What does it mean, she thinks, to know someone’s alive? Except it’s not someone. It’s Bucky, it’s John. He never calls himself that, and maybe if Jo doesn’t think too hard she’ll convince herself it isn’t a betrayal to think of him as John. The name he grew up with, shouted from the kitchen window. The name he shed as soon as he was far enough away.

What does it mean to know he’s alive, when anything could change at any second?

She tries to keep the headlines from her mind, kept at bay like snarling dogs with a whiskey pour this side of too-heavy, with a record that isn’t one she ever danced to with him, tries not to cry. 

She dreams again about wandering in the dark, the grass high at her elbows, dandelion leaves at her heels, something scratching. Towards a copse of trees in the dark, the one a ship had lit ablaze two weeks after she’d arrived. 

The last time she’d had that dream was Norfolk, half-woken by it in a tiny bed, nuzzled into him, his naked chest. He’d kissed her shoulder, right by his mouth, let her cup his cheek. Let her twine her cold thighs with his. 

His mop of warm curls. Too dark to see the fresh-nutmeg freckles on his nose.  Maybe she loved him more than she ever thought she’d be allowed. She wonders if he ever thinks about her. Of course not, she thinks, bigger things to-, and they make her want to throw  up.

That cottage. The last time before the last time, before the earthward-spiral of late summer, the autumn shock. His blue eyes in the dark, like a storm on a lake. When she thinks of quiet, she thinks of him. When she thinks of anything, she thinks of him. A sorry state for a reporter to be.