Toward the end of my tour of duty, one of my jobs was to gather dead Marines' personal effects, bag them up, and send them home: their books, their clothes, the rings they had on their fingers when their arms were shot off. Anything stained with blood was considered a biohazard and couldn't be returned. Some of the things smelled like death. Others had the odor of moon dust. Everything had an unmistakable aura of fear.

Still, I was a Marine, and I was efficient, a machine, numbed by it all. I wore two sets of latex gloves as I inspected good luck tokens, letters, photos tucked in books and envelopes, all from dead people and all meant for their survivors. Everything was logged neatly into a laptop.

Sgt. Mark Leduc, 34, wife and two kids. They'd get his ID card, his wedding ring, and a small, blue plastic frog found next to his cot.

Lance Cpl. Jim Blanchard, 40. His wife received the letters she had shipped him and the unsent letter to her he had still been working on when he was killed.

Private Chris McLeod, 22. He had a photo of a beautiful redhead in his breast pocket when he died. On the back, it said: Come home soon in one piece, you sexy man! I love you, B.

With those things neatly categorized and bagged, I turned my attention to the letters. A long sheet of paper was draped over a stone desk. My task was to write to the loved ones of the deceased.

I took a pen out of my pocket, but instead of ink, blood flowed from the tip. That didn't faze me, though, because I was beyond all feeling.

When I looked up, all three dead men were standing before me, pointing.

At me.

Blaming me.

I woke, sweating and gasping. Looking around, I felt the area near my body, then exhaled when my fingertips found cotton sheets stretched over the futon mattress.

Thank fuck. I was still in my bed. And still, fear courses through my veins.

I hadn't had a sleepwalking night terror since New Orleans—probably because I hadn't taken any Ambien, or maybe because Palmira was a truly a calming influence—but the nightmares had returned, and I hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in days. Some weeks, I'd have none and think my mind was on the mend. Then they would come roaring back every night for a long stretch.

This was apparently one of those stretches.

The dreams always involved blood and death. Sometimes, the insurgents fired on me, and on the really bad nights, my nightmares would replay the day the IED blew up the Humvee and killed Steve. In the small moments of the night like these, I felt hopeless. Alone.

As a teenager, I had often wondered whether I had what it took to be a man and fight for something right and true like my father and grandfather. Now that I'd been to war, I was left wondering whether things were ever so black and white. My therapist back in New Orleans had said I not only suffered from PTSD, but also something called "moral injury," which involved guilt and shame over the ambiguities of war.

Flicking on a lamp, I grabbed my wallet from the nightstand. I opened it and extracted a photo. It was of Jessica. I must've stared at it a thousand times while I was overseas. She'd given it to me during that vacation. I hadn't looked at it since my discharge.

Over the years, I'd come to recognize I didn't know the real Jessica. Not the woman she'd become. Still, the photo was almost like a good luck talisman. In the picture, she smiled sweetly for the camera, her blue eyes shining, her cheeks smooth and girlish.

The photo represented the one perfect, innocent time in my life when Dad wasn't yelling at me, when I wasn't grieving my mother who died from cancer, when human suffering didn't haunt me.

In my darkest moments, and there were many, I liked to think back on the day I met Jess and we fell in love. How we'd locked eyes when she served me coffee at her family's hotel, and how I'd made her snort Sprite out of her nose when I did funny impersonations in my Cajun accent. I stared at the image and listened to the sound of the surf in the distance.

Jessica. Back then, she'd been sweet and tender, the opposite of my recent life. I was no longer innocent, and maybe the same was true of everyone. Jess certainly seemed like she had her own shit to deal with.

The two of us had been so young. Had we really been in love? The idea seemed more complicated now. Was I even capable of loving someone after what I'd been through? Had coming to Palmira been a good idea?

Still, her kisses. And her body. And her eyes. I'd never felt such craving, not even when we first met.

She'd texted me that she was okay, as I'd asked. I was grateful for that. I definitely didn't like the idea of her being alone at that hotel. What if something happened to her? What if some sleazy guest tried to get physical? What if she was hurt somehow? The very thought filled me with anger. I couldn't bear to lose another person in my life, and Jessica was impossibly special. Which was the trouble with getting close to people. They could get hurt or die. Their suffering would become mine.

Shaking my head, I smacked my mouth, which felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. Wearing only a pair of sweat-drenched boxers, I trudged into the kitchen and guzzled a giant glass of water.

I was one of the lucky ones. I didn't have a traumatic brain injury. My physical wounds had healed well, except for the scars on my arm. A doctor said plastic surgery could fix most of those, but for some reason, I wanted to keep them as a reminder of what I'd been through.

As if I'd ever forget.

My emotional wounds weren't even quite as bad as other men I knew. I didn't have rage issues and wasn't inspired to drink or take drugs to numb the night terrors. At least, I hadn't thought I had rage issues, but that night in the New Orleans park made me second guess my entire psychological state. Could I trust myself?

Shaking, I went to my laptop on the makeshift card table I used as a desk. I opened the computer and clicked to a bookmark I'd saved days ago, the New Orleans Times-Picayune. My eyes went straight to the headline on the left-hand side of the page.

Still No Arrests in Recruitment Center Arson.

I scanned the article. By now, the details were familiar. The Marine recruitment center building had been empty, and no one had been hurt. Thank God. Officially, there were no suspects, but an alphabet soup of federal, state, and local agencies were investigating.

Tonight, there was a new detail. I read the paragraph over and over. Officials had revealed they'd found a red T-shirt in the bushes near the strip mall and were analyzing the fabric for evidence and DNA.

Leaning back in the chair, I pushed out a breath. Of course I'd woken up shirtless and didn't recall what I'd been wearing earlier. Didn't I have a red shirt? Where was that red T-shirt? I got up and went to a small bureau I'd bought. Yanking open the drawer, I pawed through, hoping to jog my memory.

Yeah, I owned a red T-shirt. I'd gotten it when I'd done a 5K in high school. But it certainly wasn't in the drawer now. And it's not like I could call Dad and ask him to look through my crap back home.

Wide awake with fear, I went back to the computer and read more of the details I'd read a hundred times already, trying to squash the anxiety in my chest.

DNA. They'll be at my dad's house within a week. Or less.

My eyes scanned each sentence, read and reread every word. Unnamed police sources and local politicians opined the arson was the work of homegrown Islamic terrorists. But I knew otherwise. It had to have been me, right? I'd been nearby, had ash in my beard, couldn't remember anything about that night. And my red T-shirt was missing.

Was I capable of doing something like this?

Possibly.

I'd been so tweaked out earlier that day, my anxiety at record levels because it had been the two-year anniversary of Steve's death. Could I have slipped into a fugue state and taken out my rage on the place where I'd enlisted?

The answer terrified me.

I'd been so angry over Steve's death. There had been rumors of friendly fire, rumors that were never substantiated, but still... Friendly fire was more common than anyone wanted to admit, and it was often swept aside and never properly investigated.

If I was responsible for that arson, there was only one honorable thing left to do: turn myself in. But, no, I couldn't do it now. I wanted to do one perfect thing for Dad before humiliating him with this arrest. I'd make Dad proud, at least for a day or two. Then I'd go to the authorities.

I'd only need a week or two more to get the bakery up and running—if I didn't procrastinate and do stupid shit like carve sand sculptures in the middle of the day so I could stare at Jessica.

Yeah, that was the other thing I wanted to do. Needed to do.

Before I went away, I had to tell Jessica how much she meant to me, how much I'd loved her back then and still did today. It was the least I could do for her. I wanted her to know how sorry I was for disappearing when we were teens, and how I hoped she'd someday find love again. Because, more than anything, I wanted her to find happiness.

If only I could be the one to give her a good life.

____