“I’m tired. Tired of making myself small so no one will strike against me or my family. We did that in Cuba when my father’s decisions led to our ruin, and I won’t do it again. I’m tired of always being afraid, of my life being dictated by others’ decisions. You want me, you want to have a family with me, then you fix this.”

“What would you have me do?”

I meet his gaze. “Whatever it takes.”

“You’ll stay beside me?”

It’s a chance for a fresh start to our relationship; despite how we began, in this moment, for our future, I am choosing him.

“I will.”

He pulls a small black box out of his jacket pocket. “I didn’t do this properly the first time; I hope this makes up for it.”

Anthony kneels down before me and opens the jewelry box.

The diamond is smaller than the one he gave me back in Havana, the ring that could be somewhere with a dead man. The new ring sports a round stone, encircled by more diamonds, the thin band studded with them.

It’s beautiful, and unmistakably something I would have chosen for myself.

“I love it.”

I extend my hand to Anthony, and he slides the engagement ring on my finger beside the simple band he gave me during our marriage ceremony in Cuba.

We come together in a frenzy, the depth of my desire staggering me.

For as long as I remember, I was told not to want more than I could have, to be pleasing, and pliant, and subordinate my wants to the needs of my family, taught that the greatest height I could hope to achieve was to belong to another. No longer. Let him belong to me. Let him work to earn my affections.

I’m done settling for anything less.

Thirty-One

Helen

They’ve printed a list of the dead and missing in the Miami Herald, and I scan the names, my heart in my throat, searching for Tom.

His name isn’t there.

Is Tom scanning the lists for my name, or is he up here looking for me himself, wondering if I’m one of the nameless victims whose bodies have been found but not yet identified?

The fear of the unknown haunts me.

In the hurricane’s aftermath, we exist in a state of waiting for news, the recovery process slowed by how many are still unable to find answers about what happened on September 2. I can’t fathom learning a loved one has died from reading their name in a newspaper. How do you go on after a thing like that? How do you wish to?

For as much as I hope to see Tom’s name printed in black and white among the dead and missing, I worry equally that I will see my aunt Alice’s there.

But her name isn’t, either.

In John’s absence, I turn to the newspapers, to the nurses for updates. They say the National Guard is preventing people from going home. That there are so many dead bodies that it’s unsafe to return. They’re searching for victims on land, by boat.

What sort of horrors is John seeing as he helps with the recovery efforts?

People are still dying from their injuries; others simply disappeared, their bodies unaccounted for, their families desperately searching for them.

I’m not sure what would be harder, the finality of death, or the uncertainty of it all, the absence of a body, the inability to achieve a sense of closure. Then again, how do you get closure after a thing like this?

There are some who never will.

It’s as though the hand of God has come down and reordered the world as we know it. Entire families are gone, swept away by the water and winds, and the living are left with the question:

Why were we spared when so many others weren’t?

With each day that passes without Tom, Lucy and I become more and more of a family, and I settle into the idea of raising her on my own, allowing myself to slip into the dream of a life without him. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that he was ever here at all, the sight of my daughter so all-consuming, as though little else mattered before she came into the world. My life is divided into “before” and “after,” and I have come out of the experience of motherhood reborn as someone new.

But other times, I can’t forget him, the memory of his body pressing me into the mattress, his hot breath on my neck, his hands—

I jolt awake, my heart pounding, my body covered in sweat. I turn toward the crib where the nurses have allowed Lucy to sleep in my room.

It’s empty.

I lurch up from the bed, pulling back the sheets.

“Helen. I have the baby. She’s right here.”

John walks toward the bed from his corner of the room, Lucy bundled up in his arms, and hands her to me.

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I came back tonight and I wanted to check on you. You were sleeping, but Lucy was awake and I wanted you to get some rest.”

I help the baby latch on to nurse, my heartbeat still erratic.

“No, it’s fine, I just had a bad dream. When I woke up, and she was gone, I thought Tom might have taken her.”

John strokes my hair. “You’re safe.”

Will I ever be safe? Or will I always need to glance over my shoulder as long as my husband is in this world?

“I’m glad you’re back safely. How bad was it?”

“I thought I’d seen the worst that could happen to a man when I went to war. But nothing prepared me for this. You expect to see death on the battlefield. But these weren’t soldiers. There were women, children. People trapped in their homes who had nowhere to go when the storm hit.”

“Are you all right?”

“I am. As bad as it was, it helped to do something. There was this little girl who’d hurt her shoulder. Had to set it. She was so brave. She’d lost her father and her brother, and we pulled her out from beneath an icebox. It wasn’t even their icebox. Some neighbor’s that blew for miles. When we found her body, it seemed like her death was a foregone conclusion. But then I realized she was breathing. It took a few of us to pull the icebox off her. It was a miracle she survived. She’s going to make it, though. We brought her up to the hospital here.”

“I’m glad you were able to help her. You’re good at that—taking care of people.”

“It felt good. Even in the midst of all that horribleness, there was hope. I don’t know. I guess I missed practicing medicine more than I realized.

“In the war, there was so little to be done for so many. It was difficult to face a man and know he likely wouldn’t survive his injuries, that for all my training and experience, there wasn’t much I could do. I forgot how good it feels to give someone a chance.”