My mouth felt quite dry. Elayne finished wrapping the bandage, and I cleared my throat. “It was probably an IED. They had set up the charges on the trail where they knew my husband and his squad were going to escape from. Just a huge explosion... ball of flame... dust... the noise just hammered me, and I was down.”
Her left hand rested softly on my bare right foot. “The IED hurt you? But that was shrapnel, wasn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “It was bone fragments from my husband.”
Later that night, I moved slowly out to the porch, still leaning heavily on both of my metal crutches. After Elayne let me win yet again at cribbage, I asked her to turn off the porch lights so we sat in the darkness, looking out towards the ever-lasting Atlantic. There was a slow-moving constellation of red, white and
