You have my back.”

  “And your front.”

  I smiled into his kiss. “You have my front.”

  “I can take you to the bedroom if you insist or on the stairs right now.”

  “Will you give me a minute to shower?”

  “You have rank.”

  “That’s an order then.”

  He got his hips under me and his hands under my ass, hitching me up until I could get my legs around his waist. He carried me to our room. I didn’t see anything but his face on the way up. I only knew there were wood floors and windows. Two flights. A tower with me on top.

  He sat me on a bench in the bathroom and turned the water on in the white claw-foot tub. He kneeled in front of me to unlace my boots. I couldn’t stop looking at him in his fancy suit, kneeling on the bathroom floor to service me.

  “I hate that they make us wear this shit on the way home,” he said. “It’s total PR.”

  “Yeah, well, the military is nothing without its symbols, and that’s what I am.”

  “Were.” He pulled off the boot. “Now you are Dr. Greyson Frazier, MD, with a psychiatric practice in Manhattan.” He peeled off my socks. “And my wife. Stand up.”

  Still on his knees, he undid my buckle and fly and pulled my pants down, letting his palms spread out over the skin of my thighs. I stepped out of them and he tossed the pants aside.

  “Ah, I missed this.” He lifted my shirt and kissed the silver scar over my heart. He kissed my belly and the triangle below. I put my fingers in his hair, and he reached up under my clothes until he found my hardened nipples.

  “Caden,” I groaned. “Bath.”

  With a gentle suck on my belly, he stood. I started unbuttoning from the top and he unbuttoned from the bottom. We met in the middle and got all my clothes off until I wasn’t wearing anything but the dog tags that hung between my breasts.

  He laid them in his palm and looked at them, letting one clink against the other.

  “Take them off,” I said.

  He closed his fist around them and pulled them over my head. The chain slid against my long, straight hair, and I was free.

  Caden coiled the chain on the vanity. I shut off the water and tested it.

  Scalding hot.

  No one in the world knew me the way he did.

  He’d taken his jacket off, rolled up his sleeves, and bathed me, touching every part of my body. His hands knew exactly how to tease me. They were accurate and subtle, driving my desire forward without letting me come.

  He tossed the towel away and threw me on the bed, soaking wet.

  He didn’t even undress to fuck me. Not right away. He just spread my legs and slid his fingers inside me, then took out his monster of a cock and fucked me as if we hadn’t seen each other in four months.

  The sheets were white.

  The furniture was honey, and the lamps were Tiffany.

  Day turned into evening, but the street didn’t quiet.

  That was all I noticed between orgasms.

  In the darkness, we curled under the covers. He stroked my arm with his thumb, appreciating every inch of skin.

  “I haven’t shown you the house,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you going to show me all your childhood secret hiding places?”

  “The speakeasy in the basement? Yes.”

  He’d told me about the Prohibition-era space the first owners had dug out of the basement. How it had false walls, a mosaic tile floor, a mahogany bar, and secret places to hide customers and almost a century later, small children.

  “It’s a really nice house,” I said. “Is this a good neighborhood, as neighborhoods go in New York?”

  “This block is unattainable.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “This house is priceless. I could name a number and get it.”

  “Your dad was smart to buy it when he did.”

  “He wanted to be near enough to the hospital, but not that close. He had a space for a practice in the garden apartment, which is soon to be…” He waited for me to finish.

  “My practice.”

  “Bingo.”

  “I’m nervous.”

  “I know.”

  “What if I—”

  He put his finger on my lips before I could utter my litany of doubts. “You’re going to do fine. And if it takes longer than you think it should, we can survive on a heart surgeon’s salary for a while.”

  Of course we could. There was nothing to be nervous about. He had my back and my front.

  “Can I see the office?”

  “Yes.”

  We wiggled into pajamas and went down the back stairs, which led to a short carpeted hall with an old wooden door at each end.

  “The door at the back leads to a shared kind of alley thing out the front, so patients won’t bump into each other on the way in and out,” Caden said as he turned the skeleton key that stuck out of the office’s keyhole. It clacked deeply before the door swung open. He flicked on the lights.

  The office defied every expectation.

  I expected cold fluorescents and a dropped ceiling.

  What I got was a pristine white ceiling and warm lamps.

  I expected an empty space.

  What I got was a 1950s era desk and chairs, tufted couch, end tables, a clock where I could see it but the patient couldn’t, and a deep blue carpet to muffle the distracting scrape of chairs and footsteps. Behind the desk, a horizontal filing cabinet had framed pictures leaning on the top. Family. Friends. Caden and me on the rooftop of the hotel in Amman, with the sunset behind us. I picked up our wedding photo. My parents had set up the backyard in flowers and tables, doing the best they could when they heard we were getting hitched on two-day leave. Caden and me outside the combat hospital in Balad, dressed in dull green and smiles.

  “I read up on what you’d need. They said family pictures humanized you to patients.”

  “That’s right.”

  He opened the door on the far end of the room. The waiting room was bathed in the same warm lamplight. It was small. Two chairs and a love seat. A coffee table. A Wassily Kandinski print. Everything matched the interior office.

  “I had speakers put in.” He pointed up. Small wood-grain boxes hung in the corners where the ceiling met the walls. “I hear music soothes the savage breast.”

  Caden, a psychiatrist’s husband, had hang-ups about mental illness that had revealed themselves after I accepted his proposal.

  “I won’t be working with savages,” I said with a raised eyebrow. I was going to have to patiently whittle away this particular neurosis.

  “They won’t all have breasts either.” He put his arm around me. “So you like it?”

  “I love it. Madly, deeply. I love it.” I put my arms around his shoulders, and his snaked around my waist. “Thank you so much.”

  “There’s so much we’re going to do together.” He kissed my neck. “We’re going to build an entire life out of a war.”

  “That would be a miracle.”

  “First of many. You and me. We’re a miracle.” He pulled back so he could see my face. “You know what I see when I look at you?”

  “Your wife?”

  “The worst decisions I’ve ever made, I made for a reason. You. You rose out of the destruction. Our life together will be built into the best from what survived the worst.”

  “That’s very poetic.”

  He smiled. “I’ve been thinking about what to say for days. I wanted to explain how magnificent we’re going to be.”

  “Magnificent?”

  “I don’t think I quite nailed it.” He took me back into the hall and to an unremarkable door under the stairs. “Basement.”

  He opened the door, and flicked on the light. Wooden stairs led to a dirt floor in a four-by-five room. Caden reached around me and put his hands on a vase sitting on a set-in shelf. He yanked it, and the wall slid to the side, revealing a mosaic floral floor and dark wood bar stacked high with cardboard boxes.

  “Chez Columbus,” he said, smiling. “1925-1933.”

  Amazing. An actual speakeasy with a stairway to the hidden alley on the side of the house, hidden rooms, and lastly, behind the laundry room, a big wall safe. He opened it, then pushed away the wall behind it to yet another room with cylindrical holes in the concrete.

  “The bottle room,” he said. “This was where I hid when… you know.”

  “When you were scared.”

  “When I should have been stopping him from beating her.”

  “I’m going to get you out of the habit of blaming yourself.”

  “Good luck.” He held out his hand, moving the subject away from the abuse of his mother as he always did. “Come on. It’s cold in here.”

  The steps to the bedroom seemed like an eternal climb, but we wound up racing to the top. It didn’t matter who won. We both landed on the bed.

  We held each other tight, and I felt safe starting a new life with him.

  That night, with the whoosh of cars outside and a police siren whining far away, he woke with a grunt and a command. “Stop!”

  I reached for my revolver, but it was locked away in a strange closet, in the strange bedroom, in a city that was a sea of stone.

  But he was there, the street light blue on his cheek, and all was well as long as he was next to me.

  “Caden? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” He rolled over to face me. “Sorry.”

  “What was it?”

  “Dream. Nothing.”

  PTSD was as real as the war itself, and I had to know if he was reliving it in his sleep. “Caden. Can you tell me?”

  “Pieces of me were breaking off.”

  “Were you in Iraq? In the dream?”

  “No.” His denial was barely a whisper.

  I took it for a normal nightmare and joined him in sleep.

  Chapter Two

  CADEN

  Greyson was back, and like good news when nothing’s going right or a seat by the radiator after a day in the snow, she brought relief to pain I forgot I was feeling.

  As soon as she agreed to marry me, while I was still deployed, I started getting the house ready. I met with an architect and contractor on a short leave, and again on the way back from our wedding in California. I was barely off the plane before I started furnishing the house. I had an attending position waiting at Mt. Sinai, but she had nothing and I needed to give her everything.

  The house had been unoccupied since I left. Dad’s office was a wreck. I’d had it ripped down to the studs. Had the shitty memories scraped out of the plaster and sanded off the wood. When I resigned my commission and returned, it was all details and new furniture.

  That was when the dreams started.

  Or more accurately, the dream. They were all the same dream, the way a woman was the same woman from all angles, naked or dressed. Same person, only time and situations changed.

  I was somewhere in the house. The windows were painted over. I was in tremendous dream pain. Meaning I was terrified to the point of pain, but I couldn’t physically feel my body being torn in two.

  Obviously. It was just a dream. I never felt pain in my dreams.

  The dreams weren’t long. They came in the middle of the night, and I woke enraged, because I wasn’t just coming apart. Something was taking me apart. It had to be stopped.

  But when I woke to Greyson’s voice, I wasn’t pissed off at the dream thing. I was fine, and I went back to sleep. It hadn’t come back in two nights.

  “It’s nice to not have to rush through surgery,” I said, swinging my racquet at the tiny blue ball. It popped off the front wall, made it past the receiving line, and took off for the back wall.

  Danny thought he was in an action movie, again, and tried to climb the wall to get it, managing to just get it back into play. I slammed it to the other side of the court while he was recovering.

  “How about not getting shot at? Is that an improvement?” Danny said as I helped him up. He was a buddy from my residency at NYU Medical. Pediatric surgery, but he floated into general pediatrics when he didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to cut into children.

  “No one was shooting at me.” I snapped up the ball and got ready for my serve. “It was easy.”

  “I still think it was stupid,” he said. “But you lived, so whatever. They were your years to waste.”

  “Wouldn’t have met Greyson.”

  I served. He was better set up this time and won the point.

  “Yes! One more and drinks are on you, Private.”

  “Captain.”

  “You’re nothing out here, buddy. What’s Greyson? A major? That higher than captain?”

  “Yes, but we’re nothing here.”

  “Your woman still ranks you.”

  “Trash talk won’t win you the point.” I bounced the ball, setting up a serve that wouldn’t overpower him, which he’d be ready for, but one to surprise him.

  “That’s right. I forgot you were unshakable.”

  I served. He was off guard, recovering enough to return but not win. Two points later, I had the game.

  The club’s lounge wasn’t crowded on weekdays. Out the floor-to-ceiling windows, the rooftops of Manhattan were laid out like a fallen dresser with drawers pulled out randomly. Water towers, HVAC units, greenhouses, and patios dotted the rooftops, and through the slit of Second Avenue, I saw the southern tip of the island.

  Danny placed our drinks on the table by the window and threw himself into the chair. Guy couldn’t sit straight to save his life. I hadn’t noticed that until I got back from my second deployment. Sloppiness had always bothered me, but slouching never had. All kinds of new things bugged me now, but more things seemed petty and unimportant. Status symbols. Expensive things. A woman everyone else wanted. None of that was interesting anymore.

  “Sit up straight, would you?” I said. “You look like a rag doll.”

  “I’m entitled to sit like this today.”

  I tipped the Perrier bottle into the glass. The ice clicked. When it settled, I took a sip. “You blow one too many noses?”

  “I had to refer a kid, thirteen… he was thirteen. Had to refer his parents to an oncologist they’ll go broke paying. And it was hopeless. There was no… ah, never mind.”

  “Sorry, that’s… well, it’s part of the job. But sorry.”

  “Asshole.” He crossed ankle over knee and drank his beer. He was a redhead and, in the ultimate irritating cliché, had a temper to match.

  “I am an asshole.”

  “That some kind of opening for another war story?”

  It hadn’t been an opening any more than Dan’s snide comments were actual insults. My friend was making a request. He’d lost his brother on 9/11 and listening to me tell a war story made him feel as if he’d deployed with me.

  “I had this guy on the table,” I said. “We were low on morphine, so no one got it until we put them under, so he was screaming his head off. And rightfully so. His humerus was shattered.”

  “Very funny.”

  We clinked glasses, and I continued. “His arm was hanging on his body by half a bone. Rotator cuff was torn up. Skin had third-degree burns. I could put him back together well enough to get him to Baghdad, but it would have taken five hours. So meanwhile, you know what he’s screaming?”

  “Get the fuck on with the story?”

  “‘I’m a guitarist.’” I paused with my drink at my lips long enough to mutter, “He played fucking guitar.” I put the glass down. “Meanwhile, they tell me there’s another guy who’s about to lose his leg. They clamped off the femoral artery, but it’s going stiff real fast and he’s going to need a graft.”

  “Who’s triaging these people?”

  “Someone who loves rock. But what do you do? You can save the arm or the leg. You can’t save both. One gets a quick amputation. The other gets screws and pins. Which is it?”

  “Do I get vitals?”

  “Answer.”

  “Was either in shock?”

  “This isn’t a drill, Dan.”

  “Hang on—”

  “There’s no time.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Which?”