We have maybe ninety minutes. Vera knows a place — she always knows a place, which is one of the things about her I’ve stopped

I was sixteen that summer, two years shy of the service, and I never married Ardie. But she taught me something that afternoon in Brookside

I’ve been in combat, shot at, lost my hearing for three weeks from an IED—but all that was tame compared to Laura Marley’s driving. The

Lieutenant Mandy Clarke flight-checked her MH-60S Seahawk, as usual, touching and noting the tail rotor gearbox, running her fingers along the drive shaft housing, checking