But now that Josh was living on her couch, Suzanne knew that he didn’t joke all the time. Sometimes he had nightmares. She tiptoed into the living room one night and caught him thrashing on the couch, muttering words like, “stop,” and clamping his hands over his ears.
In the morning, when she asked what he’d been dreaming about, he told her it was the burnover.
“You dream about it a lot?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. Not too often.”
“I heard you say ‘stop.’ Were you telling the fire to stop?” She smiled, expecting him to joke about it, but he just looked uncomfortable and changed the subject.
He did the same thing whenever she asked about his parents and their nutso divorce. He did not want to talk about it. His brothers called every couple of days but he kept those conversations short to
