Back at their cozy, ranch-style home, the four of them sat down to dinner, where Kelsey learned about Cathy’s job as an art teacher at El Dorado High School. Bill talked less about his work in insurance and more about his passion—college basketball. Kelsey told him about the game she had seen against Nebraska at Allen Fieldhouse, conveniently forgetting the rest of that night, with Davis.

When Meg expressed how nervous she was about the dance tryout, she offered to “send her twin sister” over to El Dorado sometime, to help her with her moves.

She saw the pride in Bill’s eyes when he looked at Peter, and the closed-mouth way he encouraged his dream to study at a good school far away from Kansas, though he didn’t quite understand it.

When Kelsey and Peter offered to do the dishes, Bill and Meg said good night, and the two of them were left to wash and dry.

They stood in silence for a while, their forearms occasionally touching as their hands worked, submerged in the soapy water, waiting for the sounds of teeth brushing and doors closing from down the hallway.

“I don’t know how else to say this,” Peter said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “But the thing is, unless you want to sleep on that polyester couch, there is only one open bed in this house.”

Kelsey knew what he was saying, and feeling the way she did about Peter, she would have to choose her words carefully. She turned to him, taking his still-wet hands, and placed them around her waist until they soaked through her shirt.

His palms went lower, to where the straight line of her back curved. She kissed his neck, slowly, many times, until she was right near his ear.

“I have a deep hatred of polyester,” she said.

His fingertips found their way under her shirt, and then out again, leaving hot traces. He took her hand.

“We can’t have that,” he said. “You need your privacy.”

“We need our privacy,” she replied, and kissed him softly on the mouth.

“Would you like to follow me to my room?” he asked, but before he could finish the question, she was already ahead of him, down the hall.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The next day, Peter woke Kelsey by kissing her at dawn. She snuck out to the polyester couch.

They drove alone in the overcast morning to the hospital, where they found Cathy so medicated that she didn’t wake when Peter shook her and said her name.

The nurse tried to calm Peter’s panic, assuring him that his mother was just sleeping. He had only a short time to see her before he had to ship out again, and most of the time she wasn’t able to say a word.

They sat as he held Cathy’s hand, her breaths steady against the beep of her heart monitor.

After three hours, Cathy emerged out of sleep to say a slurred “hello” to her son, and then sank back into slumber. Peter stood up, brushed his mother’s hair aside to kiss her forehead, and told Kelsey it was time to go.

“I want to show you something,” he told her.

They drove back to his house, but when Kelsey started to walk to the front door, he motioned her away.

“Back here,” he said, and they went around the house.

Peter’s backyard extended far past where she thought it would, past the mowed lawn and down a hill covered in wild grasses and weeds, to a clump of trees and bushes lining a small creek that seemed to connect all the houses on their block.

They hopped over the creek and ventured into the woods until all they could see were trees behind them, in front of them, to the right and left.

Then Peter led them farther, until the trees broke.

They stood at the edge of what appeared to be a wheat field, golden stalks reaching to Kelsey’s shins, hitting nothing but big gray sky for miles and miles. It was beautiful and still and clear. Everything a person could love about Kansas.

“Is this someone’s land?” Kelsey asked.

“Probably,” Peter said, looking around. “They don’t use it, though. I think it used to be wheat, but now it’s just a bunch of dried-up grass. It was like this when I was a kid. Which reminds me…” He snapped off a stick from one of the surrounding trees. “You’re going to want a stick.”

Kelsey found a relatively stiff, skinny branch and snapped it. “Why?” she asked.

Peter looked at her with a sly smile. “You want to know what I call this place?”

“What?”

He whipped his stick through the grass, stirring it. “Snake Country.”

Kelsey clenched her stick, trying not to show that she was afraid, and whipped it through the grass around her.

“Don’t worry too much,” Peter said, feeling the ground for a dry place to sit.

Kelsey let out a “ha!” and sat down next to him, running her stick over the bending blades.

“I played all sorts of games here,” he said. “Just a lonely little kid, talking to himself about ninjas and dragons.”

Kelsey smiled at the thought, picturing him leaping through the grass, wielding his stick as a sword. “I’m sure you were a great fighter.”

“Against all things imaginary, yes.” He laughed shortly. “I was undefeated.”

They were quiet, listening to the wind rustle the new leaves.

“I’m not a fighter, though,” Peter said, looking out. “I wasn’t built to be over there.”

“I don’t think many people are,” Kelsey said.

“No, but they can adjust to it. They trained us well. They make everything you ever thought you couldn’t do, like—” He swallowed. “Just brutal stuff. They make that stuff into a habit. Into a reaction. And then it becomes necessary, in your mind. My whole world is flipped. Last night, while you were getting the groceries from the car, my sister dropped one of her textbooks on the floor by accident, and it made a banging sound, and do you know what my hands did?”

Kelsey was silent. This was not a question she was supposed to answer.

“They clutched the air for a gun, Michelle. As if I was going to disarm my goddamn sister.” He shook his head. “I can’t even believe I’m back here, racing with Meg at the supermarket and, you know, kissing you, after I’ve seen what I saw. After I’ve done what I did.”

When he was finished speaking, Peter shut his mouth quickly, as if he said something he shouldn’t, and looked at her, trying to measure her thoughts.

She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what he meant. She would try to understand someday. She put her arm around him, and he sank into her.

She laid his head on her lap and stretched out in the grass, hands folded over his chest.

“I don’t want to go back there,” he said, hard, quiet, his eyes collecting the gray of the sky. “Not after I’ve been home.”

I don’t want you to go, either, she almost said, but that wouldn’t help him. That wouldn’t help anyone. She pushed herself to say what she was supposed to say.

“You have to. Here is here, and over there is over there, and there, you’ve got an obligation to your country.”

“It’s not that simple,” he replied.

Her fear was now heavy inside her, weighed down by guilt, by sadness at his leaving. Believe me, Kelsey thought, I know how not simple things are.

She bent her head to kiss him, her hand running across his shorn head, savoring the proximity of his smell, his breath, his warmth in the middle of all this vacant prairie.

“Nothing is simple,” she whispered to him. “But for now, we have to pretend it is.”