I hear other units have gotten shrinks to come in and help them deal with the way this stuff messes up your head. When we go out on a mission, it’s almost certain that at least one of us is going to die. Which one of us is only a question of luck, like which ducks are you going to hit with your water pistol in a carnival game. When I was teaching kids to drive in Brookline, I knew the war was going on, I watched it on TV with you and Mom and Dad, I heard the body counts, but that didn’t feel real. Now I’m here, and it’s too real. Every day requires fortitude, which wasn’t a word I knew the definition of until I got here.

At night when I’m on watch or I’m trying to fall asleep while also staying alert, I wonder who in the family I’m most like. Whose DNA is going to keep me alive? At first I thought it must be Gramps’s, because he was a successful banker, or my father’s, because he was a lieutenant in Korea. But then you know what I realized? The toughest person in our family is Nonny. She’s probably the toughest person in the entire world. I’d put our grandmother up against any Vietcong or any one of my commanding officers. You know that way she looks at you when you’ve disappointed her, like you’re not good enough to lick her shoe? Or when she uses that voice and says, “What am I to think of you now, Richard?” Yes, I know you know, and that’s why you’re dreading going to Nantucket, so if it helps you be less miserable, remember that the qualities of Nonny that are making you unhappy are also the qualities that are keeping your favorite brother alive.

I love you, Messie. Happy birthday.

Tiger

The night before they leave for Nantucket, Jessie and her parents are sitting at the kitchen table sharing pizza out of a delivery box—Kate has been too busy packing to cook—when there’s a knock on the front door. Jessie, Kate, and David all freeze like they’re in a game of statues. An unexpected knock on the door at seven thirty in the evening means…all Jessie can picture is two officers standing outside on the step, holding their hats, about to deliver the news that will shatter the family. Kate will never recover; Blair might well go into preterm labor; Kirby will be the most histrionic, and she will loudly blame Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson, and her particular nemesis, Richard Milhous Nixon. And Jessie—what will Jessie do? She can only imagine dissolving like the Alka-Seltzer tablet her father drops in water at night when he’s working on a stressful case. She will turn into a fine dust and then she will blow away.

David stands up from the table, his face grim. He isn’t Tiger’s biological father, but he has filled the role since Tiger was a small boy and, in Jessie’s opinion, has done a good job. David is slender (tennis is his game, which is his only saving grace as far as Exalta is concerned), whereas Tiger is tall with broad shoulders, the image of Lieutenant Wilder Foley. David is a lawyer, though not the kind who shouts in courtrooms. He’s calm and measured; he always encourages Jessie to think before she speaks. David and Tiger have a close, nearly tender, relationship, so Jessie bets David feels sick as he goes to answer the door.

Kate reaches for Jessie’s hand and squeezes. Jessie stares at the half a pizza remaining in the box and thinks that if Tiger is dead, none of them will ever be able to eat pizza again, which is too bad because it’s Jessie’s favorite food. Then she has an even more inappropriate thought: If Tiger is dead, she won’t have to go to Nantucket with her mother and Exalta. Her life will be ruined, but her summer will, in one sense, be saved.

“Jessie!” her father calls. He sounds irritated. She stands up from the table and scurries to the front door.

David is holding the screen open. Outside, illuminated by the porch light, are Leslie and Doris.

“I told your friends we were eating,” David says. “But since you’re leaving tomorrow, I’ll give you five minutes. They came to say goodbye.”

Jessie nods. “Thank you,” she whispers. She sees the relief on her father’s face. Being disrupted during the dinner hour is not good, but the reason for it is far, far better than what they had all privately feared.

Jessie steps out onto the porch. “Five minutes,” David says, and he shuts the screen door behind her.

Jessie waits for her heart rate to return to normal. “You guys walked?” she asks. Leslie lives six blocks away, Doris nearly ten.

Doris nods. She looks glum, as usual. Her Coke-bottle glasses slide to the end of her nose. She’s wearing her bell-bottom jeans with the embroidered flowers on the front pockets, of course. Doris lives in those jeans. But as a concession to the heat, she’s paired them with a white-eyelet halter top that would be pretty if it weren’t for the ketchup stain on the front. Doris’s father owns two McDonald’s franchises; she eats a lot of hamburgers.

The air is balmy, and among the trees bordering the road, Jessie sees the flash of fireflies. Oh, how she longs to stay in Brookline through the summer! She can ride her bike to the country club with Leslie and Doris, and in the late afternoons they can buy bomb pops from the Good Humor man. They can hang out at the shops in Coolidge Corner and pretend they’re just bumping into boys from school. Kirby told Jessie that this is the summer boys her age will finally start getting taller.

“We came to say bon voyage,” Leslie says. She peers behind Jessie to make sure no one is lingering on the other side of the screen door and then lowers her voice. “Also, I have news.”

“Two pieces of news,” Doris says.

“First of all,” Leslie says, “it came.”

“It,” Jessie repeats, though she knows Leslie means her period.

Doris wraps an arm across her own midsection. “I’ve been feeling crampy,” she says. “So I suppose I’ll be next.”

Jessie isn’t sure what to say. How should she greet the news that one of her best friends has taken the first step into womanhood while she, Jessie, remains resolutely a child? Jessie is envious, fiendishly so, because ever since “the talk” led by the school nurse last month, the topic of menstruation has consumed their private conversations. Jessie assumed Leslie would be first among them to get her period because Leslie is the most developed. She already has small, firm breasts and wears a training bra, whereas Jessie and Doris are as flat as ironing boards. Jessie’s envy and longing and, on some days, anxiety—she heard a story about a girl who never got her period at all—is foolish, she knows. Both of Jessie’s older sisters moan about their periods; Kirby calls it “the curse,” which is a fairly apt term in Kirby’s case, as the monthly onset gives her migraine headaches and debilitating cramps and puts her in a foul temper. Blair is slightly more delicate when referring to her own cycle, although it’s not an issue at the moment because she’s pregnant.