Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Erin Hunnicutt stood in the hallway of her father’s apartment building, just outside his door, she thought, if the scrap of paper in her pocket, where her mother had written the address and phone number, was to be believed. She’d been turning the note over in her palm the entire trip there. She’d smudged the letters while staring out the window in the plane. She’d ground her teeth and dozed off without putting her mouth guard in, despite Mom’s insistence that she keep it at hand, in her carry on.

There are some things that can’t be reversed, she’d say. I can’t buy you brand new teeth, not even with help from your father.

Erin had a tendency to latch onto things like that, to take good intentioned advice and spin it out of context. She made mantras for her fears.

So she repeated as she climbed the stairs, with her neon green shoulder bag and matching suitcase on wheels:

There are some things that can’t be reversed.

Like the divorce. Erin remembered everything about that day. She remembered walking home from her friend Molly’s house. She remembered worrying about the grass stains on her new skirt. She remembered the gentleness in Mom’s voice, and the crease between her eyebrows. She remembered the look on her father’s face, like he was going to cry, and the liquor on his breath. It had surprised her, back then. Though it wouldn’t, now.

There are some things that can’t be reversed.

Like Dad’s apartment, in the city. He didn’t have any furniture. They ate Chinese food on the floor. She cried herself to sleep in her sleeping bag. She asked him questions he evaded. They’d divorced when she was 12. Now, she’d turn 16 in a couple months. He’d stayed in San Francisco up until six months ago, when he packed up everything and left for Seattle. He left with little more than a phone call. Mom knew more than Erin. She’d been happy for him. Erin had mostly been angry.

There are some things that can’t be reversed.

Like this summer. Over the phone, her father’s voice had sounded lighter. When she was little, his voice was thick and gravelly, like there was always something hidden underneath his words. He’d tell her to clean her room in a tone just a smidge off center and she’d fixate on it for hours. She’d dust every record on her shelf. She’d hide all her toys in the back of her closet.

It was just a summer in Seattle. He had a loft with a couple of his war buddies. Erin hadn’t known her father had war buddies, or any buddies really. He didn’t talk about the war.

She knew he’d been a surgeon during the war. She knew he was there for ages, or at least that it felt like ages to her mother. She knew he’d missed her first words and steps and birthdays. She knew that the panicked dreams she had all through grade school, of suddenly being orphaned and alone in the world, had something to do with her father’s time in Korea.

But, for the most part, Erin Hunnicutt didn’t know her father.

There are some things that can’t be reversed.

She muttered the phrase, breathlessly, at the top of the stairs. Her teeth were grinding again. At the airport there had been a call from Mom waiting for her. Her father was supposed to pick her up but he’d been detained with a surgical emergency and instead he’d called her a taxi.

“Hawkeye will be at the apartment to meet you,” Mom said, over the phone. “You met him a long time ago. Your dad will be back later tonight.”

Erin’s hands were shaky. She didn’t like planes. She didn’t like taxis. And she didn’t like new people. Around her father she pretended she was braver than she was, and less chronically anxious.

She reached out and knocked.

The man who opened the door was wearing an apron and a red bathrobe over his shirt and shorts. She looked down at his mismatched socks and his slippers and then up at his reading glasses and dark, graying hair. His hair was mussed, and he looked just as panicked as she felt.

“Erin?” the man said.

“Are you Hawkeye?” Erin said.

“You look so much like him it’s astounding,” the man said. “Hawkeye Pierce, it’s a delight to properly meet you.”

Hawkeye extended his hand and Erin shook it. She flushed. She hardly remembered Hawkeye. Before, he’d been a blur of big smiles and chaotic energy in the space beside her father.

“Nice to meet you,” Erin said.

She stared at the blue of his eyes behind his smudged frames. He was rail thin and tall, like her father. He had bags beneath his eyes and he hadn’t shaved.

“Come in,” Hawkeye said. He helped her with her bag.

“This couch pulls out,” Hawkeye continued. “We’ve got fresh sheets and blankets for you.”

She looked around the living room while Hawkeye explained that his other two roommates were working as well, but would be home soon.

“You don’t have to work?” Erin said.

She was sizing up the shabby couch and the cluttered coffee table. The whole room was full of the glowy, sunset light from outside. The light was making it difficult to hate everything about her father’s apartment, which was what Erin had resolved to do. There were big bookshelves lining the walls and a cozy looking easy chair with a bright orange knit blanket thrown over it. There was an end table with an ashtray and a tiny, beat up TV in the corner. She could see into the kitchen too: mismatched chairs, big lace doily at the center of the table, flowers hanging upside down to dry over the sink. The loft felt lived in. Dad’s old apartment had never felt like that.

“I’m in charge of the welcome committee,” Hawkeye said. He’d crossed the room, turning to attend to the various pots and pans Erin could see bubbling on the stovetop. “And dinner,” he added.

Dinner looked like spaghetti. It was, regrettably, one of Erin’s favorites.

“My mom said we met when I was younger,” Erin said. She was still holding her green bag, standing stiffly in the middle of the living room. “Have you and my dad been friends for a long time?”

“Let’s see…we met in ‘52 That’d be 15 years now. I guess when you put it like that it just makes me sound old,” Hawkeye said.

Erin didn’t think he looked any older than her father. She’d always thought her father looked old, that there were lines in his face that weren’t in the faces of her friends’ fathers. She’d seen photos of him just before she was born. He looked young in those pictures. There was a childlike quality to his smile.

“You met my dad during the war,” Erin said.

Hawkeye smiled at her, and then tilted his head to one side, curiously. “He really didn’t tell you a thing about me, did he?” he said.

“My dad doesn’t tell me anything,” Erin said.

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. “Well, that makes two of us,” he said. “Your dad, I mean, not my dad. My dad calls me to tell me what he had for lunch.”

Erin snorted. It came from trying to hold in a laugh. There was something ridiculous about the whole conversation. It was as if Hawkeye was on her side, instantly, and didn’t deem her deficient in some way. Approval was never that freely given, in Erin’s experience. Neither was trust. Adults, especially, were never on her side.

Hawkeye’s grin spread. “Oh, I’ve got a lot of cracks about Beej. I love him to death but he still drives me crazy,” he said. “Can you put your bag down and take a seat somewhere? You’re making me nervous and when I’m nervous I burn garlic bread,” he said.

Erin sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and slung her bag over the back of it. Hawkeye was now fully engaged in finishing dinner, it seemed. Erin was grateful that his eyes were off her. There was something intense in his gaze.

“How’s your mom?” Hawkeye said.

“She’s good,” Erin said. Hawkeye’s back was still turned so she took the opportunity to pick at her cuticles. “She just sold a house. Henry wants to take her to Paris.”

“Henry?” Hawkeye said, looking over his shoulder. He looked alarmed.

“My stepdad,” she said, and Hawkeye’s expression relaxed.

Mom got remarried a couple years ago. It was a courthouse wedding. Erin had been permitted to wear one of her mother’s old dresses, a pretty periwinkle number with a floral pattern and lush fabric that she smoothed compulsively with her hands. Henry was nice. He gave her space. He smiled a lot and he didn’t overstep. Erin was the only one of her friends with a stepdad. He’d invited Erin to Paris too, but she didn’t want to be a nuisance. Erin often felt like the divorce was her fault, though she’d never said this out loud, not even to the child psychologist she’d been made to see for a couple sessions.

Sure, her parents were still friendly. Sure, it hadn’t been some big, drawn out thing with screaming matches and tense conversations. But Erin Hunnicutt’s parents had promised to be together forever, in sickness and in health and all that jazz, and then they had her and soon enough it had all fallen apart.

Hawkeye wiped his palms on his apron. Erin sat hunched, with her hands between her knees.

“Your dad really wanted to meet you at the airport,” Hawkeye said.

“I know,” Erin said. The reassurance sent something queasy through her stomach.

“You’re all he’s been talking about these past few weeks. He was going to take you out someplace fancy,” Hawkeye said.

Erin’s head bobbed, hair falling into her face. Her hair was long, long enough to obscure her vision or use as a scarf. Mom said she hid behind her hair.

“We’re all excited that you’re here,” he added. “I imagine it’s intimidating to be shipped off for a summer with a bunch of your dad’s old friends. Beej has all sorts of things planned—”

“Like picking me up?” Erin cut in, sharply. Her face burned, on instinct. She hadn’t wanted to let on that she was angry, really. Sometimes she felt like anger built up in her, like a shaken soda can.

Hawkeye smiled. Something twisted up in Erin’s chest. What are you smiling for, old man?

“I’d be angry with him if I were you. It’s too bad BJ’s the best surgeon in Seattle,” he said.

He dumped the pasta into a strainer, stepping back so the steam didn’t hit him full in the face. He shut off the burner with the sauce pot and put his hands on his hips, assessing his work. Hawkeye had to be a surgeon if he was friends with her father during the war. She could almost see the two of them in their scrubs.

“Is he really, or are you saying that because he’s my dad?” Erin said. She was grinding her teeth again, irreversibly.

“Really,” Hawkeye said. “Although, I can’t say I’m entirely objective.”

There was something distant and fond on Hawkeye’s face. Erin decided it was none of her business.

There was a loud thump in the hallway. Both Hawkeye and Erin jumped, and then the door opened.

“Christ, Margaret, did you drop a bowling ball out there?” Hawkeye said.

A blonde woman bent to scoop up her grocery bags in the doorway. When she straightened, Erin saw that her face was red and her eyelashes were long. Her hair was French braided and she was wearing slacks and a big blue button‐down with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. It looked like a men’s shirt. Erin couldn’t help but stare.

“I’m trying to make sure we’re prepared, Pierce. BJ will be back with Erin any minute,” the woman, Margaret, said. She looked up at Erin with wide eyes.

“The minute has come and gone,” Hawkeye said. “Beej got called in for surgery. He sent a cab for Erin.”

“A cab?” Margaret said.

“He’s patching up that kid with the bad heart,” Hawkeye said. He crossed the room and took her bags from her. “Erin Hunnicutt, meet Margaret Houlihan,” he said.

Margaret looked at her like a deer in headlights.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, young lady,” she said, with a nervous smile.

Erin liked her, instantly.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said.

“You’re just in time for spaghetti, Margaret. Would you two mind setting the table while I put Margaret’s emergency rations away?”

“Pierce—”

“You’ve got four boxes of corn flakes. How much do you think one kid can eat?” Hawkeye said.

Erin laughed, and they both looked at her and then at each other.

The door opened again. A dark haired woman wearing nurse’s scrubs stood in the doorway. She closed the door behind her and grinned at the three of them.

“Hi,” she said. She pulled a clementine out of her pocket and tossed it in Margaret’s direction. Margaret caught it. “Vitamin C, Houlihan,” she said.

“Helen’s convinced Margaret’s coming down with a cold,” Hawkeye said, to Erin.

Helen set her bag down and flopped into the armchair with the orange blanket.

“Erin, this is Helen Whitfield,” Margaret said. She was already sinking her fingernails into the clementine peel. “She’s very sweet but also very wrong about my immune system.”

“Nice to meet you,” Erin repeated.

“Well, kids, soup’s on,” Hawkeye said.

He laid out dinner: a steaming heap of pasta, marinara and shredded cheese, a salad with greens and carrots and sliced cherry tomatoes, the garlic bread, just singed and cut into generous pieces, a pitcher of lemonade.

“I’ve got ice cream and brownies too,” Hawkeye said.

“You’ve outdone yourself, Hawk,” Helen said, passing Erin the garlic bread.

He shrugged. “I’ve been keeping busy,” he said.

Erin ate, because she was hungry and they were all looking at her for approval. Hawkeye turned on the radio for background noise. Margaret asked Erin about school and she gave the standard, polite answers. Hawkeye explained that they’d all met in the same MASH unit. Helen and Margaret worked as ER nurses at the hospital where Erin’s father worked. Hawkeye was a surgeon too.

“But you don’t work with my dad anymore?” Erin said.

The table fell silent. Margaret moved stray pieces of lettuce around her plate.

“I’ve been taking time off,” Hawkeye said. “Off of work, off of being a functioning member of society, the works, you know?”

“I’m not sure you were ever a functioning member of society,” Margaret said.

“It’s a relative term,” Hawkeye said. He reached for another piece of garlic bread. “Besides, someone’s got to be the housewife. I’ve been hard at work cooking and cleaning for you animals.”

Helen sipped her lemonade. “Well I’m sure as hell not going to be the housewife. What about you, Margaret?”

“I’m fine right where I am,” Margaret said. She was balancing her chin on her palm, and staring only at Helen.

“Fine,” Hawkeye said. “We can take turns. I’ll start and Beej can go next.”

He stood and started to clear the table. “I’ll cook forever as long as BJ stays on dish duty,” Hawkeye said.

“Oh, I’m on dish duty am I?” Dad said.

Erin turned to look at him, standing in the doorway, looking exhausted, but pleased with himself. He had the same stupid mustache, but alongside more scruff than she remembered. His hair was longer, and he looked happier than she’d seen him in a long time. He looked around at the four of them, and smiled, wide, when his eyes fell on Erin’s.

“Hi Erin,” he said.

“Hi Dad,” Erin said.

He crossed the room and hugged her. She pressed her face to his chest, breathing in familiar scents: hospital room, disinfectant, laundry soap, sweat. And new ones: cologne, cigarettes. She put her arms around him and found that he was sturdier. His grip was tight, like he thought that the second Erin stepped out of his arms, he’d never see her again.

“I see you’ve all been introduced. And that I’ve missed dinner entirely,” he said, pulling away at last.

“I made you a plate,” Hawkeye said, from the sink. He was already rinsing dishes, despite his previous delegation.

“And you didn’t miss dessert,” Margaret said.

Erin squirmed in her chair. Her father made his way to the fridge and pulled out his plate of cold spaghetti and a beer. He paused at the sink, beside Hawkeye. Hawkeye took a bottle opener out of a drawer and opened Dad’s beer. Dad put his arm around Hawkeye’s shoulders and squeezed as he slipped past.

Margaret stood and helped Hawkeye with the brownies and ice cream. Helen turned off the radio and got up to put on a record. Dad sat down next to Erin.

“How was the flight?” Dad said.

“How was the surgery?” Erin said.

Dad sipped his beer. “I wanted to meet you, Erin. I really did,” he said.

Erin scoffed. “I’m not being shitty. I’m really asking,” she said.

Dad stuck his fork into his pasta. Margaret and Hawkeye were at the counter dishing out ice cream and having some private conversation. Erin watched Hawkeye bump his hip into Margaret’s. They were both smiling.

“It went well. He’s stable,” Dad said. His eyes were on her. Erin was still looking around at Dad’s war buddies. Which of these people did you leave Mom for?

Hawkeye put a bowl of brownie and ice cream down in front of Dad, and then one for Erin.

“What’s the agenda for tomorrow?” Helen said. She’d slid in beside Margaret again.

“I thought we could go for breakfast? And then I could show you around the city for a while. I don’t have to be into work until 2 tomorrow—”

“You’re working on a Saturday?” Erin said.

“We’ll have plenty of time together. And you won’t get bored. Hawk can take you to the movies,” Dad said.

Erin was surprised at how quickly he’d volunteered Hawkeye’s time. Hawkeye, evidently, wasn’t. He nodded, eagerly.

“As long as BJ’s paying for our popcorn,” Hawkeye said.

“Okay,” Erin said.

She’d already abandoned her plan for the silent treatment, for snippy comments, and expressions engineered to inspire guilt.

She hadn’t been expecting any of this. She hadn’t expected cheerful roommates and comforting furnishings. She hadn’t anticipated Hawkeye, with his sad eyes and his nervous camaraderie with her.

The corners of Dad’s eyes crinkled up. “I’m really glad you’re here, kid,” he said.

Erin looked down at her melting ice cream.

“Me too,” she said.

The second Hawkeye closed the door behind them, BJ’s mouth was on him. He kissed his neck and his jaw and his cheeks and his lips. It wasn’t the first time he’d done so. Actually, it was pretty typical for Beej to be all over him after a hard day. Hawkeye preferred that reaction to his silences and foul moods back when they shared a tent and not a bedroom.

“I thought we talked about this,” Hawkeye managed, breathlessly, between kisses. “You’ve got to use your words.”

“Thank you for tonight. I don’t know how you did it,” BJ said.

His hands had migrated, sneaking up the back of Hawkeye’s shirt, just under his ribs.

“Did what?” Hawkeye said. He was getting a little distracted.

BJ pulled away, his expression clouding. Hawkeye thought he’d memorized all of Beej’s expressions, all his wrinkles and smile lines, every shift of his gaze. He could look at him across the room and know exactly what he was thinking. He’d started memorizing the day they met, he thought. It would be a ridiculous thing to say out loud, but that didn’t make it any less true.

“I expected her to be hostile. She’s so quiet on the phone. I have to ask her to speak up,” BJ said.

Hawkeye hadn’t known what to expect from Erin. He knew she hadn’t been apprised of all the details. She didn’t know, for example, that Hawkeye had shown up in California, nine months ago, two weeks after his father’s funeral, and discovered that Beej no longer lived in the charming Mill Valley house Hawkeye knew only from pictures.

“She was very nice to me,” Hawkeye said.

He’d been expecting a little girl. He didn’t know why. But Erin was poised. She looked older than 15, with her good posture and her serious expressions. Her hair was long and straight and dirty blonde, and she looked like BJ, except her eyes, which were her mother’s. After BJ had set her up with the pull out couch in the living room, and Margaret had seen to her bath towel and washcloths and a pair of house slippers, Hawkeye had made his evening cup of chamomile (to go alongside his sleeping pill) and watched Erin braid her hair into two long pigtails and curl up on her side in just the way that BJ had in the Swamp. Her shoulders scrunched to her ears, and she gripped a spare pillow tight to her chest. Hawkeye said goodnight and turned off the kitchen light.

“Well, you did something,” BJ said.

“I didn’t even shave, or get out of my pajamas, like you asked,” Hawkeye said.

Hawkeye rubbed a hand over the sharp line of his jaw, and watched Beej watch him. It had been half an argument that morning, when BJ was late for work and Hawkeye couldn’t get up. BJ had been stressed and irritated and concerned, sitting on the edge of the bed, half‐dressed, pulling on his shoes. Hawkeye had been fighting the familiar feeling of being rooted to the mattress.

I thought things were getting better. BJ had said things and not you.

Margaret had talked Hawkeye into the Seattle move. Beej came around quickly. He hadn’t been thrilled to be so far from Erin and Peg, but Peg had always been adamant that she didn’t want to hold him hostage in San Francisco. Especially since she was remarried, and he only saw Erin on weekends.

Margaret said a change would be good for him, over the phone, while BJ was packing. Hawkeye had just woken up from a 22 hour nap. He’d eaten half a piece of toast, gotten nauseous, and curled back up on Beej’s mattress. BJ had coaxed him into changing, at least, and washing his face. He’d brought him the phone and a cup of coffee.

“BJ’s worried, Pierce,” she’d said, voice low. “I think it would be good for you to be among friends. It’ll be a fresh start.”

A laugh forced its way out of his throat. “Oh, I see…you’re diagnosing me with hysteria and prescribing a trip to the seaside,” he said.

He was trying to shake off the dread that BJ’s worried had inspired.

“Think about it,” Margaret said.

“I’m sure BJ will stuff me in a suitcase and drag me to Seattle,” he said.

“As long as I get to see you,” Margaret muttered. “I miss you, Hawkeye.”

Hawkeye coughed. “I uh…I miss me too,” he’d said.

She’d been right, of course. The change had kept him from drowning. Only lately he’d been plagued with insomnia instead of the oppressive exhaustion of before. He’d get up and wander the apartment. He’d spooked Helen several times, perched on the kitchen counter in the dark.

It wasn’t all bad. He’d taken up cooking, to keep his hands busy and because BJ ate the things he made with such fervor it seemed a shame to stop. He’d never been much of a cook before the war, but once he’d gotten home he’d poured over his mother’s old recipes, written in neat, tiny, script on yellowing notecards. Dad had been happy to eat Hawkeye’s cooking too.

It didn’t matter that there was very little Hawkeye could stomach anymore. It didn’t matter that the steam rising off of the pot of beef stew with rosemary potatoes (Margaret’s family’s recipe) reminded him of the steam from warm bodies in the operating room. It didn’t matter that some days he was back in Korea, with frosty fingertips and blood on his apron.

It was better than the alternative. The first days in the apartment he was near comatose. He was all over BJ, though, lust was the first thing he’d been able to extricate from the numbness that had replaced his personality. Beej’s touch was like a drug, and he’d been off it for so long. BJ had been surprised, receptive, and willing to forgive the fact that Hawkeye barely ate or showered or got out of bed at all. They’d carried on that way, to a point, until it all got too depressing.

“You’re like a zombie, Hawk,” Beej had said.

Hawkeye couldn’t even sit up to look at him.

“And you can’t fuck a zombie,” Hawkeye said.

So, cooking, and cleaning, and pacing around the apartment just to keep himself out of bed. Then, he’d ventured further:

One. The convenience store down the block, where he’d buy the paper and a candy bar, had a feral cat that wandered the aisles, and would run right up to him after a few weeks of slipping her treats.

Two. A public park with a big fountain that kids threw coins into. He’d walk big loops and then sit down on a bench to write. Letters to Dad, mostly, and shopping lists.

Three. The sprawling grocery aisles, where Hawkeye moved among other bored or frazzled housewives, and then walked home with too many bags, so his arms ached, and he was panting by the time he reached the apartment’s lobby to snag the mail.

Hawkeye’s travel radius grew, and then his stamina, and then his ability to hold conversations in the living room, or around the kitchen table, or even over the phone, with Sidney, Charles, Trapper, and a few of his old friends from Crabapple Cove.

And now, apparently, he’d found an adequate way to communicate with Erin, who had no idea she was talking to her father’s partner. They hadn’t fully discussed what Erin should know, and what was better to conceal. BJ, Hawkeye knew, had always favored hiding.

“You made Erin feel more welcome than I did. I wasn’t even here,” BJ said.

They were laying down now, so their sides were pressed together. The building had settled. BJ had opened the windows for the breeze, and Hawkeye could hear the sounds of the city. He tried to listen more deeply, to catch some sound of Erin in the living room. He wondered if she slept easily, like he had when he was a kid.

“You thought you were going to lose that kid today, in surgery,” Hawkeye said.

BJ was quiet. Hawkeye stared up at the ceiling. His hand found BJ’s in the dark.

“Yes,” BJ said.

“And he’s alright?” Hawkeye said.

Beej turned his face to the side, burying it in Hawkeye’s shoulder. He hummed, affirmatively.

“I wished you were there,” BJ said.

“Moral support?”

Another hum.

“Does Erin know how many bedrooms are in the apartment?” Hawkeye asked.

“She can count. She’s got a basic grasp of the floor plan, I’m sure,” Beej said, voice muffled against Hawkeye’s shirt.

“Who does she think you’re sharing a bed with?” Hawkeye said.

“I’m sure she’s not thinking much about where her dad’s sleeping,” BJ said.

“Au contraire, monsieur divorcée," Hawkeye said.

“Can we talk about it later?” BJ said. He exhaled heavily, something between a groan and a sigh.

“We’re coming up on later, Beej. In fact I think we’re past later,” Hawkeye said.

“Surgical support,” BJ said.

“What?”

“That’s what I meant, earlier. Not just moral support. It’d be nice to have your surgical support,” BJ said.

“That’s a dirty trick, changing the subject like that,” Hawkeye said.

Beej hummed again, he was half‐asleep, Hawkeye could tell.

“I’m full of dirty tricks,” BJ said. “But you knew that already.”

Hawkeye sighed. “Goodnight, Beej,” he said.

The breeze slid through their curtains, so they billowed, big and white, for a moment. Hawkeye could swear he heard rustling from the living room, and a squeak of mattress springs. Their bedroom fell silent. Hawkeye closed his eyes.

“I’ll talk to her in the morning, Hawk,” Beej said, into the quiet. “Don’t worry.”

Chapter Text

BJ Hunnicutt had never expected to get a divorce. He’d expected everything to fall into place once he was home. He held things together, for a while, even though he jumped at loud noises and took quick, freezing showers, on instinct. And sleeping was difficult. Peg found him curled up on the floor, in Erin’s bedroom more nights than not. He kept a compulsive watch over her crib. Erin was often the star of his nightmares.

His hands shook sometimes, in surgery, and when he was done with work he had to hide in the bathroom stall and hyperventilate until his heart stopped pounding.

Peg was trying, but BJ was distant. He threw himself into projects: repainting the house, starting a garden, restoring an old motorcycle from the 30s. He worked late and sat in his car in the driveway for ten minutes before he came inside. 

Most of the time BJ felt like none of his clothes fit. His pant legs were too short and the waists too big and then, in time, too small. Shirt seams chafed and made him break out in rashes. Shoes he’d had for years started to give him blisters. It was like he was a stranger in his own body.

And he longed for the Swamp. He longed for his lumpy cot and the burn of dogshit gin. He missed nights when the air would get hot and heavy and punishing, and BJ would be drenched in sweat, half‐dressed, staring up at the top of the tent. He’d listen to Hawkeye’s breathing, beside him, and his muttering. He’d sit up and watch the shadows moonlight made on their things: the spidery lines of the still, the deep blue‐black of vinyl on Charles’ record player, Hawk’s robe, draped over a chair. Some of those nights BJ had felt completely at peace.

Peg dragged the three of them on outings: to the zoo, to the farmer’s market, to PTA meetings at Erin’s preschool. BJ held his daughter close. He put her on his shoulders so she could see the zebras and helped her with her macaroni art. Peg and Erin were all he’d come home for, and still, every hour in Mill Valley was exhausting. 

For a while, they clung to their marriage. She held onto him, and he made a show of being happy and well‐adjusted. He was a good actor, good enough to convince himself.

And good enough to convince Hawkeye, it seemed. They wrote letters. Hawkeye told him about Crabapple Cove, about his neighbors and his old friends and his work at his dad’s practice. Sometimes they’d call, and Hawkeye’s voice would sound so thin and far away that it would scare BJ.

In any case, BJ would handpick anecdotes about Erin or details about his more difficult cases. He didn’t say anything about his bad sleep or his jumpiness or his arguments with his wife. 

Or about the divorce. 

“No matter what happens, I want us to stay friends,” Peg had said. 

BJ had his head in his hands. The whiskey he’d just downed was making his brain spin. 

“How can we?” BJ muttered. 

Peg’s hand was light on his shoulder, like she was far away already. 

“I want you to stop pretending,” she said. Her voice shook. “It’s no good for any of us.”

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” BJ said. 

“Darling,” Peg said. Her eyes were big and watery. Her face was open and warm. He was reminded of the day they met. 

She’d pulled him under her umbrella. He was getting drenched on the walk home from class. She’d been forward and charming and kind. She’d held his arm, so she didn’t trip on the wet sidewalk. He’d been taken with her smile, and the easy way she’d asked him up to her apartment. He hadn’t known women could be that bold. 

She’d always been his best friend. He thought that was enough. She’d always been pretty and funny and warm and kind. She’d always been patient with his fumbling, with the odd mismatch of their mouths and hands, and his obvious focus and effort when they made love. It had never come naturally. Peg had always been kind about it. 

When he got home, BJ had dreams about Hawkeye, about Hawkeye’s tongue in his mouth, about his hands, about his sleepy smile, about the warm weight of Hawkeye atop him, about what dirty things he’d whisper, with hot breath, in BJ’s ear. BJ had plenty of guilty dreams about things they never did. 

You’d think all these details would add up, huh BJ? Diagnostic criteria? The voice in the back of BJ’s head sounded like Hawkeye, on occasion.

“I know,” BJ said. “I’m sorry.” 

He couldn’t say I love you in a letter. And if he couldn’t even say Peg and I are getting a divorce then it was better to stop writing altogether. He could barely face himself, packing up his things and moving to an apartment in the city. Peg had said he could stay as long as he wanted, that the house belonged to the two of them, but sticking around felt more humiliating than living in a poorly furnished bachelor pad.

He’d been there two and a half years when Hawkeye turned up. 

It was 11. BJ had gotten in bed, but his brain had been fighting sleep. The phone startled him. The only person who called him at his new place was Peg. And if she was calling this late it was an emergency.

“What is it? Are you okay? Is Erin okay?” BJ said. He’d already broken out in a cold sweat. It was an old habit.

“We’re fine. It’s not that,” Peg said. “It’s…darling, Hawkeye showed up here tonight.”

“Hawkeye,” BJ repeated. It was strange. It was like if you dreamed about someone enough times they would appear, in the flesh, at your ex‐wife’s doorstep.

I can’t think of any stories that go like that, Beej. 

Peg’s voice was hushed. “You never told him,” she said.

“I…Jesus, Peg I didn’t think he’d show up at the house. And I was working out a way to tell him I‐I‐I just haven’t…what happened?” BJ said.

Hawkeye was incongruous with Mill Valley. BJ tried to imagine him standing in the driveway, arms folded familiarly, face scrunched, inspecting Peg’s peonies or the light in his old bedroom’s window. BJ had imagined Hawkeye in a multitude of scenarios (part rosy memory, part fearful rumination, part embarrassing lust) but the edges got blurry when it came to the Mill Valley house. Maybe it was because the house itself had been an illusion for so long. He dreamed of it so often and so vividly during the war that when he got back, little things made his eyes well up: chipped paint on the shutters, the big shrubs by the door, Peg’s pink lawn flamingo. When things started falling apart the house always looked gray. He let the porch light burn out. The dream house wasn’t a dream anymore.

Peg said Hawkeye had asked for him. She’d answered the door with her curlers in, in her bathrobe. She checked the peephole first and hardly recognized him. He looked bad. Manic bad, out of it bad, thin and pale and dirty bad. He’d looked stricken when she told him BJ didn’t live there anymore. 

“I tried to get him to come in, but he wouldn’t. He just wanted to know your address. I told him to have you call me when he made it to your place, but it’s been an hour now and—”

“An hour ,” BJ said. “Did he say he was coming here?”

“He didn’t say much,” Peg said. 

“You should’ve called the second he left. Dammit, he could be anywhere. He could be gone,” BJ said.

“Don’t raise your voice,” Peg said, icily. “Frankly, I didn’t want to call because this isn’t my business anymore. We’ve been divorced for two years and you didn’t tell him.”

It was two years, six months, and eight days, actually.

“I’m sorry,” BJ said. “Really, I…thank you for calling.”

Peg sighed. Her breath was scratchy and distant on the line. BJ felt sick and jittery and deeply embarrassed. 

“He was driving a rental: old red Pontiac with a newspaper on the dashboard,” she said. 

“Thank you,” BJ said. He was already pulling on pants and his jacket.

“Darling?” 

Two darlings in one conversation. His chest hurt.

“Yes?”

“Let me know, okay? I always liked him. And I’m a little worried,” Peg said.

BJ started with motels near his old neighborhood: pulling into the parking lots, scanning the spots for Hawkeye’s rental car, pacing nervously under flickering fluorescents, and trying to convince stony faced night shift desk attendants to tell him if they’d seen anyone of Hawk’s description. It was the sixth motel and he was getting panicked, hands drumming on the steering wheel, sweating through his t‐shirt, and wondering if perhaps he should start calling hospitals, when he found him.

Hawkeye was sitting on the curb, in front of the red car, just at the edge of the light from the lobby. He was wearing a thin dress shirt with the buttons done up wrong and was holding a paper cup in his bony hand. He was shaking. It was getting cold. He looked worse than Peg’s description. He was just staring into the space in front of him. A spike of fear shot through BJ. Hawk looked too much like the person he’d visited in the institution, and the fragile man who’d asked him if he’d hold him or let him lay there bleeding. 

BJ approached slowly, like he would a stray dog. When he was close enough and Hawkeye still hadn’t looked up at him, he took off his jacket and draped it over Hawkeye’s shoulders. 

Hawkeye looked up. His blue eyes were red‐rimmed and cloudy, but they were, unmistakably, still his eyes. His hair was grayer and overgrown, but it was still his. His hands: bruised knuckles, long fingers, dirty nails, were the same hands that led BJ around and pointed the way and sewed up the injured and touched BJ in his dreams.

BJ watched Hawkeye’s eyes assess him, head to toe, slowly, because when Hawkeye looked at him he really looked at him. When Hawkeye was around, BJ often felt uncomfortably seen.

“You got old,” Hawkeye said, voice rough and fractured, but still his. And then. “Hi, Beej.”

“Hi, Hawk,” BJ said. 

He knelt in front of him, knees to the pavement, hands on Hawkeye’s shoulders, wrapping the jacket tighter around him. BJ’s jacket was swallowing Hawkeye. He was still shaking. BJ patted Hawkeye’s shoulders, confirming he was real and solid and uninjured. He brought his hands up to cup Hawkeye’s face and Hawkeye sighed a big, full body sigh. He leaned forward and then back.

“What are you doing here?” Hawkeye said.

“I thought that was my question,” BJ said. He hadn’t let go of Hawkeye’s face. He wasn’t sure he could.

“How long has it been?” Hawkeye said. 

It had been nine years, three months, and eighteen days. The last time they’d seen each other, BJ had brought Erin and Peg along to Portland for a medical conference. BJ had been elated, and a disaster. He’d had to put himself off seeing him, even though he’d bought a Maine travel book and dogeared all the pictures and places that reminded him of Hawkeye. He’d get himself worked up into fits of madness, where he thought he might hitchhike to Hawk’s door, drop his bags in the yard, and take root there. It was a dangerous idea, seeing Hawkeye again.

“A long time. Peg called me. She was worried,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye’s expression sharpened. He looked more alert, and he dumped the contents of the paper cup onto the pavement in front of him. It smelled like liquor. He removed BJ’s hands from his face, but held onto them, gripping tightly.

“Peg, your ex‐wife ? Peg who lives in your ex‐home , and has, for quite awhile, she informed me, without you?” Hawkeye said.

“I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know how to tell you anything, really. It all fell apart, and I was ashamed,” BJ said. 

“Everyone’s favorite family man got a divorce,” Hawkeye muttered. He was holding BJ’s hands so tightly that they’d gone a little numb and tingly. “I thought maybe you died. Maybe that’s why you stopped writing. Would anyone have informed me if you died, BJ?”

“Did you think I’d died?” BJ said. He hated the way his voice wavered. 

“Margaret maybe. If she knew maybe she’d tell me. I called her, you know? I thought she might know something. You know what she said? ‘I can’t make Hunnicutt do anything he’s not ready to do. I thought that was your job, Pierce.’ That Margaret, she’s a riot! Everything’s my job nowadays. I suppose it was always that way, wasn’t it?” Hawkeye said, eyes on the ground, talking a mile a minute.

“We should go inside, or I can take you to my place. It’s cold out here,” BJ said.

Hawkeye laughed, high and loud. BJ got goosebumps all up his arms.

“You don’t know cold. In Maine in the winter the ground is so frozen it takes hours to dig graves,” Hawkeye said.

“Graves,” BJ repeated. “What are you talking about?”

Hawkeye met his eyes and for a moment all the years slipped away and it was like he was looking at the Hawkeye he met in Kimpo, the Hawkeye with a quick wit and a mild drinking problem and a freshly broken heart.

“Dad died. I didn’t know where to go,” he said.

“God,” BJ said. He’d never met Hawkeye’s father.

BJ imagined Hawkeye getting dressed for the funeral, standing there, alone, at the grave. BJ wondered if the earth had been upturned, like at his own dad’s funeral. He wondered if Hawk had to stare into the big, empty hole in the ground, while people paid their respects or tried to shake his hand. He wondered if anyone had been there to make sure Hawkeye dressed warmly enough. Grief could make your whole body go cold. Grief could turn your stomach and make your joints ache.

“I cracked up after the funeral. I drank a lot. I’ve got a gap in my memory, but apparently the police found me wandering barefoot down Main Street and asked me if I had someplace to go,” Hawkeye said.

“Oh,” BJ said. He hated the way his voice sounded. 

Back at the 4077th Hawk had two kinds of drinking: happy, joking, motions all smoothed out, can’t keep his hands to himself kind of drinking and sad, sullen, argumentative, or worse silent drinking. After a long night of the latter, BJ had rubbed comforting circles into the space between Hawk’s shoulder blades while he threw up in the bushes. They didn’t talk about it. 

“I’m sorry, Hawk. For everything,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye sniffled. “I didn’t mean to worry Peg,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, really, other than that I needed to see you, even if you didn’t want to see me.”

I always want to see you , BJ thought, but didn’t say. Even when I hate you I want to see you. 

“Why didn’t you come to my apartment? When Peg called I thought maybe you were just gone,” BJ said.

Hawkeye laughed again, but it was gentler. “You don’t get to say anything about disappearing. You’re the one who’s always gone,” he said.

“I know. I’m sorry,” BJ said.

“I was going to come,” Hawkeye said. His face was flushing. Red was better than ghostly pale. Red was the most beautiful color in the world. “But I thought you might be with someone. Peg didn’t say…uh…I didn’t know if—”

“Hawk,” BJ said.

“Yeah?”

“There’s no one. Let me take you home. We can come back for your car in the morning,” BJ said.

Hawkeye looked at him. His head tilted to one side and he smiled, sadly, gently, torturously. His face was still very red. BJ tried to memorize him, then. 

“That’s a sweet offer. You think I’m easy, or something?” Hawkeye said. “Can you help me up?”

Hawkeye wobbled to his feet and BJ steadied him with his hands on Hawkeye’s elbows. 

The car ride was quiet. Hawkeye leaned his head against the window and dozed. BJ worried about how dirty his apartment was. 

Hawkeye looked around at the bare walls and the sparse furnishings. He looked at the dishes piled in BJ’s sink. He looked at the ashtray in the windowsill. He looked at the mattress on the floor and the liquor bottles on the counter. BJ watched him take it all in. 

“Home sweet home,” Hawkeye said, leaning heavily in the doorway.

BJ motioned for him to sit down on the couch. He went and got him some water. He put a blanket over Hawkeye’s shoulders and then stood awkwardly, anxiously, in the middle of his stupid, depressing little living room. He still had boxes from the Mill Valley house that he had never unpacked.

“Not much better than a motel, I’m afraid,” BJ said. 

“It’s quaint,” Hawkeye said.

“I’ll get some clean sheets for the couch,” BJ said. The floor mattress was too pitiful to offer. “The bathroom’s down the hall if you want to shower. I’ll get you a towel. Are you hungry? I could make something.”

BJ wrung his hands. He studied the haggard way Hawkeye was draped over his couch.

“Easy, Beej. You’re making me nervous,” Hawkeye said. “I’ll be fine. I ate on the plane.”

BJ frowned. He had no idea when Hawkeye had flown in. 

“Okay,” BJ said, at a loss. “Uh, goodnight, then?”

“Goodnight,” Hawkeye said.

BJ called Peg, and then he didn’t sleep a wink. And in the morning, in the kitchen, he told Hawkeye that he loved him. 

Hawkeye found him smoking out the kitchen window. BJ had scrambled all the eggs he had left in the fridge and found a few slices of bread that weren’t molding at the edges for toast. He scrubbed aggressively at some dirty pans and then filled the sink with hot water and soap to let the rest of the dishes soak. 

He tried his best with the rest of the mess, tiptoeing around so he wouldn’t wake Hawk on the couch. He seemed dead to the world, though, when BJ got up at sunrise, smoothed his bedhead, and stepped out into the living room to confirm he was still there. He was stretched out the same way he used to in the Swamp. The couch was too short for him. His heels were hooked over one arm rest. BJ had stood over him for a moment, just watching him breathe. 

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Hawkeye said. And BJ jumped. 

He was standing in the doorway, looking less weary than the night before, but not by much. 

“I’m quitting,” BJ said, fingers trembling. “This is my last one.”

Hawkeye scoffed. He slid into one of the beat up kitchen chairs and BJ put a plate and a glass of orange juice down in front of him. 

“You cook?” Hawkeye said, eyebrows rising.

“Peace offering,” BJ said. “Go ahead. I ate already.”

Hawkeye hummed. He stabbed at his eggs. BJ put out his cigarette and waved at the smoke. 

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Hawkeye said.

BJ hadn’t had the time or energy to go out and buy proper furniture. Peg had told him to order things out of a catalog. She’d bookmarked pages for him: table, chairs, couch, lamp, dresser. There didn’t seem much point. His life was in freefall, in limbo.

“I haven’t been here all that long,” BJ said, leaning back against the kitchen counter. It was more that time had become warped and cloudy again, like it was in Korea.

“Uh huh,” Hawkeye said. “At first, I thought you were too busy to write, with your family, career, and all. I couldn’t blame you for that.”

“You could,” BJ said. 

“I was afraid to call in case Peg picked up and wondered what the hell I was calling for, or if you did and told me you hated me. I read that last letter from you a million times. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what I could’ve said to drive you away. It’s one big ramble every time I write. It could’ve been anything. Little things set you off, you know?” Hawkeye said. 

“I know,” BJ said.

“Eventually I’d stewed over it so long I thought maybe I’d just made you up. Maybe I’d made your whole life up and there wasn’t even a BJ Hunnicutt in Mill Valley. It’s plausible, isn’t it? It’s a nice little ghost story. For fuck’s sake, I don’t even know your name,” Hawkeye said. 

“Hawkeye—”

“No, let me…let me get it out,” Hawkeye said. He brandished his fork like a weapon with one hand, and ran the other through his hair. “I was confused and then I was worried for you and then I was angry and seething and felt crazy , because how could you do this again? You know what it means, for you to leave me.”

His voice was calm and even. BJ thought it would be better if Hawkeye yelled, if it was big and vicious and maybe Hawk hit him. But Hawkeye wouldn’t do that. 

“The worst part is now I need you too much to be angry,” Hawkeye said. His eyes were on his plate. He ripped off a piece of his toast crust and dipped it in melted butter. “I’m trying, believe me, but then I look at you and it’s like the fog lifts. Nothing else does that anymore.”

Hawkeye glanced up and met his eyes. BJ wanted another cigarette desperately. He wanted to duck his head like a chastised schoolboy. He wanted to run away again, but he anchored himself to the counter, knuckles going white.

“I’m sorry,” BJ croaked. It was all two word sentences today. He was sorry for a lot of things. He was sorry for going silent and for his cowardice and for being the person who could lift Hawkeye’s fog.

Hawkeye smiled. “I know you are, Beej. You said already,” he said.

“I think it bears repeating,” BJ said.

Hawkeye hummed. He looked around the kitchen in its new morning light and BJ squirmed. 

“This isn’t what I was picturing. I was picturing the whole nine yards. Dinner parties, backyard barbecues, kids running through the sprinklers. And of course a fully furnished little home, with Peg’s smart sensibilities, naturally, I wouldn’t trust your eye,” Hawkeye said.

BJ stood in the barren kitchen, suddenly embarrassed of his ratty boxers and messy hair. He was embarrassed of everything, these days. He was embarrassed that Peg had started answering the phone with her new name. He was embarrassed that he still wore his wedding ring. He was embarrassed that most nights he ate cold sandwiches, alone, in the hospital cafeteria. He was embarrassed by his wrinkled clothes and his thinning hair, and the fact that sometimes when Peg brought Erin for the weekend, she just sat at the table with her homework and hardly looked at him. 

Hawkeye watched him. His eyebrows furrowed. “I’m only teasing, Beej,” he said. 

“I’m aware of what this all looks like,” BJ said, waving his arms in the empty apartment.

“It looks like you’re having a rough time,” Hawkeye said. “But I’m not really one to talk.”

BJ swallowed, thickly.

“How did he—?”

“It was his heart. It was all very quick,” Hawkeye said. 

“And the funeral?” BJ said. 

“Well attended. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was disgusting,” Hawkeye said. 

“And now?”

“Now what, Beej?” he said. 

“Are you…I mean, are you okay?”  BJ said. 

Hawkeye shrugged. “I’m here,” he said. He bit his toast and chewed. “Can I ask you something?”

“‘Course,” BJ said. He wrung his hands. Hawkeye’s eyes were on him, blue and intense. 

“Were you ever going to tell me? Or come see me? What exactly was your plan?” Hawkeye said.

When BJ stopped replying, Hawk’s letters came in a flurry, and then petered out. Peg had brought the last of them to his new place and told him, half terse, half concerned, that he should see to his mail forwarding. BJ had spent his whole life ignoring problems and hoping that if he did so long enough, they’d go away.

He didn’t know how to say there wasn’t a plan. There was barely enough energy to get out of bed and go to work, to pick up Erin for weekend visits, and buy enough groceries to survive. He’d hoped to be better next time he saw Hawkeye. He’d imagined pulling into the driveway at Hawk’s dad’s house. He’d find him in a gentle recline, on a couch or an easy chair, with his feet up, reading a book, like BJ had just stepped out of the Swamp for a moment, and all the years hadn’t passed. He’d imagined he’d have a whole speech by then.

“I thought I’d make a big show of it. I thought I’d go to Maine and beg for your forgiveness,” BJ said. 

“On your hands and knees?” Hawkeye said. There was some glimmer of the Hawkeye he remembered in his tone, light and airy despite the weariness in his face.

“Face down on the floor, with my arms around your ankles,” BJ said.

Hawkeye laughed.

“I haven’t given you any reason to forgive me. I haven’t given you any reason to listen to a word I have to say,” BJ said.

“I never listen to a word you say,” Hawkeye said. He put his elbow on the table and balanced his chin in his palm.

“I’m trying to be serious,” BJ said, face reddening. He trained his eyes on the floor.

“Alright, Mr. Serious,” Hawkeye said. He smiled his well worn, goofy smile, the one that he used to distract people when he was feeling insecure. 

“I’m sorry I run away. And I’m sorry it took me so long,” BJ said. He hesitated. When it came down to it, BJ had hoped Hawkeye would just read his mind. That’s the way it had been before.

“To do what?” Hawkeye said, mouth full.

BJ looked up at him. Hawkeye shoveled more eggs into his mouth and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“To tell you I’m in love with you,” BJ said. “I’m sorry, Hawk.”

Hawkeye choked on his eggs. He coughed and then he swallowed.

“Say it again,” Hawkeye said.

“I’m sorry,” BJ said.

“The other thing,” Hawkeye said. 

“I love you,” BJ said. 

“Again.”

“I love you, Hawk,” he said. 

Hawkeye was up and across the room in an instant, crowding him against the sink, putting his hand on BJ’s jaw. Hawkeye bridged the gap between them, and BJ said the next I love you into Hawkeye’s mouth. Suddenly there wasn’t much time for talking. Hawkeye’s mouth was feverishly hot: on BJ’s mouth, on his jaw, on his neck, at the space where it met his left shoulder. BJ exhaled, trying and failing not to make a sound. He didn’t like to be so obvious. 

BJ slipped his hands under the hem of Hawkeye’s shirt, up to his ribs, and back down to his hips, pulling him closer so they fit together. It didn’t matter that the edge of the counter was digging into his lower back or that the angle was awkward and their noses kept crashing, because this was the closest they’d ever been. 

Hawkeye drew back, breathlessly, panting. 

“You should pinch me, Beej. It doesn’t feel quite real. I love you too, for the record. I needed to see you,” he said. 

BJ felt lightheaded and delirious. He’d never expected Hawkeye to turn up. He’d never expected to be kissing him, just as he did in dreams. 

“You’re incredible,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye winked at him. “I’ve got a reputation for overzealousness,” he said. 

“No I mean…you’re so good. People don’t tell you that enough, do they? They don’t tell you how good you are,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye’s face had gone scarlet. 

“You don’t have to get carried away,” he said. “In fact maybe we should uh…should pause for a drink.”

BJ kissed his neck. “It’s not even noon. You nervous, Hawk?”

“I wasn’t expecting you to…well, I wasn’t expecting anything. I didn’t expect you to let me kiss you,” Hawkeye said. 

Hawkeye retreated. He picked up his empty plate and glass, and came back to the sink to rinse them off. He leaned into BJ’s space again, their shoulders brushing. He settled in the corner, by the fridge, close enough but out of reach, like he was teasing him again.

“Let you?” BJ said. He could feel his cheeks heat. It was probably written all over his face: how much he liked kissing Hawkeye, the salacious content of his last Hawkeye dream, his strong desire to finish what they’d started.

Hawk’s eyes were on him. “Beej, you’re blushing ,” he said. 

“Well, I uh… well , I’m new to uh, to this,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye’s eyebrows rose. “How new?” he said. 

One. Harvey Fankhauser, who sat across from him in Sunday School. He couldn’t stop staring, but he didn’t know why. 

Two. Paul, his high school girlfriend’s older brother. He wore muscle shirts when he cleaned the family pool. BJ saw him naked once, skinny dipping in the same pool. Jane’s parents were gone for the weekend and they were using the opportunity to make out and smoke cigarettes in her bedroom. The cigarettes helped him get up the nerve to paw at her chest, like he knew boys were supposed to do with their girlfriends. Paul was drinking in the yard with his friends. They all got naked. They all looked pale in the moonlight and something squirmed in BJ’s stomach, watching from the floor above. 

Three. His roommate in med school (ironic, huh?) BJ would jerk off to the sound of him having sex with his fiancé in the next room. He had it in his head that he was just a late bloomer. Sooner or later he’d feel the way he was supposed to about women. The feelings he had about men were just hormonal, adolescent trickery. They’d pass. 

BJ and Peg were engaged quickly. He barely remembered the night Erin was conceived. He was so nervous that his hands shook, undoing her brassiere. 

He had never been with a man. He never considered it, properly, until he met Hawkeye. 

BJ laughed. He scooped the ashtray up from the windowsill and dumped it in the nearly full trash can. “I thought it would be obvious,” he muttered. 

“Never?” Hawkeye said. His eyes were wide. 

BJ didn’t know whether or not to be flattered at his supposed sexual prowess with men, according to Hawkeye’s imagination. 

“Nobody knew, least of all me,” BJ said. “When I was growing up I would never have dared to…my father would’ve killed me, and things were already…well, never mind.”

“Oh,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ smiled. “Am I scaring you off, Hawk?”

“No,” Hawkeye said, sincerely. Something sharp was shooting down BJ’s spine. 

“Well…did your dad know?” BJ said. He didn’t know what compelled him to ask. He felt childish. 

“Dad?” Hawkeye looked taken aback. “Dad knows. I mean, he knew that I have entanglements with men, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s known since I was 16. I couldn’t hide anything from him, really. He’d figure it out faster if I tried. And he knew that I love you. He got it out of me a week after I got back,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ wondered exactly how many entanglements Hawkeye had had. He’d known there had been a lot of women, but he wasn’t sure about the men. He knew they were different in that respect, too. Hawk didn’t have any trouble loving women. 

And Dr. Pierce senior. BJ understood how a person could go to pieces losing a dad like that. 

“I really wish I’d met him,” he said. 

“We’ll all get to know each other in the family plot. I always said I’d rather be cremated and sprinkled over the ocean, but he insisted,” Hawkeye said. “Sorry, is it too soon for jokes about growing old together?”

BJ had thought it was a joke primarily about dying. 

“You’re going to stay here,” BJ said. 

“Is that a question or a command?” Hawkeye said. 

The light was hitting all the angles of his face, casting shadows and making his eyes look bluer. He crossed his arms. There was a hole in the elbow of his shirt. 

I’m begging. 

“It’s whatever you want it to be,” BJ said. 

“Oh, come on. I thought we were done with all that,” Hawkeye said. “You want me to stay?”

“Of course I do,” BJ said. 

“And you want to…?” Hawkeye trailed off. 

“Pick up where we left off?” BJ said. “Even though you know that l don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I’m a good teacher,” Hawkeye said, leaning his elbows on the table. “And you’re a quick study.”

BJ was excited and overheated and keyed up from Hawkeye’s mouth and the cigarette and pacing in the kitchen all morning.

“Okay,” he said. And he followed Hawkeye’s lead. 

Later, when they were side by side on his floor mattress, BJ fought the pleasure drunk feeling in his head and tried to keep talking. Peg had always been adamant that talking was the first step. Things got better if you stopped holding everything in. 

“It’s never felt like that before,” BJ said, the truth, no hiding it in vagaries. 

Hawk was quiet for a moment. BJ watched his face in the light slipping through thin curtains. 

“Is that a good thing?” he said, gentle, uncertain. 

“Fuck, Hawk, yes. It’s a great thing,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye moved closer and they put their arms around each other. Hawkeye held on tight, with his face pressed to BJ’s chest. 

“I wanted to hold you like this all the time,” Hawkeye muttered. “Sometimes it was all I thought about. Sutures and shrapnel and holding you.”

Hawkeye’s breathing was slowing. BJ listened to the sounds of the building: the neighbor kids watching cartoons, loud on the TV, creaky footsteps in the apartment above, a delivery truck backing into the alley next door, Mrs. Johnson in 3C and her chocolate lab, hobbling down the stairs. She gave him kind, pitying looks when she saw him, because she knew he was alone, unless Erin was visiting. Once she’d stuck a humane society flier under his door. It wasn’t a bad idea. Erin would like a cat. BJ wasn’t sure he could handle a puppy. He wondered what Mrs. Johnson would think when she saw Hawkeye. (And she would. She was nosy.) 

Hawkeye shifted, and then pressed his face deeper into BJ’s shirt and took a big, loud breath.

“You cold, Hawk?” BJ said. 

“I’m absorbing your warmth. No, I’m absorbing you,” Hawkeye said. “Do you have big plans for the day, Beej?”

“I thought we could just stay like this,” BJ muttered. 

Hawkeye hummed, half‐asleep, eyes still closed. “Oh no, you’ve got to at least get out of bed. Dad always said that. He made me, on my bad days,” he said.

BJ stared up at the ceiling. “Do you have a lot of bad days?” he asked. 

“When I first got back. It got better, but then it would get bad again,” he said. “Dad used to make me walk with him to the duck pond. He’d give me a bag with all the stale bread bits and make me toss them. I’d complain the whole time. I’d wear my robe. He’d say come on Ben, breathe the fresh air. He was big on fresh air.”

“Did it help, any?” BJ said. 

“I don’t know. Cut me open and ask my lungs,” Hawkeye said. “Dad only calls me Ben when he’s serious.”

“Okay, so we’ll get out of bed,” BJ said. “And then what?”

“Are you worried, Beej?”

“What?”

“You’re interrogating me,” Hawkeye said. “It makes me think you’re worried.”

Hawkeye opened his eyes and looked up at him. BJ thought about what he’d said earlier, about not knowing where else to go, about his blurry memory and run in with the police. He thought about him getting on a plane in the state he was yesterday. Hawkeye hated planes. He hated any sort of flying after the war. He’d told him in a letter once that any time he had to fly anywhere he swallowed enough pills to take down a horse before he even set foot in the airport. 

“I always worried about you, when there was reason to worry,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye scoffed. “You could have let me know that, you know? You keep your cards so close to your chest it takes a sledgehammer to get anything out of you,” he said. 

“You’re mixing metaphors,” BJ said. 

“And you’re deflecting,” Hawkeye said. “You did the same thing, before, right up until goodbye.”

After a while in Korea, BJ felt like he was walking around with his ears clogged. He was numb and distracted and couldn’t help anybody but himself. And he could barely help himself. 

“I worry about you the way I worry about Erin, sometimes,” BJ said. “I never let on when I worry about her, either.”

“How old is Erin, now?” Hawkeye said. 

“She’s 15,” BJ said. 

“And what do you worry about?” Hawkeye said. 

“She’s smart, you know? And she’s funny. She’s a real witty kid. But she gets so nervous sometimes. She works herself up into these fits of panic. When she was younger she’d throw tantrums, but now…I don’t know. Peg understands her better than I do. I get worried she’ll hold herself back. And she reminds me so much of you, sometimes.”

“Of me?” Hawkeye said. 

“You’re both kind. You’re both caretakers, peacekeepers. She was always the kid who’d share her toys. Or she’d talk all her friends into some game she made up for them. But you both go places I can’t get to. You get agitated. You’re—”

“Crazy?” Hawkeye said. 

“Sensitive,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye hummed. “Well she’s yours, Beej. You can’t say I’m a corrupting influence. I hardly know the kid.”

“I want you to know her,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye smiled. “And here I thought I’d just be your dirty little secret,” he said. 

“What did you mean, earlier, when you said you cracked up?” BJ said. Be direct , his and Peg’s couple’s counselor would say. 

“I uh…” Hawkeye said. He laughed. “I’m going to tell you, and you’re going to start treating me funny,” he said. 

“It’s okay,” BJ said. Hawk’s face was close enough to kiss, so BJ did: his cheek, and then his mouth. 

“Can’t we just do this, instead?” Hawkeye said. 

“Hawk—”

“Fine, fine, I don’t know, okay? I started waking up in that house I’ve lived in my whole life, and everything in it made me so sad I couldn’t stand it. Everything reminds me of him and the only thing I can do to stop it is drink or sleep all day or just walk, apparently, and forget where I’m going. I had to get out, the grief was eating me alive,” he said. “I’ve been dodging my lawyer’s calls, you know? And concerned family friends. Dad left me the practice. I only ever worked part time after the war, and he was semi-retired. He left me the house too, of course, and everything in it. It’s just been sitting there while I’m crumbling.”

BJ sucked in a breath. “So, we go to Maine and I help you get everything sorted,” he said.

“You don’t have to do that,” Hawkeye said. 

“Yes, I do,” BJ said. 

“Don’t argue with me,” Hawkeye said, frustrated, and fond. 

“We go to Maine and then we go anywhere,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye was quiet, but BJ could hear the gears turning in his head. It was like that in the Swamp too. Hawkeye would keep him up, with his loud thoughts. 

The silence stretched so long BJ thought Hawkeye was asleep. 

“Anywhere?” Hawkeye said, voice distant and sleepy. “You really mean it?”

That was what they did. Hawk stayed in BJ’s apartment for a week and then they flew home to Crabapple Cove. It was cold when they got there. There was frost in the grass and Hawkeye had to lend him a jacket. He’d left the heat off and all the pipes were half-frozen. BJ spent the first day cleaning: a mountain of dirty dishes, all the rotten food in the fridge, dust and clutter and broken glass. BJ cleaned while Hawkeye slept on the couch, curled on his side with his knees to his chest. 

The second day BJ dragged him out for coffee at the local diner ( no spending all day in bed, remember? ) and everyone who saw them sitting there, in the red vinyl booth, stopped to say hello to Hawk and ask after BJ. 

“Everyone here’s a gossip,” Hawkeye said. He had his elbows on the table and the sleeve of his cardigan was getting in the maple syrup from his French toast. “And it’s not every day someone brings a tall, handsome stranger to town.”

He stabbed a piece of French toast with his fork. Hawkeye had a dull, dreamy look about him ever since they’d landed. BJ had wanted to make a sleeping beauty joke when he’d woken up from his couch slumber, but Hawk had nightmares, and when BJ shook him awake he had tears in his eyes. 

Hawkeye was smiling at him, graciously. He was putting on a show now, despite the whining and moaning he’d done on the way. The diner was only a few blocks from Hawkeye’s place. They’d walked, and Hawk had stuck his fingers in BJ’s coat pocket to hold his hand. 

“I’m sure that’s not what people are thinking,” BJ said. The tips of his ears were turning pink. He’d forgotten what it was like to have Hawkeye flirt with him, and in any case it felt different now. 

“They’re thinking there goes Dr. Pierce Junior, back from his stay in the loony bin , then?” Hawkeye said. 

“My apartment’s a shithole, but I still think loony bin is a bit extreme,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye hummed. “They probably think you’re my nurse,” he said. 

“Hawk—”

“I’ll stop. It’s a tired bit. Even Dad hated that one,” Hawkeye said.

BJ put his hand over Hawkeye’s. It was ice cold. BJ squeezed. 

Hawkeye looked down at their joined hands, and the haze of his expression lifted, momentarily. 

“You’ve gotta quit being sweet to me, Beej. I’ll get used to it,” he said. 

BJ made arrangements with the lawyers. He talked to the staff and patients at Daniel Pierce’s practice. He came back to find Hawkeye in his bed, with a half-empty bottle of rum.

BJ called to cancel Hawkeye’s father’s magazine subscriptions, and talked Hawkeye into helping him sift through his father’s things: clothes, books, junk mail, journals, shoes, assorted knick knacks. 

They brought flowers to the Pierce family plot.

BJ had to coax him into the shower. He had to persuade him to eat. Anything more than sleeping or drinking was an arduous task that required convincing. BJ dragged him out of bed, put his coat on for him, laced his boots, and walked him to the duck pond in the morning. When the ground was frozen, Hawk would cling to his arm, with a grip so tight it nearly bruised. 

And then one morning, while BJ was drinking his second cup of coffee and reading the local paper, Hawkeye came up to him (t-shirt from a million years ago, college maybe, with a hole at the collar, flannel pajama pants, house slippers, robe, unshaven, hair a mess), kissed him deeply, and said he wanted to go back to San Francisco.

They’d hired a neighbor to check in on the house periodically. The practice was dissolved and Hawkeye’s father’s car had been sold. Some of his things had been donated, and the rest Hawkeye had organized and BJ had stored.

Their last night in Crabapple Cove, Hawkeye insisted on sleeping in his father’s bed. He’d avoided his dad’s bedroom like the plague the whole time they’d been there. Even when BJ was sorting things, Hawkeye would hover in the doorway to give feedback. 

BJ brought him tea, lingering in the same doorway like a nervous child.

“Peg called. All your boxes are accounted for,” BJ said. Hawkeye hadn’t packed much: a few boxes of books and clothes and dishes, an easy chair, some scrapbooks, and a quilt his mother made. Still, Hawk’s things would occupy more space in BJ’s apartment than the meager collection of things BJ had taken from home. 

Hawkeye’s head bobbed. He was sitting on the edge of his father’s bed, flipping through his dad’s day planner. BJ had watched him look through its pages for hours. He’d been doing that: picking something up and fixating on it (a broken pocket watch BJ had found in Hawkeye’s dad’s desk, a chipped coffee mug with the name of his high school on it, a book of coupons, a copy of Catcher in the Rye .)

“Anything interesting in there?” BJ said.

Hawkeye took the mug of tea. He looked up at BJ through a cloud of steam. 

“He made lists in the margins. Like this: October 14th: coffee with M, rotary club 3 p.m., eggs sunny side for Ben, flu shot clinic,” Hawkeye said. 

Hawkeye traced the letters with his index finger. “It’s funny, how all that’s left of him now is things like these. It was the same way with Mom, I guess, but Dad had so many stories about her it felt like there was more,” he said.

“You’ve got stories about him. Heck, Hawk, you’ve got his eyes and her nose. I’m not sure day planners and photos are all that’s left of your parents,” BJ said.

BJ had studied the photos lining the walls. Hawkeye, with a missing tooth grin and an innertube around his waist, at the side of a tall woman with a wide smile and a shock of dark hair. His hair was slick with sea water and his face was freckled. She was in a polka dotted swimsuit, with her hand on his shoulder. They both looked exhilarated and windswept. 

Hawkeye’s graduations: high school, college, med school. In each Hawk looked a little less like an awkward, gangly, poor-postured teen, with features he hadn’t quite grown into, and more like the gangly, poor-postured adult he’d met in Korea. And Hawkeye’s father was always by his side. The pride and the love was written all over his face.

BJ’s family had never been like that. He had to puzzle out every look from his father, and pride and unconditional love were rarely the solutions to his father’s expressions. 

Ink was smudging on Hawkeye’s fingers. 

“It’s too much to bear. If I stay in here any longer I’ll become an artifact of the house, Beej. Vines will grow over everything, myself included,” Hawkeye said. 

“I packed your bag,” BJ muttered. It wasn’t quite the thing to say. 

Hawkeye hummed. He sipped his tea. 

“Do we have anything stronger?” he said. 

“Fresh out, Hawk. Sorry,” BJ said. 

“No matter,” Hawkeye said. 

He tilted his head back and pulled BJ down by his collar, for a kiss. It was a pleading kiss. Hawkeye’s hand skimmed the line of BJ’s jaw. BJ had noticed that for Hawkeye, sometimes, touching BJ was an adequate substitute for alcohol. 

“Goodnight,” Hawkeye said, when he released him. 

“I’ll be in your room, if you need me,” BJ said. 

“A boy in my room,” Hawkeye said, with an eyebrow waggle. “That takes me back.”

BJ couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned. Then he got up and snooped through Hawkeye’s things: old yearbooks, dirty magazines, dried up ballpoint pens. He gave up and went downstairs to make coffee.

BJ had their bags lined up beside the door, the way his father did before trips. He always had things prepared ahead of time, like that, with a near paranoid precision. He was a doctor too, most of BJ’s life. But when he’d first met BJ’s mom he was putting himself through med school by working in construction and house renovations. He redid her family’s kitchen cabinets. And they liked him so much they kept him on to paint the house and cut grass on the weekends. 

BJ knew he’d inherited a lot from his father: his anger, his bluntness, his belief that he had something to prove. But he’d forgotten, until he saw the suitcases at the door, that he’d inherited little things too. 

BJ wondered what Hawkeye had inherited from his father. He wondered what Erin would inherit from him. 

He went back upstairs, quietly, he thought, until he heard Hawkeye call for him. He could barely see him in bed. A sliver of moonlight peaked through the curtains. 

“You okay?” BJ said. 

Hawkeye was quiet for a moment. “I’m cold,” he said, at last. His voice was thin and shaky, the way it was when he was coming out of a particularly rough marathon shift in the OR, or when he was caught in a nightmare. 

“Do you need another blanket?” BJ said. 

“Can you just come here?” he said. 

“Sure, Hawk,” BJ said. 

BJ had washed all the sheets in the house, but Daniel Pierce’s bed still had a particular scent: like aftershave and mothballs. Hawkeye had settled into the outline his father had made. It was an old mattress. It kept the impression of its sleepers. Its springs groaned when BJ shifted. 

Hawkeye didn’t touch him. His arms were curled around a pillow. 

“When I was little, and I got nightmares, I'd sleep here. When Mom died and Dad got a new mattress, I cried. I don’t why it was that that opened the floodgates. I couldn’t cry at her funeral. It felt like that’s what everyone wanted me to do, so I couldn’t,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ wondered what it felt like to be so small and so comforted, wedged in the warm space between parents, wiping fresh tears from his eyes. Erin was such an independent kid. She didn’t even like for him to tuck her in. I’ll be alright, Daddy. She’d say it with such a serious look on her face that he couldn’t deny her. He’d settle for kissing the top of her head, at the part of her soft hair. 

“Sometimes I think about how hard it must have been, to be missing your wife so deeply, for it to hurt like someone hollowed out your guts, and to come home to your kid crying, sprawled out on the new mattress you bought so you didn’t have to sleep the same place she died,” Hawkeye said. “And now it starts all over. We’ll have to get a new mattress, if we come back here. It feels too much like his to be anything else.”

“I love you,” BJ said. 

“I know you do,” Hawkeye said. 

“I thought I’d say it more often,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye made a choked, laughing sound. “Is it hard for you to say it?” he asked.

“It’s hard for me to say a lot of things. It all builds up and then it just explodes,” BJ said.

Hawkeye was moving closer. He reached out and touched BJ’s face. He smoothed the crease between his eyebrows. 

“At my father’s funeral all I could do was cry,” BJ admitted, softly. He couldn’t remember if he’d even told Hawkeye his father was dead. 

“Were you close?” Hawkeye said.

“No,” BJ said.

 Maybe that was why. 

It was embarrassing. Big, hot, dramatic tears ran down his face. Peg had held his hand and collected his dirty tissues in her coat pocket. They’d left Erin at home, with a sitter. His mother’s posture was hunched. She gripped her cane for dear life and hardly looked at him. That was nothing new. She’d be remarried in six months. 

“I can understand how it hurts to be here,” BJ said. “It’s so much memory that it’s suffocating. I feel like I’m watching you drown in it sometimes.”

“Oh, I’m always in some stage of drowning, Beej. I’ve just usually got floaties,” Hawkeye said.

“My house growing up was never like this. My parents were never much interested in building a home, or a life together. It was a shotgun wedding, you know, and they uh…they never got tired of reminding us kids. I spent a lot of energy trying to make up for it. I tried to do things I thought would make them proud. Our house was all white walls and spotless carpets. No music, no books, no clutter or anything. The only thing I ever saw my parents do together was smoke cigarettes on the back porch. That ashtray was the only thing with any personality in the whole damn house. I always wanted a house like this. I always wanted someplace warm and lived‐in to raise a kid. And Peg felt the same,” BJ said.

“You couldn’t tell, looking at your apartment,” Hawkeye said. 

“Yeah, I thought maybe you could help me out with that. At the apartment, or wherever we end up,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye smiled. “I could do that,” he said.

The apartment in Seattle had Hawkeye all over it. Their bedroom had his books and his photos and his clothes in their closet. Their kitchen had his father’s mugs and his mother’s spaghetti strainer. Their living room had the blankets he’d knitted and the couch they’d picked together at the thrift store.

Margaret bought a key rack and hung it by the front door. It was a little off center, Hawkeye complained. It had four hooks, one for each of them. 

“No, no, no, a little to the right,” Hawkeye said, from the couch, martini glass dangling from his hand, feet up, head tilting back and forth as Margaret adjusted the key rack.

“How about now?” Margaret said.

“Lovely effort, but it’s still crooked,” Hawkeye said.

“You’re the one who’s crooked,” she said, sighing dramatically. She put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows at BJ, like he was Hawk’s keeper.

“We can tilt everything else on that wall to match,” BJ said.

“Excellent idea, Beej,” Hawkeye said, rising from the couch, crossing the room to meet BJ in the kitchen, offering the last sip of his martini. (They’d been doing that, sharing drinks to cut back on total consumption. That, and Hawk liked sharing everything.)

“Thank you,” BJ said.

“It’s ideas like that that really make this place a home,” Hawkeye said.

BJ sipped the last of their martini. He liked the sound of that. He liked home if it was with Hawkeye. 

Margaret rolled her eyes “Crooked it is,” she said. 

Chapter Text

Hawkeye was in the kitchen when Erin woke up. She’d slept badly, as she always did in new places. She’d double checked the door and window locks before she got in bed. She’d paced the length of the room and braided and unbraided her hair. She’d stared at the cracks in the ceiling and wondered if it would cave in. The building had creaky, nighttime noises, like Mom’s office when she used to walk there to meet her after school.

Erin jumped when she saw him. He looked up from the coffee pot he was fiddling with and smiled at her. He’d shaved, and he’d put on real clothes. Erin didn’t know which bedroom was Hawkeye’s. Margaret's was the one at the end of the hall. She had told Erin, and said she was just a knock away.

“I’m here if you need anything you don’t want to ask your dad for, girl trouble or anything,” she’d said. “And if I’m not here you can always ask Helen.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Erin said, nodding, hugging the plush towel Margaret had picked out for her. She’d been worried, actually. Mom had given her an old makeup bag she’d gotten for free at Macy’s to store her sanitary napkins, and a hot water bottle for her cramps.

“Call me Margaret, please,” she said. Something self‐conscious flashed across her face. “I hope we can be friends, Erin. I’ve heard so much about you. Your father used to show me every baby picture your mother sent him. And she sent me Christmas cards for years.”

Erin squirmed in the bathroom doorway, in the crescent of yellow light. “Dad never mentioned you,” she said. He never mentioned any of you.

Margaret smiled. “We’re all very happy you’re here,” she said. 

Erin picked up a pillow and hugged it. She balled her shaky hands in the pillowcase, trying to hide her jumpiness. It was usually the first thing on which people commented. Why so nervous, little girl? As if pointing out the problem was akin to solving it. 

“Good morning,” Hawkeye said. “Did I wake you?”

Erin shook her head. She hoped she didn’t look like she felt. Her shoulders were bunched up. She ducked her head and reached for her mouth guard container. She spit it out and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, hoping he wasn’t watching. 

“Your dad said you were a late sleeper, the liar. He’s still asleep and here we are,” Hawkeye said, gesturing between them as if they were conspiring. 

Erin laughed in spite of herself. She remembered coming home from school to find Dad asleep on the couch with the TV on. He worked nights sometimes, and would fall asleep anywhere when he got home. She’d tiptoe around the house all afternoon. She’d do her homework at the kitchen table just in case he woke up and wondered where she was. 

Hawkeye grinned, looking pleased with himself. “Are you allowed to have coffee? Don’t parents worry about it stunting your growth? Or is that a myth?” he said.

“Aren’t you a doctor?” Erin said.

She got up: pale legs, pajama shorts, and a big blue shirt that had belonged to her mother, frayed at the collar, flyaway hairs from her lopsided braids.

“Touché,” he said. “Do you take cream and sugar?”

Erin nodded again, and took the mug he offered her. 

“Margaret says I drink too much coffee,” Hawkeye said. “She says I talk fast enough as it is and caffeine just makes me quicker.”

Erin wondered if Hawkeye also slept in the room at the end of the hall. They made a good match, she thought, standing side by side. Hawkeye was all harsh angles and Margaret had a complementary softness. Erin often thought in shapes and tactile sensations. Mom was angry when her voice got all choked up and scratchy, like her rough palms in the winter. Erin knew she’d done poorly on a test when she had pencil lead smeared on the side of her hand. 

Erin stirred a spoonful of sugar and a splash of cream into her coffee. She braced herself for bitterness and took a sip.

“He’ll be up soon, and Helen and Margaret should be dashing through here on the way to work any minute now,” Hawkeye said. 

As if on cue the two women came barreling down the hallway, pulling on shoes, tripping over each other, and reaching for the travel mugs Hawkeye had set on the counter. 

“Good morning, Erin,” Margaret said. She had half her hair pulled up and was wearing nurses’ scrubs. “Sorry to eat and run.”

Hawkeye handed her a banana and a brown paper bag Erin assumed was a sack lunch. Helen splashed milk into both travel mugs while Hawkeye slid a matching lunch and banana across the counter to her. 

“It’s like I’m sending my kids off to school,” Hawkeye said. 

Erin glanced around the kitchen. She hadn’t realized he’d been up so long but there was the evidence: a cutting board and knife, a package of deli turkey and swiss cheese, a mustard bottle, a bag of pretzels, and a carton of strawberries. There was a third bag, unclaimed, lunch for Dad, presumably. 

“Do you have a plan for the day, Hawk?” Helen said.

“Erin and BJ are having breakfast, and then it’s whatever Erin wants to do in the afternoon,” Hawkeye said. He met her eyes and suddenly it felt like everyone was looking at her. “The matinee is The Wizard of Oz. I circled it in the paper for Beej. He likes all her movies,” he said.

Erin had dressed up as Dorothy one year for Halloween. Mom had bought her a little pair of heels and glued red glitter to them. She’d made the dress from a pattern and Erin had carried around a stuffed dog and a wicker basket for her candy. Dad had taken her trick-or-treating. It was one of the last times he’d done so. She remembered asking him to fix the ribbons on her braids. She remembered his big hands and the way he’d knelt down on the sidewalk to adjust her silly little hair bows. 

“Sounds fun,” Margaret said. She took Helen by the waist and turned her to the door. “Come on Whitfield, we’re going to miss the train,” she said. “You’ll have to tell us all about it when we get home, Erin,” she said.

“Sure,” Erin said, still startled by the kindness of all these supposed friends of her father.

The women hurried out the door, and then Erin and Hawkeye were alone again.

“We don’t need to go to the movies if you don’t want to,” he said, rinsing the cutting board and stray dishes.

 He glanced up at her. The nervousness was back. Erin thought maybe they were feeding each other's anxieties.

“You don’t have to entertain me all day, if you have something better to do. I’m not a little kid,” Erin said.

 She hated to think that it would be a summer of babysitters.

Hawkeye laughed. “Believe me, I don’t have anything better to do,” he said.

Erin leaned her elbows on the counter. “I brought books. I can read. Or I can help you around the house. At home Mom lets me do the shopping,” she said. 

It was half a lie, to make herself sound grown up. Mom had only let her do the shopping once, when she was frazzled with work and Henry was out of town. Erin had dropped all of her coupons on the floor and had to scramble for them in the produce section. 

Hawkeye raised an eyebrow. “Oh, does she?” he said.

“Yes,” Erin said, doubling down.

Hawkeye hummed. “Noted,” he said. “Do you like the movies?”

Erin nodded.

“So do I. Maybe I’m the little kid and you can take me to the movies,” he said.

The door to the other hall bedroom creaked, and Dad emerged. (Not the door at the end of the hall. That answered that question.)

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Hawkeye said.

“Hey kids,” BJ said. He put a hand on Erin’s shoulder. “Are you ready for chocolate chip pancakes?”

Erin squirmed. “I don’t always get chocolate chip pancakes,” she said. It seemed like such a juvenile order, when Dad said it aloud. 

“I’ll take some chocolate chip pancakes,” Hawkeye said. 

“I’ll bring you a doggy bag,” BJ said. 

“I’m holding you to that,” Hawkeye said. 

He gave Erin a pointed look and then scooped up his mug and the paper and retreated to the closer bedroom. He waved, over his shoulder. 

“The place I want to take you is only a few blocks away,” Dad said. He looked down at Erin’s coffee cup and then up at her face. “I thought we could walk,” he said. 

The sky was threatening rain, so Dad put on his raincoat and handed Erin a spare. It was  Hawkeye’s, he clarified, when she stuck her hands in the pockets and pulled out a ball of lint, a sock with a hole at the big toe, and two quarters. 

“It was raining the last time he did laundry,” Dad said.

He put the hood of his raincoat up. It smooshed all his hair up around his ears and forehead so it stuck out in comical tufts. He put hers up too, the way he did when she was little and he had to zip up her zippers and tie her shoes.

Erin ordered an omelet to spite Dad, and orange juice, which she drank while staring out the window at the rain slick streets. A kid in a yellow rain jacket and boots splashed through the puddles on the sidewalk, holding his mother’s hand as she swayed on her heels and kept her big umbrella over the two of them. 

“Do you have a lot of work today?” Erin said, picking pieces of onion from her eggs. She didn’t like omelets all that much. 

“Just a couple surgeries and a staff meeting,” Dad said.

“And that kid from yesterday?” Erin said. 

“He’s doing alright,” Dad said, meeting her eyes. He’d gotten French toast, with a dusting of powdered sugar and rivers of syrup. It taunted her across the table. 

“But you’re checking in, aren’t you? To make sure?” Erin said. 

When she was little, every time she got hurt she would ask Dad to talk her through everything he was doing. The first time she fell off her bike and skinned her knee she cried and stared at the ceiling while he fixed it up.

“I’m going to clean the cuts now, sweetie. It’s just warm water, but it’ll probably sting,” he’d said. Hot tears were dripping down the side of her face. Her heart was pounding and she wasn’t sure why. “Ready? 3, 2, 1.”

And then the antiseptic and a big bandage, firmly placed, and he kissed the spot, helped her up and made sure she could move it without too much stiffness. 

“If you ever get scared, I’ll always talk you through it,” Dad said. 

He’d said the same thing when Mom tripped on the stairs and got stitches on her temple, and when Erin’s friend Cathy’s dog was sick and had to get her stomach pumped at the vet. She wasn’t sure the precise time he stopped talking her through things that scared her. It ended around the time of the divorce. Erin thought maybe she was too old for fears and calm explanations. And of course there were things Dad could never explain.

“He’s got a check up,” Dad said. He sliced his French toast into big strips. “We’ll check his vitals and then I’ll explain the recovery procedures, if he’s not too groggy.”

“What if his vitals aren’t okay?” Erin said. 

“We’ll give him some time to stabilize, keep a close eye on him, and take some x‐rays if problems persist,” Dad said. He stabbed a piece of his toast and chewed. Syrup was getting in his mustache. 

“Would you ever have to open him up again, if he wasn’t getting better?” Erin said.

Dad put his fork down. It clanked against the ceramic of his plate and Erin jumped. 

“I didn’t bring you here to talk about work, Erin,” Dad said. 

“Sorry,” she muttered. She wished she’d taken her braids out before they left, so her hair could cover her face and he wouldn’t see how pink her cheeks were getting.

She didn’t say that back when he still worked in the ER, before he moved to pediatrics, and he’d get called in for horrible accidents (fires, fights, pile ups on the highway) she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She’d get it twisted up in her head that he was the one hurt, that the same hands that patched up her knee would be broken and bloody. She had to sleep in bed with Mom those nights, and even then her sleep was light. She’d wake up when the front door clicked, and she’d stand in the hall in her nightgown, ghostly and pale, just to make sure he was there in the doorway with all his limbs intact. 

Mom understood. Mom said Erin had picked up the worry from her. 

“How’s school?” Dad said. 

“It’s over,” Erin said.

Dad sighed. “I know, kid. I mean before it ended,” he said.

“I got all A’s. Didn’t Mom tell you?” Erin said. 

“That’s all you have to say about school?” he said.

“It’s fine, Dad. I’ve been invited to the honor society and I’m running track again in the fall,” she said. This was what Erin told everyone when they asked how her first year of high school had gone. Her grades were good, she’d been strong enough to run in a couple varsity track meets, and things were fine. 

They were half‐lies, again. For one, her grades were only so good because she made herself sick studying. She threw up in the bathroom before tests and she sat at her desk, scanning flashcards with shaky hands during breaks. She’d had trouble making friends, because she worked herself up into panics and could hardly speak sometimes. The most interaction she had with her classmates was group work in her chemistry lab, and the occasional request from Penelope Adams, who sat behind her and asked to borrow pencils or copy her notes.

The honor society was imminent, and Erin’s homeroom teacher had encouraged her to run for secretary because she had such neat penmanship. None of her close friends from middle school were eligible. They’d all joined the cheer team or prom committee and whispered during class. You’re such a goody two shoes, Erin. What happened? Emma Harris told her. She was smoking cigarettes with some juniors under the bleachers. They used to walk home together every afternoon. They used to play safari adventure in Erin’s backyard, and climb trees. 

Mom said it was growing pains. She said little girls got mean for a little while and that Erin should just be true to herself. Erin wasn’t sure what self was worth being true to. She joined track because she was itching to move. She was a sprinter. Track practice was early, before the air got hot and suffocating. She’d double over on the track, hands on her knees, throat burning and scalp sweaty. Coach said she’d be even faster if she focused.

In Erin’s dreams she was always running away.

Dad’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Erin fidgeted.

“Mom says you’re having some trouble adjusting,” Dad said. 

Erin sipped her orange juice. Her jaw tightened. She ducked her head.

“Well, Mom would know better than you,” she said, then looked up at him, eyes wide. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

The trouble with Dad was he always looked so hurt and so tired when she said something she shouldn’t have. And then Erin’s brain got stuck on all the sacrifices he’d made for her, and all the good he was off doing when he wasn’t around. She thought about the kids he saved and the hours he spent in surgery. She thought about how he was good and how he tried and about how at the end of the day she was the one who was lacking, who was ungrateful.

“I don’t want to be disconnected from your life. I want you to feel like you can come to me, if you’re having a problem,” Dad said. “I’m sorry I’ve been distant, with the move.”

Erin frowned. The move, Seattle, the summer. It was all a big question mark. She hunched her shoulders and watched the door. People kept funneling in and out. A busboy was clearing the booth behind them. Erin wondered how often Dad was in here. The waitress had smiled at him and led them to a particular booth. She’d brought coffee before he’d asked.

“Can I ask you a question?” Erin said.

“You just did,” Dad said.

She rolled her eyes. “Another one, then,” she said.

“Of course, kiddo,” he said.

“Whose idea was it for me to come here? Was it Mom’s?” Erin said.

“It was mine,” Dad said. He sipped his coffee. “Your mom and I discussed it.”

“And why did you…?”

“Why did I what?” Dad said.

Erin chewed on her lip. “Move,” she said. “And want me to come in the first place.”

Dad sucked in a breath. Erin thought she could detect a glimmer of nervousness. Maybe the tensing of shoulders and furrowing of eyebrows was genetic. It was strange to see herself reflected in him, when she’d spent so much time convincing herself they were nothing alike.

“We moved because Hawkeye needed a change of pace,” Dad said. “And I wanted you to come and stay so you could see the apartment and meet everyone, because you’re my daughter and I love you and I care about what you think.”

“Hawkeye?” Erin repeated. She was blushing again, and picking at her eggs. It was something about an I love you , from her father, in a place people could hear. It made her feel like a little kid. 

“We lived together in my old apartment for a while. His father died and he needed someone,” Dad said. 

Erin’s head bobbed. Someone always needed Dad. 

“You moved because he was having a hard time?” she muttered.

She thought about Hawkeye in his pajamas with his unshaven face and his greasy hair. She thought about how he didn’t work and made everybody sandwiches. She thought about how he knew Dad liked Judy Garland movies and about Dad’s arm around his shoulders. 

“We…Hawkeye and I, uh…” Dad started. He smoothed his hair with his hand. Erin thought she could see his fingers trembling. 

“It’s okay Dad,” Erin said. She chewed on her lip some more, worrying the skin into a scab. “You can tell me.”

He laughed. It was breathy and brief. “We’re partners, the way your mom and I were, the way Henry and your mom are,” he said. 

Erin bit her lip until she could taste blood. “Is that why you got a divorce?” she said. “Did you cheat on Mom with him?”

She felt a surge of protectiveness for her mother. She’d always thought it was odd how easily they could be friends, and the thought that there was some betrayal at the heart of their relationship hurt her more than she could bear. 

“Of course not,” Dad said.

“Does she know?” Erin said.

“She was the first person I told,” Dad said. 

“Oh,” Erin said. “I thought maybe you were marrying Margaret.” 

He smiled. “We’re just good friends. I’m not marrying anyone,” Dad said. 

“Okay,” Erin said. She didn’t know what else to say. 

“I know it’s a lot to process,” Dad said. 

“Yeah,” Erin said. 

“Can you tell me a little of what you’re thinking?” Dad said. He was wringing his hands, nervously. 

He hadn’t been saying it for her benefit, earlier. He genuinely valued her opinion. 

“I’ve never seen you as happy as you were last night, with your friends and with…him. I don’t think there’s anything else to say,” she said. 

“Erin,” Dad said. His eyes were watery. Whenever Dad cried Erin felt hollowed out. 

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” he said. 

She shrugged, and looked down at the table. She’d have to spend the whole afternoon with Hawkeye. 

Dad slid the rest of his French toast across the table towards her. 

Erin speared a piece with her fork. 

“You’re welcome,” she said. 

Hawkeye’s feet were up on the easy chair in the living room. He’d worked a little on Margaret’s Christmas present (a sweater, cable knit, with wooden buttons) and then picked up one of Beej’s old mystery paperbacks with a cracked spine and yellowing pages. 

He was fighting the urge to nap. If he got back in bed, with its warm quilts and its soft sheets (that smelled like BJ still, soap, aftershave, rubber gloves, sweat) he was afraid he might not get back up. 

Erin was through the door before Beej was. She paled when she saw him.  

“Hi, Erin,” Hawkeye said. 

“Hi,” she said. She hurried down the hallway and disappeared into the bathroom. 

BJ was quick behind him. He put a takeout box on the counter, the chocolate chip pancakes, presumably, that Hawkeye had been joking about but of course BJ had taken seriously. 

“You told her?” Hawkeye said. 

“I told her,” BJ repeated. He put down the hood of his raincoat and crossed his arms. 

“And?” Hawkeye said. He put his feet back on the floor. 

“And come outside for a minute, won’t you?” BJ said. He was fingering fabric on the coat rack, feeling around for his other jacket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. 

“Oh come on, Beej. Lung cancer killed your father. You’re burning through your pack,” Hawkeye said. 

“Last pack,” BJ said. 

“Hmm, you said that two packs ago,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ crossed the room and pulled him up, leading him by the hand out to the balcony, where it was still sprinkling. 

He lit up, and god Hawkeye hated the smell. He hated kissing Beej when he’d been smoking. He hated the rasp he got in his voice from the damage to his lungs. He hated how long his fingers looked balancing a damn death stick and the way his throat moved when he took a drag. 

“Stop staring,” Beej said. 

“It’s not my fault you look criminally good when you smoke. In fact I wish you didn’t so I could put my whole heart into chastising you for it,” Hawkeye said. 

“You put your whole heart into everything, Hawk,” BJ said. 

“Is she mad?” Hawkeye said. He wished he could get his hands to stop sweating. He wiped them on his pants. 

BJ blew smoke away from them. “She’s showering and changing. She likes to sing in there, you know? And take up all the hot water,” he said. 

“Like father, like daughter,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ laughed. “I think she’s too good for me to claim any part of her. It’s all Peg,” he said. 

Hawkeye exhaled. “She’s not angry,” he said. 

“Maybe she’s a little angry, or confused, I guess. But she didn’t run out of the restaurant, or make a scene,” BJ said. 

“Less like father, more like daughter,” Hawkeye said. 

“Are you going to be alright?” BJ said. 

“Oh, me?” Hawkeye said, batting his eyes. “You make it sound like she’s going to claw at my eyes the second you’re out the door.”

BJ shrugged one shoulder. It was a calculated motion meant to look casual. Hawkeye wished he’d stop trying those things on him. Hawkeye could see through them. 

They stood like that for a little while. Hawkeye could hear the gears turning in BJ’s head as he hunched over the railing and smoked. Hawkeye leaned beside him, so their shoulders touched. When he was younger some hopeful, childish part of him thought he might suck up BJ’s troubles, through osmosis, or sheer proximity. If Beej wouldn’t say what was bothering him then maybe the problem could pass to Hawkeye through the brush of skin. And maybe Hawkeye could untangle BJ’s anger and fear and frustration. Maybe he could turn it on its head, and clear the smoky air. 

It was an idea that got Hawkeye in trouble. 

“Apparently, I hardly know her,” BJ muttered. 

“Beej—”

“Dad?”

They both turned. Erin was standing in the living room again. Her hair was out of its braids, and wavy. She had on a red t-shirt and a pair of blue overalls. She’d coated her pale lashes in mascara (as Hawkeye supposed 15-year-olds who fancied themselves adults were want to do) and had laced up a pair of Chuck Taylors that matched her father’s (albeit smaller).  

“Erin?” BJ said, as if he were seeing her through a fog. He put his dwindling cigarette out in the ashtray, waved at the lingering smoke, and opened the screen door. 

She narrowed her eyes at the two of them. “I wanted to say goodbye before you had to go to work,” she said. 

“Shit,” BJ said, eyes on his watch. “I’ve gotta go,” he said, to Hawkeye. There were more questions in his eyes, but no time for answers. 

“Your lunch is on the counter,” Hawkeye said. 

He passed Hawkeye on the way inside, put his hand on his shoulder, and kissed the side of his face. He did the same thing to Erin on the way to the door. 

And then it was Erin and Hawkeye, alone. 

She stared at him, with her hands tucked in the pockets of her overalls. 

“I didn’t know Dad smoked,” she said.

“He says he’s quitting,” Hawkeye said. He didn’t say the rest: that his worsening nicotine addiction had coincided with the move, new job, new apartment, new man moping about the place, stressing everyone out. 

Erin frowned. “He says a lot of things,” she said.

“Uh huh,” Hawkeye said. They regarded each other warily. Even though it had been Hawkeye’s idea for BJ to tell her at breakfast, rip off the band‐aid , he believed his thought process had been, it seemed like a torturous trick for BJ to leave the two of them alone together. 

Erin was grinding her teeth.

“Well,” Hawkeye began. He rubbed his hands together. “Shall we clear the air?”

Erin grimaced. “The air?” she said. 

“Yeah, uh…you could ask me whatever questions you want and I could try to answer them. And if my answers are sufficient maybe we’ll have time for that movie,” Hawkeye said.

Erin crossed her arms, considering. She got that scheming look on her face, the same one BJ had right before he did something devious, like nail Hawkeye’s boot to the floor.

“Well, what do you get in exchange?” she said. Evidently she’d read the offer as some sort of business transaction.

“What do you mean?”

“I get to ask you a bunch of questions and then you take me to the movies? That doesn’t seem fair,” she said.

“ You’re taking me to the movies, remember?” Hawkeye said.

“How do I know you’re not going to tell me a bunch of lies? Or refuse to answer part way through. I’d prefer a fair negotiation. Then, at least, I’d know you’re not saying things to score points with my father,” Erin said.

Hawkeye laughed. Only BJ’s daughter could turn a normal conversation into a game of chess. 

“Okay, how about we trade off? You ask me a question and then I ask you one,” he said. 

Erin stuck her hand out, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “Deal,” she said. “But you have to start.”

“Do you remember the first time we met?” Hawkeye asked.

Erin sat down on the couch. She tucked some of her hair behind her ear and considered the question. “I remember a little. Mom said it was some conference Dad had in Portland. I remember the hotel had these big white beds, and Mom let me ride on the luggage cart. I’d never even seen one of those before,” she said. “You were there at dinner. It was one of those places with tablecloths. Mom kept telling me to sit still.”

Hawkeye had been half out of his mind. BJ had mentioned the conference in a letter. He said the whole family would be in Portland for the weekend and that he’d love to see him if he wasn’t too busy, if it’s not too much trouble, Hawk. Dinner and drinks are on me. It was a crazy thing to read, when they hadn’t seen each other in five years. The thought of walking into a restaurant and saying something to the effect of oh, my friend is here already; the reservation should be under Hunnicutt was almost too jarring to imagine. The thought of BJ in a dress shirt and jacket, and not in olive drab or a sweat‐soaked henley, waving him over from his place beside Peg, his lovely wife who Hawkeye had never met, was enough to have Hawk’s teeth chattering on the drive over, or maybe it was just the cold.

He remembered the tablecloths too, and Erin’s pouting. He remembered turning the corner, following the hostess, and seeing the three of them: happy family, plucked from the canvases of Norman Rockwell. Peg’s dress was pink. He could still see her, hair curled to perfection, leaning her elbows on the table and saying something into BJ’s ear. Erin was busy with crayons, and turning her head curiously at the many things to look at (spindly light fixtures, brightly colored cocktails, high-backed wooden chairs, and the dessert cart rolling by). 

And BJ. Hawkeye had thought he would be different. Some part of him had always believed that the second he set foot in Mill Valley he’d be just as he was: husband, father, devoted doctor, and family man. Anything that was simmering beneath would be filed away. Hawkeye had known BJ Hunnicutt in crisis, and there were no crises to be had in Mill Valley, or Portland, Maine for that matter. 

It was the look on BJ’s face when he saw him that convinced Hawkeye he was wrong. BJ’s arms were around him before he could even say hello. And, god, he felt the same. Hawkeye hadn’t thought he would feel the same. 

“It’s really you,” BJ had said, voice muffled in Hawkeye’s shoulder. 

“Were you expecting some other Hawkeye?” Hawkeye said. 

BJ squeezed him so hard Hawkeye’s ribs hurt. 

“It’s so good to finally meet you,” Peg Hunnicutt said. 

“BJ’s better half,” Hawkeye said. He took her hand. “It’s an honor.”

“And Erin,” BJ said. “Erin, this is my best friend Hawkeye.”

He remembered her meek little nice to meet you . He remembered her pointing her little fingers at the kids menu, while Peg dictated her order. He remembered BJ got an expensive bottle of wine, and that he drank a lot. And ate a lot of bread. And he talked a mile a minute. He asked a lot of questions about Hawkeye’s work, about Dad, about what he and Peg should see in Portland, and about when he could get him to Mill Valley. 

Hawkeye tried to give satisfactory answers. BJ was smiling too much. He was holding Peg’s hand and talking too quickly about how great everything was. How nice it was for Peg and Hawk and Erin to be at the same table. How it was a dream to have his three favorite people in one room. 

It was as if BJ was trying to convince him of something. Or maybe Peg was the one he was trying to convince. She kept meeting Hawkeye’s eyes. Mrs. Hunnicutt , he repeated, to remind himself. And when Beej was drunk enough to wobble, slightly, when he got up from the table, she helped her husband into his jacket and asked Hawkeye if he could call them a cab.

Hawkeye remembered waiting with her, on the sidewalk, while Beej was entertaining Erin. Hawkeye hadn’t been able to hold her, when BJ offered. Erin liked to be carried. She threw her arms around her father’s neck and clung, but Hawkeye was sure something bad would happen, and he’d drop her.

“He’s been talking about nothing but dinner with you for a month,” Peg said. 

Hawkeye looked at her. “Is he doing okay?” he said. 

Peg nodded, slowly. Hawkeye remembered her good posture and the way her eyes never left Beej and Erin. 

“He’s doing his best,” she said, quiet, even, knowing. Hawkeye had always wondered how BJ had managed to find a woman like Peg. “He really cares what you think,” she said. 

“I know,” Hawkeye said. 

In hindsight, maybe Hawkeye should’ve known something was acutely wrong, and done something about it. Beej was always championing the wholesome, American, family business, albeit not usually so self‐consciously. But when Hawkeye saw the three of them squeezed in the back of the taxi (Erin beside Peggy, BJ with his head on his wife’s shoulder) he decided not to press. If anyone could make a marriage work, in the aftermath of the war, it would be BJ. 

“I remember Dad said you were his best friend and I said I thought I was his best friend,” Erin said. “And that Mom bought me an ice cream cone from a street vendor and I dropped it on the sidewalk.”

“That’s sweet,” Hawkeye said. “The best friend part, not the dropped ice cream.”

Erin chewed on her lip. “Yeah, well, Dad and I used to be pretty close,” she said.

Hawkeye nodded. Maybe that was what he’d sensed, back then. It had been clear that even when BJ was hanging on by a thread, he was entirely devoted to Erin. Convincing her that everything was alright was the top priority, though he didn’t always succeed. 

“Your turn,” Hawkeye said. 

“Have you ever been married?” Erin said.

Hawkeye smiled. “No,” he said. “I came close, once, but it didn’t work out.”

“So you don’t have any kids?” Erin said.

“That’s sort of a different question, but no, I don’t have any kids,” Hawkeye said. “Does your stepfather have kids?”

Erin nodded. “Henry’s got a son, Mark, and Dawn, his daughter. They’re both older than me by a lot. He’s in college and she’s married already,” she said. “When I was little I thought maybe Mom and Dad would have another baby. I’m one of the only only children I know, you know?” she said, and Hawkeye sputtered out a laugh before he could stop himself. 

“So am I,” he said. “Only, I mean.”

“It’s good that they didn’t, but I really wanted them to,” she said. “Did you ever want kids?”

“I thought I had another question, first,” Hawkeye said. 

“Fine, what’s your question?” Erin said.

“What’s your favorite color?” Hawkeye said.

Erin scoffed. “Red,” she said. “Do you want kids?”

Hawkeye figured he’d spent so much time caring for other people (sewing them up, restarting their hearts, letting them cry into his shirt, and tread on his feelings) that any well of paternal energy he’d had was dried up now. He’d learned from Dad that fatherhood was about support, stability, compassion, and understanding. He’d learned from BJ that when your brain was like a plane going down, with turbulence and shouting and luggage being thrown from the overhead compartments, it was hard to secure both your oxygen mask and that of the person beside you, even if that person happened to be your kid.

In short, it didn’t matter if Hawkeye wanted kids. They probably would not want him.

Sometimes his throat started closing up when he heard babies cry, still, even when he thought he was fine it snuck up on him. 

“The thought crossed my mind, but I’m not sure it’s in the cards for me,” Hawkeye said. 

Erin looked like she was considering his answer, carefully. Hawkeye wasn’t sure what an acceptable answer would be, to Erin. 

“In…uh, in Korea your Dad had a photo of you in every pocket. Sometimes I found pictures in my pockets too, you know, same scrubs and all. It was easy to mix them up. He had more photos of you than dirty socks and that’s really saying something,” Hawkeye said. 

Erin’s nose scrunched up. “I thought it was all Mom, with the albums. She used to pull them out after dinner and get all teary-eyed over dumb pictures I’d seen a million times,” she said. 

“She used to write your every move down in her letters. If you sneezed on a Tuesday in 1952 I heard about it,” Hawkeye said. 

“You read Dad’s letters?” Erin said. 

“He read them out loud, to anybody who’d listen,” Hawkeye said. “He’s always going on and on about you, Erin, even now. If it’s not baby pictures it’s report cards or track meet statistics or spelling bee participation ribbons.”

Erin had come in 4th place at her 7th grade spelling bee. Beej spelled out every other word he said for a week. Hey, Hawk, should I make more C-O-F-F-E-E? That’s two F’s two E’s. 

Erin frowned. 

“Dad doesn’t talk about Korea. Not to me,” she said. “I guess that’s why this is all so confusing.”

Hawkeye swallowed, thickly. “He tries very hard to protect you,” he said. “And it’s a hard thing to talk about.”

Erin’s eyebrows furrowed. “Yeah, well how is it fair that you know all about me and I found out about you an hour ago? He moved across the country and didn’t even bother to tell me why,” she said. 

Hawkeye remembered that BJ thought he and Erin were alike. He thought about falling in step with him, in the dying grass, just after BJ got off the chopper that had nearly taken him home and then pulled him back for the last few days of the war. He hadn’t said much then, because what was there to say when your best friend slipped away without goodbye, and when everything you feared was coming true all at once? BJ left him. And BJ knew what it meant for Hawkeye to be left again. 

In Maine, when Dad’s house held so much memory that Hawkeye was suffocating, he was waiting for BJ to run. He’d wake up panicked on the couch, in the dark, and BJ would be there, reading a book in the lamp light, with his feet up on the coffee table. He’d lose sight of him at the grocery store, and spiral until he turned the corner and there BJ would be, inspecting the day’s catches at the fish counter. If Hawkeye was honest, he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

He’d get too depressed or too neurotic or too clingy or too much and Beej would be gone without goodbye. It scared him, sometimes, that he’d given BJ that power over him. And he’d done it wholeheartedly, unwittingly, inevitably, the same way he had with Carlye and Trapper and Tommy and Billy and Mom and Dad. Everyone was leaving. And there was something different about him, he thought, something that made the leaving feel personal, or like a punishment. There was something in him that made him need people the same way he needed water or gin or sleep. 

Other people weren’t lonely the way he was. It wasn’t all-consuming. When he was little he used to sit by his bedroom door when his parents had dinner parties. He used to listen to the laughter and the big, boisterous, conversations. He used to stare at the golden light in the hall, and cry because the grown-up parties were past his bedtime. 

He needed people like air, and yet he’d spent a lot of his life alone. He wanted BJ in his life, and yet he was certain he’d abandon him. 

Hawkeye wondered if he and Erin shared any of that. He thought about the 7-year-old, whose Dad was her best friend. He’d been that 7-year-old too.

“Can I ask you something?” Hawkeye said. 

“It is your turn,” Erin muttered. 

He knelt down so he and Erin were eye to eye. She was still hunched on the couch, with her elbows on her knees. 

“You know, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to hold it against him all summer. You’re right. It’s not fair. And I can say he has good intentions and he’s trying to make things right all I want, but the fact of the matter is you don’t know me and you’d be well within your rights not to trust a single thing I say,” Hawkeye said. 

“Is there a question in there somewhere?” Erin said. 

“Are you going to let him try to make it up to you?” Hawkeye said. 

Erin bristled. “What kind of a question is that?“ she said. “He’s my dad…of course I will.”

Hawkeye grinned. There was something about second chances. There was something about unconditional love. There was something about Erin Hunnicutt, angry and wary, but kind and forgiving. 

Hawkeye hummed. Erin rolled her eyes. He remembered being a teenager, when everything you said was equal parts self-conscious and contemptuous. 

“Can we go to the movies now?” she said. 

Chapter Text

“You’re drunk, and you’re supposed to pick her up in half an hour,” Peg said. 

She was standing in the doorway wearing her red plaid coat with the gold buttons and a white hat with a pom pom that made her hair look blonder and shinier. It was 1962 and she was angry with him, as she often was the last few years, when they were hurtling toward divorce. 

BJ sat in his study, hunched over his desk, rocks glass in his grasp, with a whiskey bottle in front of him. He’d pulled it from its hiding spot in the bottom drawer, the key to which migrated from pants to jacket pockets. This posture was common for BJ in 1962. He’d get home from work and close the door. He’d sit in the lamp light and listen to the sounds of the suburbs: kids riding past on their bikes, a radio blaring through an open window, the wind through the trees.

Every evening he’d try to fashion a different end point. That night he’d intended to walk past his study and go upstairs to shower. He’d imagined himself reheating the leftovers in the fridge and then reading at the kitchen table. He imagined putting on a new record and tidying the living room for Peg’s return home. He imagined her finding him there and smiling like she used to. He imagined asking her to dance.

But every night he got stuck in the hall between his study and the stairs. Every night he felt around for the key to his liquor drawer and talked himself into a nightcap. And if work was hard one drink turned into three. And when he got buzzed he got nostalgic or angry or sad. Sometimes he rested his eyes and woke up to Peg shaking his shoulder, telling him to eat something or come to bed. Lately it was Erin, knocking at the door, asking if he was still working, asking if he could please come upstairs and kiss her goodnight. She used to complain when he did that. 

“I’m not drunk,” BJ said, straightening. “I can pick her up. Where am I picking her up from?”

Peg sighed. She looked tired. She had her purse on her arm, and was wearing the black heeled boots she wore to parties. 

“You’re going out,” he said. He’d forgotten.

“Yes, BJ. Diane was nice enough to host a bunch of the girls today. You’re supposed to keep an eye on Erin this evening. That was the deal,” Peg said. She was speaking slowly, like he was stupid.

It was coming back now. Erin’s school was on half‐day for the start of their winter break. Peg was working in the afternoon. She did secretarial work at a real estate office in the city. And she had her office Christmas party in the evening. She hadn’t invited him along because they were fighting. BJ often forgot where their fights began and ended. The whole year had been a bit blurry. 

Peg put her hand over her eyes. BJ stared at her manicured nails and felt shame pooling, hot, in his stomach. He was drunk. 

“One night, I said. I needed one night where I didn’t have to worry about you or Erin or anything other than this party, and now I’m going to miss it,” Peg said. 

“Darling, I can still watch her. If you pick her up I can—”

“Andy’s picking me up in five minutes. I’m already putting him out for the ride because I thought I’d leave you the car,” Peg said.

“Andy?” BJ said. He could feel his face coloring. 

“Andy Thomas, from work. He’s escorting me,” Peg said, enunciating each syllable to spite him. 

He couldn’t blame her. He couldn’t blame her at all. He was hardly home, and when he was he neglected her. 

BJ laughed, harshly. “Oh, that’s rich,” he said, instead of apologizing. “Where does Andy Thomas think your husband is, tonight?”

Peg reached for the whiskey bottle. She picked it up and swirled the remaining liquid. 

“You know I’ve been tracking this,” she said. 

She held her thumb and pointer finger up to the side of the bottle, estimating the gap between what BJ drank yesterday and what he’d had tonight. 

“I told people at work that you had the flu,” Peg said. All the anger had drained from her voice, which was more frightening than anything else. 

“Peg…”

“I’ll call Diane and see if someone over there can drive Erin home. And if no one can, I’ll see if Andy can drive me over,” she said. 

She reached for his half-empty glass and downed the rest of his drink. Hawkeye used to do that at the Officer’s Club, when it was clear BJ should head back to the Swamp. He thought about his wife and some other man, picking up his daughter. 

“I thought things might get better,” BJ said. 

Peg looked at him with watery eyes. 

“I’ll call,” she said. 

Peg left and BJ put his head on the desk. The room seemed to come close and then recede, like the tide, like Peg’s face pressed to his chest, when he said something too funny and she laughed with her whole body. He loved that motion: her leaning forward, into his space, so he could smell her perfume, and then away, so he could see the length of her neck, the soft point of her chin, the sweet timbre of her laugh. There had been a time when he was certain that every time she leaned away from him she would come back. And now they’d been leaning away from each other for years. The distance was getting so great that BJ could barely remember what it was like to be close. 

He hadn’t been close with anyone for a long time. 

“Diane can bring her back. It’ll be awhile, because she has to wait for all the other girls to get picked up,” Peg said. 

BJ lifted his head from the desk. Peg was fixing flyaway strands of her hair. She reminded him of Margaret, sometimes, with the way she fussed over it.

Part of him was still trying to devise futile, temporary solutions. He and Erin could make Christmas cookies tomorrow. He could go out and buy multicolored sprinkles and food dye for the frosting, and use Peg’s star shaped cookie cutters. Erin liked decorating. She’d get laser focused and chew on her lip. She’d spend ten minutes on one cookie. Her energy could sustain the three of them. And when Peg came home she’d see the effort he’d made. And the effort implied love. The effort was close enough, when it was hard to say love out loud. A distant memory brushed up against him, coupled with the head pounding of a future hangover: arranging stones in the dark, cold hands, camp as still as death, his mind drawing carefully blank, saying goodbye the only way he was able. 

“I’m sorry,” BJ said. It came out choked. He didn’t know why it was always so hard to get out those particular words. Maybe it was because he backed himself into corners where he was sure he’d never be forgiven. 

Peg came close and cupped his face with one hand. Her palm was small and cold. She only touched him for a moment. This was as near as they could get anymore, to reaching each other. It was in brief instances where Peg was gracious and BJ was pathetic. 

“Go get cleaned up. Andy’s in the driveway. I have to go,” Peg said. 

One. Shower, water cold, like Korea, and then scalding. 

Two. A piece of toast, nearly burnt, eaten over the sink so he could rinse the crumbs down the drain. 

Three. A cigarette, because his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, smoked in the backyard in the cold, to sober him up. In the back of his head he could hear Peg telling him off, and then Hawk, and then Margaret would say something about how she’d never deny her father his evening cigar, even when his ashtray was black with cigarette butts.

Four. Standing, lost, in the kitchen. And an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. BJ fumbled for the phone book. Margaret was in Boston, three hours ahead. He called her on her birthday, every year, but he’d never called out of the blue. 

Five rings, before she picked up. BJ leaned against the wall. 

“Hello?”

“Hi Margaret, it’s BJ,” he said. 

“BJ? Are you okay?” Margaret said. She sounded groggy, like maybe he’d woken her up. 

“Do I sound like I’m not, or are you just surprised I’m calling?” BJ said. He was still a little drunk. 

Margaret laughed, and then exhaled. The connection was bad. She sounded scratchy. 

“Hello, BJ,” she said. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”

“Are you busy?” he said.

She hummed. “I just got off shift,” she said. 

“Tough day?”

“Quiet, but long,” she said. “I stitched up a kid who fell off his motorcycle, reminded me of you.”

“Was he all right?”

“Yes. Just shaken up,” she said. “Nothing like the things we used to see.”

“Nothing keeps dumb kids from their dumb motorcycles,” BJ said. 

He had a sudden vision of Erin as a teenager, on a motorcycle, with her arms around some snot-nosed boy. 

“There was another kid who reminded me of Pierce. They had the same sneeze. You remember that sneeze of his? It was so ridiculous sounding I thought he was faking it…well, you know what I mean,” Margaret said. 

Something in BJ’s chest seized. 

“Margaret?”

“Yes, BJ?”

“Were you scared when you got a divorce, that everything else would just fall apart?”

“Oh BJ…” He could hear her concern and her pity and something else he couldn’t quite identify. 

“She’s not…we aren’t, I’m just afraid and you’re the only person I can ask,” he said. 

“My marriage was never a real marriage. It was all a fantasy,” she said. 

“A wedding in a war is your idea of a fantasy?” BJ said. 

“I wanted the white dress, you know? And a man to come home to, someone to care for, who’d commit to me,” she said. 

BJ had been a mess of nerves on his wedding day. He could hardly tie his tie. He remembered crouching in the men’s room, dizzy with worry, trying to scrub an ink stain off his cuff.

“And now?” BJ said, cradling the receiver. 

Margaret laughed. “I sure as hell don’t want a man around. No offense,” she said. 

“None taken,” BJ said. 

“I was devastated. I wanted it to work. It’s all I wanted. And at the same time it made me miserable, to be devoted to him, when he couldn’t bother to be there for me,” she said. “And really I wanted to be married more than I wanted to be married to him.”

“I love Peg,” BJ said. 

He could love her more. He could close off the part of himself that felt out of place and throw himself into loving her, the way he used to. He could wedge himself into Mill Valley like a stubborn key in a broken lock, like an unexpected dinner guest around a crowded table. He could do that. He thought he could.

Hawkeye would roll his eyes. Hawkeye would hardly recognize him. Hawkeye would scoff. Here you go again, Beej, getting all bent out of shape about fitting in. 

“I know, BJ. I’m sorry you’ve been having trouble,” Margaret said, slow and gentle, like they were back in the Officer’s Club, at the bar with a bowl of pretzels between them. 

“No, I uh, sometimes I think maybe there’s something wrong with me,” BJ said.

“BJ—”

“It’s like it’s all dried up, you know? My heart, or my brain and the love can’t come out, or it comes out wrong and I can’t, Margaret. I can’t , even with Erin. I forget things. I don’t know what to say to her. She’s making this diorama for her book report. It’s My Side of the Mountain, you know? That book where the boy’s alone in the wilderness, living in caves or something, and training a falcon, one of those rugged, survivalist books for adventurous kids,” BJ said. 

“They let little girls read books like that?” Margaret said. 

“The times are a’changing,” BJ said. “Anyway, she’s got her modeling clay out and her paint set and these popsicle sticks and suddenly all I can think about is Hawk’s monument, all those names of kids we treated, all of it going up in flames, him , really. I think of him. He gets stuck in my head.”

“You two were inseparable,” Margaret said. “That doesn’t just go away.”

“But I’m home . And it’s been years. And this is what I wanted. Why do I miss it, being there? Being with…”

“Being with him,” Margaret said. “Being yourself, with him.”

“I’m crazy,” BJ said. 

He thought about Hawk’s letters: messy handwriting, scratched out words, pages long rants about something he read in a medical journal or a dream he had or the things he’d found under his bed when he was rearranging the furniture in his room at his dad’s place. Hawk wrote the same way they talked when they saw each other every day, when they slept and ate and worked and cried side by side. BJ couldn’t do that. He could hardly write Dear Hawkeye , because Hawkeye was too dear. 

“I have to be crazy,” BJ said. “I keep throwing away the things I want.”

Margaret was quiet for a moment. BJ closed his eyes and she was beside him: white mask, gloved hands, pressing a scalpel into his palm, telling him something with just her eyes.

“I don’t think you’re crazy, but maybe I think that because I’m crazy too,” Margaret said. 

“How do you figure?” BJ said. 

“I thought I was crazy for leaving Donald, but as soon as I signed the papers I felt freer than I’d ever been. I thought I was crazy to give Pierce the time of day, when we were so different, and he used to make me feel so small, but I ended up making one of the dearest friends I’ve ever had. I thought I was crazy for writing Captain Helen Whitfield, once she shipped home. I thought it was silly, when she needed to focus on recovery, when she was home with her family, and then back at work in a hospital stateside. I thought there would be no chance she’d have the time or the inclination to write to me. It was crazy to even consider. And then she did. I thought it was crazy to keep writing when I got back. I thought it was crazy to invite her to Boston. I thought it was crazy to let her take me to dinner, to talk for hours, to hold hands under the table. I thought it was crazy when she said she was going to move to be nearer to me. I thought it was crazy when I asked her to move into my apartment, and then when I asked if she might like to move again, to Seattle, where we could work together. I thought I was crazy when I told her I loved her, because it was never the plan. I was supposed to have the white wedding. I was supposed to be a general’s wife. I was supposed to pretend that wanting anything else was impossible, worse than impossible, crazy . It’s a lie, BJ. It’s a lie I believed for far too long. You’re not meant to be alone. You’re not meant to pretend to be someone you’re not. It works for a while, until it doesn’t, and then all it does is hurt. That’s not crazy, it’s just hard,” Margaret said.

“You’re moving to Seattle?” BJ said. His heart was pounding.

“You’re in love with him?” Margaret said.

“Yes,” BJ said.

“Yes,” Margaret said.

She’d always taken him seriously. She’d always seen him the way he’d wanted to be seen: loving father, devoted husband, keeper of dreams in Mill Valley paradise. And he’d seen her: endlessly alluring, skilled without being threatening to the male ego, feminine, dedicated, the kind of woman any man would be lucky to have. It was easy to recognize someone’s facade when you’d been practicing yours for so long it had taken over. It was easy to let someone pretend, when you cared for them, and you were doing the same. 

“You’re the first person I’ve admitted it to. I suppose it would be silly to deny it,” BJ said. His mouth was dry. 

“It wouldn’t be silly,” Margaret said.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

Margaret sighed. He could hear the past ten years in her sigh.

“I think to start, you have to be honest. To yourself, and to them,” she said.

“I’m not great at that,” BJ said.

“I know,” Margaret said.

BJ laughed. And then Margaret laughed, and then they were both breathless on either end of the line.

“Thank you,” he said. “God, Margaret, thank you. And I’m happy for you and Helen. So happy, really. It’s so good to hear that you’re doing well.”

He wondered if she could hear him, shouting from rock bottom.

“If you need anything—”

“Thank you,” he repeated. “I’ll write. Or I’ll call again. I’ll be in touch. I promise. If I’m ever near Seattle—”

“I’ll hold you to that, Hunnicutt,” she said.

He called her again when he signed his own divorce papers, when he felt numb all over. She told him Hawkeye was the person he should really be talking to, and he said that he would, as soon as he’d gotten himself together. He didn’t think either of them expected Hawkeye to come storming back into his life first, to find him hiding like an injured animal. The first week in Seattle, with the four of them, Margaret put together all BJ’s furniture. She tied her hair up in a big ponytail, high on her head, and chewed on her lip while he handed her tools. He was happy, squatting on the hardwood of their new, shared, living room, to follow her lead. It was only fair, he thought, for him to be the nurse to her surgeon.

Hawkeye was standing in front of the kitchen hutch Margaret had assembled when BJ got home from work. Erin was at the counter, dicing a tomato. When he set his bag down they both looked up at him. 

“Chicken pot pie,” Hawkeye announced. “And Erin’s in charge of the side salad.”

She was smiling, shyly, and rolling her eyes at Hawkeye. He’d done it again. BJ could tell just from her posture. She looked less guarded. Hawk had flour on his face. 

“You’re making pie crust?” 

Hawkeye grinned. “I know what you’re thinking, but your daughter is supervising this time,” he said. 

The last time Hawkeye made his own pie crust he got butter all over the floor that BJ slipped in and bruised the hell out of his tailbone. He also burned the pie. BJ hadn’t minded all that much. It was one of Hawkeye’s first baking projects in Seattle, and coming home to him frantically kneading dough was far superior to finding him curled in the fetal position, surrounded by unpacked boxes. And BJ had an excuse to lay, chest down on the couch and watch Hawk open windows, scrape charred bits off of a salvageable pie slice, and bring him more ice for the pack that was melting on his ass. You’ve gotta stop looking at me like that. I feel bad enough, Beej. BJ didn’t have the guts to tell him that he only stared because the sight of Hawkeye in their kitchen drove him wild.

“No disasters on Erin’s watch,” BJ said. “Can I help?”

Hawk’s smile was infectious. Erin was washing a head of lettuce at the sink, carefully, separating the leaves. 

“What do you think, Erin? Can we trust him?” Hawkeye said. 

Erin looked at him, eyebrows rising, hair half obscuring her expression. Peg was right. Her hair was getting too long, like she was trying to hide her face. And Erin had such an expressive face. She’d been like that since she was little: when Peg made her try creamed spinach, when she fell off her bike, when she opened her presents at Christmas. He could see what she was feeling all over her face. It was alarming, sometimes. When she was younger he thought she just looked like Peg, but the older she got the more he could see himself too. She looked like him when she was angry. 

“You could set the table, Dad,” she said. 

“The big plates, Beej. And forks and knives, please,” Hawkeye said. His fingertips skimmed BJ’s shirt sleeve as he passed, trailing flour.

“How was today?” BJ asked Erin. She was slicing the rinsed lettuce. Hawk was squatting on the floor, looking in various drawers for a rolling pin.

“Good,” she said, eyes on the lettuce. “Hawkeye and I went to The Wizard of Oz, and then I helped him with the shopping.”

“Popcorn?”

Erin nodded. 

“And Junior Mints,” Hawkeye said, voice muffled because his head was fully stuck in a cabinet.

BJ had noticed the empty to go box from breakfast in the trash. Someone had eaten them, which was a good sign. Peg said Erin had a poor appetite lately, and Hawkeye never ate enough. Popcorn and Junior Mints and pancakes could qualify as lunch. And here was dinner. BJ laid out the plates and silverware as directed, while Erin sliced a carrot. 

“I showed her the recipe cards,” Hawkeye said. He was really getting in the pie dough. He’d rolled up his sleeves, and he was consequently all elbows.

The recipe cards were in a little wooden box on the top shelf of BJ and Margaret’s kitchen hutch. Hawkeye had the chicken pot pie card in front of him, a little yellowed at the edges, with smudging ink. Hawkeye had been curating the recipe cards for the past couple months, whenever he had the energy. He’d copied some of Helen’s family recipes from their slanted, fading, cursive of old letters. He’d cataloged clippings Margaret gave him from magazines or library cookbooks. He made modifications and offered detailed instructions, hunching over the kitchen table with a pilfered pair of BJ’s reading glasses and a stack of blank note cards.

BJ was partial to this particular Hawkeye project. It seemed like a step in the right direction, though where that direction led BJ wasn’t entirely sure. 

“Mom’s chili recipe is in there,” Erin said. 

It was. BJ had forgotten. She’d sent it in a letter during the war. He remembered trying to bribe Igor to make something similar. There was no getting close to home cooking in a MASH. 

“Your mom makes good chili,” BJ said. “Hawk likes to collect good recipes from people we care about, like a scrapbook.”

“Who’s the chicken pot pie from?” Erin said. 

“My mom,” Hawkeye said. 

He’d located the rolling pin and rolled the mass of dough into a big circle. He swept a hand over his forehead and some strands of his hair stood straight up. BJ watched him spoon filling into the dish and beat an egg to brush over the dough. Hawkeye had a meticulous way of cooking. He brought his face close to the dish as he laid the circle of dough over the filling and crimped the edges. Everything he made was careful and rustic. Watching Hawkeye cook was like watching him in surgery. He was all quick skill and insistent motion. If BJ were the type to write poetry, he thought his first subject would be Hawkeye’s hands. If they’d met when BJ was younger, and more prone to embarrassing, sentimental declarations, he probably would have. He used to write Peg saccharine love letters. 

“The dough wasn’t this crumbly when she made it,” Hawkeye said.

“It looks perfect,” BJ said, and Hawk met his eyes. He looked flushed, the way he did when BJ used to tease him.

“I’m going to shower,” Hawkeye said. He put the pie in the oven and set a timer. “Can you two keep an eye on that?” 

“‘Course,” BJ said. 

“Have you met Hawkeye’s mother?” Erin said, cautiously, once Hawkeye had disappeared down the hallway.

“She passed when he was little,” BJ said. 

Erin frowned.

“Did you meet his dad?” she said.

“I never got the chance,” BJ said. Though perhaps it would be more apt to say he’d missed his chance.

“So he’s an orphan, now,” she muttered.

“He’s too old to be an orphan, kiddo,” BJ said.

Erin blushed. “I know,” she said. 

“Thank you for helping with dinner,” BJ said. 

“I like helping,” Erin said. 

“Maybe you could write down a recipe for Hawkeye’s collection. Or you could make one. Or we could make one together,” BJ said. 

He was nervous again. Apparently he needed Hawk as a buffer. God, was that sad. All his life he’d wanted to be a father and now he could barely hold a conversation with his daughter. Her acceptance seemed precarious. Her rejection seemed inevitable. 

“Okay, Dad,” Erin said. BJ listened to the shower water, and Hawk’s muffled singing. He still sang in the shower these days. 

“You could make those blueberry popsicles, remember? That stained your tongue blue?” BJ said. 

“And your favorite shirt, remember? You were angry,” Erin said. 

He’d yelled. He’d forgotten. 

“They were good popsicles, Erin. It was a hot summer,” BJ said. 

He’d been working all the time. 

“Well, this…this chicken pot pie is a good one. You’ll…I mean I think you’re really going to like it,” he said. 

“Okay, Dad,” she said. 

“And you had a good day, really?” BJ said. 

“Yeah Dad, really,” Erin said. She smiled. 

The pie didn’t burn. BJ ate too much, like he always did when he was nervous. Margaret and Helen asked Erin lots of questions. Hawkeye told a story about wrecking a communal kitchen in his dorm in undergrad. BJ had two beers. Erin was quiet. He watched her move pieces of flakey crust around her plate. 

“Next time I’ll use fresh rosemary,” Hawkeye said. “I think fresh rosemary would send it over the top.”

“I don’t know if I can handle over the top . Your mother’s chicken pot pie wipes me out every time. If you add fresh rosemary you might as well sedate me,” BJ said, sighing, palms on his stomach.

“It’s all part of my master plan, Beej. First a home cooked meal, then a walk to tire you out,” Hawkeye said.

Hawk was standing in the doorway, in his robe and pajamas. BJ was stretched out on the bed. They’d gone for a walk around the block after dinner, and when they’d returned Margaret had painted Erin’s nails. When BJ said goodnight Erin was sitting in Hawk’s chair, reading a book and turning the pages carefully, given her still drying nail polish. 

“What am I, a dog?” BJ said.

“Just keeping the nightmares at bay,” Hawkeye said.

“Have yours been bad?” BJ said, mouth going dry. 

Hawkeye shrugged. “I don’t want to wake Erin,” he said.

“Erin’s used to it,” BJ muttered. 

“She’s warming up to me. We had a nice afternoon, I think,” Hawkeye said.

“Once I left, you mean,” BJ said.

“Don’t be like that. You’ll have all day with her tomorrow, right?” Hawkeye said. He lay down on the bed, curling into the space at BJ’s side.

“Did you tell her all my secrets?” BJ said. 

“That would require me to know your secrets,” Hawkeye said.  “She wants to know you, Beej. And the hard part was this morning.”

“There are more hard parts,” BJ said. 

“I know,” Hawkeye said, moving closer, poking BJ in the ribs. 

“I thought I’d take her to the bookstore, and the mall, maybe the Space Needle at sunset,” BJ said.

“Sounds nice,” Hawkeye muttered, sleepily. 

BJ looked over at him. Hawkeye was nodding off. Back when BJ couldn’t bring himself to write, he composed letters in his head. Even now, he put things he wanted to tell Hawk into imaginary letters.

Dear Hawk,

I think I’ve been drinking too much, but it doesn’t compare to the things I put my poor liver through in Korea. So, I can’t bring myself to care.

Dear Hawk, 

Do you remember movies in the mess tent? When it would get dark and I’d put my hand on your knee. You used to pretend you didn’t notice. And I’d pretend not to feel your eyes on the side of my face. Was I cruel? Is it unfair that I don’t like movies unless I’m sitting next to you?

Dear Hawk, 

I wish I’d gotten my head out of my ass years ago. I wish it was easier to say what I mean.

Hawkeye closed his eyes. “You know the colors in that movie are enough to knock a guy out,” he said.

“What?”

“The Wizard of Oz. You remember, when Dorothy steps into Oz? I think they’re the richest yellows and reds and blues I’ve ever seen,” Hawkeye said.

“Sweet dreams in color, then? No nightmares,” BJ said. 

“No promises,” Hawkeye said. He kissed him. Hawkeye tasted like toothpaste. 

“No promises,” BJ repeated.

Margaret and Helen cleared the table. Erin got up to help but they waved her off.

“You made dinner. We’ve got dishes,” Helen said. Margaret was washing and she was drying. 

Erin sat up straight, with her legs crossed on a kitchen chair. She watched the two of them at the sink, shoulder to shoulder, amiable, and in rhythm with one another. 

When they were finished Helen got a call from her mother, and Margaret took Erin back to her room to give her some privacy. 

Erin was surprised to see just one bed, and then she wasn’t. The room was beautifully decorated, like the bedrooms Erin envied from magazines. The curtains were deep green with a striking ivy print. There was a pale yellow loveseat in one corner and a matching lamp with fringe on the lampshade. They had a coffee table piled with magazines and a heavy bookshelf made of some rich looking wood. Erin spotted romance novels and medical textbooks, and photos in nice frames. There were more books and papers piled on a desk on the other side of the room.

They had plants in the window sill: aloe vera, and a sprawling spider plant. Margaret motioned for Erin to sit on the floral bedspread. The mattress was soft and the bedding smelled freshly laundered. Erin examined the pillows piled at the head of the bed and was convinced that Margaret was really a movie star or a princess or someone out of a dream. She took the seat across from Erin, at the vanity with its big mirror and collection of interesting looking perfume bottles, jewelry, and hair products. 

“Your room is so lovely,” Erin said, shyly. 

Margaret smiled. “If you want to borrow anything, just say the word,” she said. “I’ve got some dresses from when I was your age that were too pretty not to save.”

Erin had yet to see Margaret in a dress. When she’d returned to the apartment she’d changed out of her scrubs into another smart pair of slacks and a striped blouse.

“Thank you,” Erin said. 

Margaret leaned forward, rubbing her hands on her knees. Erin’s eyes fell on her French manicure. 

“I could paint your nails, if you’d like? Helen’s got a whole bag of colors,” Margaret said.

Erin flushed. “Would you?”

“Of course,” Margaret said.

Erin selected a pale blue polish she thought looked good with her skin tone and gave Margaret her hands.

Margaret filed her nails and trimmed Erin’s hangnails.

“I used to bite my nails when I was a girl. My mother used to paint them to get me to stop, but I just picked off the paint instead,” Margaret said.

“You didn’t like having your nails painted?” Erin said. She’d always picked at her nails, ever since she was small. Mom would worry over her, wrapping bandages over her marred fingers.

“I used to think it was too fussy,” Margaret said. “I grew up on military bases, and I was rather concerned with fitting in, even though I wasn’t particularly good at it.”

“Neither am I,” Erin muttered. 

She kept her fingers steady while Margaret applied the polish in careful strokes. She thought about fitting in. When she was little she cared less. She smiled without worrying about her crooked teeth in pictures. She organized big games of freeze tag, and smacked four square balls into wet pavement with reckless abandon. She wasn’t stifled by apprehension. She wasn’t always so doubtful. 

Erin thought about swinging at recess: throwing her legs back and forth so she could swing higher, nearly flinging her shoes off into the grass, leaning back so her loose hair touched the mulch, thinking that she could kick the clouds if she stayed there long enough. Life seemed so much simpler then. 

Back then her anxieties were muted. Mom and Dad still smiled at each other, and laughed. She didn’t find Dad sleeping on the couch or at his desk with a half-empty liquor bottle. She didn’t find Mom crying in the garden, with her hands in the dirt. 

It seemed silly, since they were both happier now, to miss the days when her parents were a unit. If everyone else was so happy, why wasn’t Erin? It was like she fit nowhere. 

“Being a teenager is tough. It gets easier,” Margaret said. 

“Did you figure it out? Fitting in, I mean?” Erin said. 

Erin heard Helen laugh from the kitchen. Margaret finished touching up the paint on Erin’s pinky.

“I think I just found a place where I wanted to fit,” Margaret said. She smiled. “It took a while.”

“Thanks,” Erin said, admiring the drying nail polish. She looked over at the cluttered desk. “Are those books yours?” she said. 

“I want to go back to school, medical school, to become a surgeon,” Margaret said. 

Erin hadn’t known there were women surgeons. 

“Your dad and Pierce are helping me with applications,” Margaret said. She laughed. “If  someone told me that when we first met I’d never have believed them.”

“You weren’t all friends from the beginning?” Erin said. 

“Pierce had been tormenting me for an eternity before your father turned up. But they were as thick as thieves from the moment they met. The day I met your dad he came tumbling out of a jeep, drunk, covered in mud, straight into my arms. They were laughing like they’d known each other all their lives when it had only been a few hours,” Margaret said. “The three of us became friends later.”

Erin chewed on her lip. She tried to imagine her father tumbling out of a jeep. She tried to imagine him younger. She tried to imagine him far from home, with pockets full of her baby pictures. She tried to imagine him laughing so hard he fell over. 

“Into your arms?” Erin said. 

Margaret twisted the cap back onto the nail polish. She stood. 

“He nearly knocked me over,” she said. 

Erin laughed, madly. 

“My dad? My dad?” she said. 

Margaret put her hands on her hips. “We’ll get all the best stories out of him by the end of the summer. I promise,” she said. 

Erin tucked some strands of hair out of her eyes and chewed, absently, on her lip. It sounded like a challenge.

“You’ve got beautiful hair, Erin,” Margaret said. 

“Mom thinks it’s long. She’s the one who cuts it,” Erin said.  

Mom was probably right, but Erin’s hair was a little like a security blanket. Erin would never say that to anyone, but she could tell by the way Mom frowned when Erin asked to put off a haircut, or just trim half an inch of dead ends, that she knew without being told.

“Helen cuts my hair,” Margaret said. “That’s why it’s a little shorter on one side than the other. She could cut yours if you like. I’d supervise.”

“I’ll think about it,” Erin said, honestly.

Erin had a lot to think about, really: sightseeing with Dad, his nervousness and hers, his evasive maneuvers, coaxing stories out of all of them, figuring out Hawkeye. Hawkeye was a big, magnetic question mark. And Erin had the idea she wasn’t even seeing him at his full, charismatic, strength. Dad was so different around him. Erin wanted to know why, and where exactly she fit in this new equation, if she indeed fit anywhere.

“Ginger ale, anyone?” Helen called from the kitchen.

Margaret raised an eyebrow. “Shall we?” she said.

“Sure,” Erin said. She smiled wide, crooked teeth be damned.

Chapter Text

The next month Erin set about collecting stories. It was easy to get them out of Hawkeye. He told Erin about the Swamp and Rosie’s and the horrid food at the mess tent. He told her about the time their CO organized Olympic games, and he and Dad were in fierce competition. He told her about Major Winchester and his pompous accent and his tape recorder and his records. He told her about Radar O’Reilly and his animals and the peculiar look he got on his face just before he predicted the arrival of more choppers. He told her about Corporal Klinger’s vibrant dresses and hats and heels. He told her about the party Dad threw him, where everyone dressed in red and dipped their hair in dye. He told her about the time Mom sent Dad a mystery novel and the whole camp passed around ripped out pages, and then were in mad search for the story’s ending. 

Margaret had stories too, about bridge and bowling and poker and dancing with Dad on his wedding anniversary. Erin wondered how so many stories could fit into a couple of years, years she didn’t even remember, when Mom was on her own. And she knew that there were stories they wouldn’t tell her. There were details they smoothed over. Hawkeye and Margaret jumped at loud noises, the same way Dad did. The three of them kept odd hours. They drank. They all got that distant look on their faces, on occasion, Hawkeye more than others, more than Dad even, and Erin thought that was really saying something.

He also set things down and forgot where he’d left them. He had his head in the clouds; Mom would put it like that. 

Hawkeye stood in the middle of the kitchen, his arms out in mock surrender, his fingers wiggling, his head swiveling around. 

“What are you looking for?” Erin said, padding over the tile in her slippers. They were both in pajamas. Everyone else had left for work. 

“Whisk,” Hawkeye said. “I just had it, see? I’ve got all the eggs in the bowl.”

He gestured to a mixing bowl where Erin counted six yolks floating in their whites. 

“Are those all for the two of us?“ she said. 

Hawkeye sighed: big, dramatic, exasperated. Erin wondered how long he’d been looking for the whisk before she came into the kitchen. 

“I thought I’d try omelets. Your dad says enough with pancakes and syrup. He says he’s worried about cavities,” Hawkeye said. 

Erin rolled her eyes. “Yours or mine?” she said. 

Hawkeye laughed his ridiculous, honking laugh, that Erin thought was unwarranted. 

“It’s not that funny,” Erin said, crossing her arms. “And I liked your pancakes.”

“Half my pancakes were burned and runny in the middle. You don’t need to be nice. And you’re much funnier than your father,” Hawkeye said. He rolled up the sleeves of his robe. 

Erin took a seat at the table and flipped through Margaret’s copy of Vogue. 

“The whisk, Erin. It’s urgent,” Hawkeye exclaimed. 

“Top of the fridge,” Erin said, without looking up. Tall people were always losing things in tall places. 

“Aha! The omelets are saved,” Hawkeye said, scooping up the whisk. “What do you want in yours?”

“Chocolate chips,” Erin said.

“Oh come now,” Hawkeye said, brandishing the whisk like a sword. “ We’ve got a great day ahead of us, don’t we? What’s on the agenda?”

It wasn’t the first time Hawkeye had asked her that particular question. 

Dad seemed concerned that each of Erin’s hours were occupied. On his free days he’d dragged her to every museum and shopping center and tourist trap in the city. He bought her a mountain of books at a shop around the corner, despite Erin’s assurances that she’d be fine with just one. The elderly shopkeeper had been surprised that Dr. Hunnicutt had a daughter, went on for minutes about how Erin must be as smart as she was pretty, and then asked after Hawkeye, saying something about some volume of poetry he’d reserved. It was the same way at all Dad’s regular spots. The man at the deli counter and the girls at the record shop and the waitress at the little Italian café who gave Erin a free cannoli and winked at Dad were all surprised of Erin’s existence, and seemed perplexed that Hawkeye wasn’t attached to Dad like a shadow. 

Dad was always keeping an eye on her: when she was curled on the arm of the couch watching old cartoons or Bewitched reruns, when she helped Margaret with the dishes or Hawkeye with folding clothes, when she sat on the balcony and read in the sun. He was hovering and tiptoeing around her, making awkward small talk like Erin was a mysterious newcomer or a space alien. He’d do funny things, like bring her icy glasses of lemonade and peeled clementines when she hadn’t asked. He’d fill in a few clues in the paper’s crossword and leave the rest for her on the coffee table, with one of his nice pens. He’d kiss the top of her head to say goodnight, and she’d watch him hesitate in the doorway, his shape still and dark, with his fingers lingering on the doorframe.

He was tremendously worried that Erin would be bored, it seemed. So was Mom. On the phone she asked if Erin was getting out enough, if she was eating well, and if she’d met any kids her own age around the apartment building. They both kept lists of activities and itineraries for long summer days. The agenda was never up to Erin, unless she was left for Hawkeye to entertain (or he left for her to entertain, Erin could never be quite sure.)

“I thought I’d lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling for a couple hours,” Erin said, leveling Hawkeye with a challenging stare. 

“After you eat this omelet?” Hawkeye said. 

Erin looked back down at Vogue, running her fingers over the glossy pages of a lipstick ad. 

“I don’t know why Dad keeps trying to get me to like eggs. They taste like rubber,” Erin said.

Hawkeye sliced off a pad of butter from its dish, plopped it in the frying pan on the burner, and frowned at her. 

“These are real, farm fresh eggs. Do you know the things I would’ve done for eggs like these back in the day?” he said. 

Erin wanted to say that the more he played the war card the faster its value depreciated, but she held her tongue. 

“I don’t know. I didn’t know you back in the day,” Erin said. 

Hawkeye was pouring half of the eggs into the pan, a comical look of concentration taking over his face.

“He wants you to eat them because they’re good for you. He’s a doctor, after all,” Hawkeye said.

“You’re a doctor and you’d let me have pancakes every morning,” Erin said.

Hawkeye hummed, noncommittally. Erin wasn’t sure if he was objecting to the pancakes or being called a doctor. 

“And after you’re done playing rug?” Hawkeye said. 

Erin’s plans usually depended on Hawkeye’s. If he disappeared to his and Dad’s bedroom to nap (as he usually did when he was in a poor mood), then she would walk the three blocks to the nearest convenience store and buy a cherry popsicle, a bag of pretzels, and a package of baseball cards that she collected even though the most baseball she watched was the JV team practices at the diamond across from the track field. If Hawkeye went out for groceries or laundry or something else similarly time consuming, Erin generally snooped in Dad’s room. 

She’d done it a handful of times, now. She’d poke around and make a record of all the interesting items: a threadbare pink shirt, a box full of old letters from Mom, photos of his old motorcycle, a big pair of boots with holes in the soles and dirty laces, a squashed straw hat with pom poms, an army uniform that looked too stiff and small to ever be worn by her father. And she found his dog tags, in the same wood box as his wedding ring. She’d only seen the tags in old photos. It was strange to hold them in her hand, to trace the letters of his name. Erin wondered if there had been times during the war when Dad thought those dog tags would be all that was left of him.

Best yet, Erin thought, was when Hawkeye made house calls and she got to tag along.

“Are you looking in on any neighbors?” Erin said. She didn’t look up at him, so as to not appear too eager. 

Hawkeye deposited a handful of grated cheese into the half-cooked egg and flipped it over onto itself, carefully, without the egg tearing. Hawkeye must’ve been a great surgeon, she thought, because his hands were so steady when they needed to be.

He took a long sip of his coffee and sighed, hands on hips, dish towel over one shoulder, hunch pronounced in the sunlight bleeding through Margaret’s pretty yellow curtains in the kitchen windows. 

“Mrs. Harmon wants me to check up on her grandson. She called a little bit ago and detailed his symptoms. I told her it sounded like a regular old cold in my professional opinion, but I promised to stop in just to ease her mind. She promised a slice of cherry pie in exchange, so I’m certain I’m getting the better end of the deal. I didn’t tell her about Beej’s cavity commentary,” Hawkeye said. 

“Smart,” Erin said.

“I owe Mr. Finch chapter 12 of Treasure Island. Abigail asked if I could make sure he took all his medications while she’s on her work trip, so I’m sure we’ll get through plenty of pirate mayhem,” Hawkeye said. 

“And Elsie and Andrew?” Erin said. 

Hawkeye scooped the first of the omelets onto a plate. 

“I told Andrew I’d be over at 3. And I told Elsie she’d better be off her feet when I get there, sewing be damned,” Hawkeye said. “I’m going to bring them some of that casserole from last night, assuming you weren’t lying when you told me it turned out okay? You’re my picky eater test.”

“I never lie,” Erin said, lying. “And I’m not that picky.”

Hawkeye made quick work of the second omelet. He was waving the spatula around, impatiently. 

“You just made a fuss over perfectly delicious eggs,” he said.

“That’s different,” Erin said, hoping he wouldn’t press because she didn’t have much of an argument. 

He set the perfect, steady omelet in front of her. 

Mom taught Erin to make breakfast when she was little. She started with toast (buttered on both sides with strawberry jam), and worked her way up. Mom used to have Erin bring Dad breakfast when he wouldn’t eat. She’d say go cheer up your dad and Erin would perform. She’d be bright-eyed and enthusiastic and spread extra jam on Dad’s toast, because even then she knew that she was Mom’s secret weapon. She was Mom’s last hope. She held everything together and her hands were always too small. Erin had never made eggs without something going wrong: bits of shell in the scramble, broken, overcooked yolk when it was supposed to be runny, tears in omelets or bits that stuck to the pan. She hated eggs mostly because they reminded her of failing.

She stabbed a piece of the omelet with her fork and chewed until it didn’t taste like rubber.

“I finished my baby hat. Margaret showed me how to make a pom pom. You could take it along to them if you want,” Erin said.

Hawkeye watched her: chewing, pretending to be enraptured by Vogue. She could feel his eyes.

“If you want to come along, Erin, all you have to do is ask,” Hawkeye said, gentle in a way Erin found embarrassing.

Andrew Patterson, from apartment 3B, had knocked on their door for the first time two weeks into Erin’s stay. Erin opened the door, because Hawkeye was sleeping and everyone else was at work.

“Is this where the doctors live?” he had said. 

Erin hadn’t wanted to open the door, but the knock sounded insistent.

“The uh…yeah, I guess. My dad’s a doctor but he’s not here right now,” Erin said.

“Are any of the doctors here?” Andrew said. He mopped sweat off his brow. “I’m Andrew Patterson. I live in the apartment below yours and my wife’s in some pain. She’s expecting, see?”

“Oh!” Erin said, alarmed. “You mean a baby?”

“She’s not due for a couple months. I’ve really got to talk to the doctor. Elsie’s scared of hospitals, clinics, everything. I keep saying we need to go see someone but she won’t let me take her,” he said.

Hawkeye’s door creaked open and then he was standing in the hall, blinking, sleepily at the two of them, wearing his robe.

“Is he the doctor?” Andrew said, meeting Erin’s eyes incredulously.

“One of them,” Erin said.

“Margaret will be home in a couple hours. I can send her your way,” Hawkeye said, once Andrew had explained everything. Hawkeye got a peculiar look on his face when Andrew said his wife was pregnant. And he started talking fast, like getting his neighbor out of the apartment was akin to defusing a bomb. 

“Please, doctor. She’s scared. I don’t know where else to go. I promised her I’d bring one of you back,” he said.

Erin looked the father‐to‐be up and down. He didn’t look much older than she was, early twenties, baby‐faced, crooked teeth, jaw covered in patchy stubble, with bags beneath his eyes. He was wearing work boots that were caked in mud and was sweating through his t‑shirt. This was his lunch break, Erin realized. He’d mentioned a construction job, and hating leaving Elsie on her own. They didn’t have any family in the area. They’d eloped to the city and rented in the first place that would have them.

Hawkeye was jumpy. He’d shed his robe with shaky hands. He couldn’t look either of them in the eye. 

“It’s not my area, Mr. Patterson. I’m not even practicing at the moment. I’m not qualified to—”

“It couldn’t hurt to go look, if she won’t go to the hospital” Erin said. “I can come too, if you want.”

She looked at Andrew and then over to Hawkeye, who had gone still.

“Doctor?” Andrew said. 

“Hawkeye, call me Hawkeye,” Hawkeye said. He reached for his shoes. 

The apartment’s furnishings were sparse, sparser than Dad’s new apartment but better decorated than Dad’s old apartment. 

There was a kitchen table with scuffed legs, piled high with baby books and bottles and what appeared to be baby proofing equipment. There was a red Persian rug on the wood floor and a yellow couch with green cushions, on which a pregnant woman in overalls, Elsie, presumably, was sprawled. 

Erin hovered awkwardly by the door.

“I’m not going to a hospital,” Elsie said, voice low, part groan. “I told Andy.”

Hawkeye took a stethoscope out of a big leather bag (monogrammed with the initials DTP, previously hidden at the back of Dad’s closet, and subject to Erin’s snooping, Daniel Thomas Pierce, he told her later) and pressed it to Elsie’s womb. 

“Is she in labor?” Andrew said. 

Hawkeye shifted the end of the stethoscope.

“How far along are you, Mrs. Patterson?” he said. 

Erin chewed on a hangnail by her thumb. 

“Seven months,” Elsie said. 

“Do you feel like you’re in labor?” Hawkeye said. 

“ You’re supposed to tell me , aren’t you, doctor?” Elsie said. She glared at Hawkeye. “If you’re even who you say you are. I’ve seen you in the hall, you know? You’re not like the other one, with the mustache. Or the nurses. They’re always rushing to some place. Mostly I see you in a bathrobe with groceries, or the washing, or in the courtyard writing letters. What kind of doctor are you, anyway?”

“Semi‐retired,” Hawkeye said. He smiled, warmly, and Elsie looked as if she was about to launch more insults and accusations. He put a thermometer in her mouth. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

Elsie’s eyebrows furrowed. She reclined further, staring up at the ceiling. Erin followed her gaze. The ceiling had cracks. It was an old building. The elevator had been out of service twice since Erin had arrived and the water took ages to heat up. Dad’s upstairs neighbors stomped around at all hours, and Erin could hear the creaks and sways of the foundation at night. She could hear footsteps clang over the fire escape. She could hear shouting in the street and the rusty screech of windows opening and closing. If she were the one having a baby, Erin thought she’d feel much safer in a hospital. 

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been in labor before,” Elsie muttered, voice muffled around the thermometer. 

Hawkeye removed the thermometer and inspected it. He perched himself on an ottoman.

“Andrew, would you mind getting your wife something to drink? An herbal tea, or just a glass of water would be fine,” Hawkeye said. 

Andrew’s head bobbed. “I’ll put the kettle on,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

“He’s got to get back to work. If I’m alright you’ve got to tell me so he can get on,” Elsie said. She was watching Hawkeye with wary eyes, the same way Erin watched Mom when she put her hand over her forehead and Erin awaited judgment of whether she could stay home from school.

“Mrs. Patterson, you know yourself better than I do. Trust what your body is telling you and answer me honestly. Do you feel like you’re in labor?” Hawkeye said. 

Elsie blanched. She sat up, with effort, and wiped moisture from her leaky eyes. Hawkeye pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. Erin trained her eyes on the floor, the way she always did when people cried. 

“No. I had some pain, like contractions, but it passed. It spooked me, Dr. Pierce, and I’ve done so much research I didn’t think I could be spooked,” she said.

Hawkeye read the thermometer, wiped it, and returned it to its case. He hunched closer to Elsie and put his hand on her shoulder. 

“It seems to me like Braxton Hicks contractions. They’re just a sign that your muscles are preparing, not that you’re in labor. They’re normal, Mrs. Patterson, and should pass quickly. Rest will help, and staying hydrated,” Hawkeye said. 

“I’ve read about those,” Elsie said, sniffling. 

“Look, I know it’s scary. It’s your first time at all of this and your little husband has that panicked look about him. I bet he looks like that a lot,” Hawkeye said.

Elsie laughed, wetly, wringing Hawkeye’s handkerchief in her hands. Erin shifted her weight from foot to foot and took a few steps closer. Hawkeye caught her eye and gave her a half smile.

“You probably feel a little alone, figuring a pregnancy out by yourself. I’m sure your husband is a huge help, but at the end of the day it’s you and the baby. I can see why you’d keep an eye on the medical personnel next door, just in case. And I can see why you’d be disappointed that Andy brought me,” Hawkeye said.

“Not disappointed,” Elsie mumbled.

“It’s okay. Erin’s been suspect of me too. She wouldn’t let me look at her thumb when she burned it on the stove,” Hawkeye said.

Erin blushed. “Because I’m perfectly capable of applying burn cream and a bandage,” she said. 

“I don’t know what your apprehensions about going somewhere for proper care are. And I don’t want to scare you or try to talk you into something you don’t want to do. But I’ve operated in plenty of unsuitable places, places where nobody was safe or prepared or comfortable and I’ve got to tell you, Elsie, if you have the opportunity to go to a hospital with all the correct equipment and professionals, I think it’s in your best interest to do so,” Hawkeye said. 

“My mother had me in her apartment, with my aunt and grandmother assisting. She never saw any doctors and I came out all right, screaming my head off, but alright. She died in a hospital a year ago. It was cancer. It was quick. The doctors kept lying to spare my feelings. Right up until the end they kept saying she had more time. She was supposed to help me through all of this. She always did everything herself,” Elsie said. 

“I can understand that,” Hawkeye said. “Sure I can, easily. I thought my dad was going to stay around to put out all the fires I’ve started in my 40s…or maybe fill in the holes I’ve dug, maybe that’s a better metaphor.”

Andrew had returned with the tea. He looked between them, expression darkening when he spotted the damp handkerchief in Elsie’s hands. He set the mug on the coffee table in front of her.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital, Dr. Pierce,” Elsie said. 

“I’ll talk to Margaret and see if she can get you in touch with a good midwife. And one of us can look in on you in the meantime. You’re not going to be alone,” Hawkeye said. 

“Sure as hell she isn’t,” Andrew said. “Sorry kid,” he added, to Erin. 

“You’ve got to promise me that if there’s an emergency, if you’re at all unsure, you’ve got to get some real, professional help,” Hawkeye said. 

“It’s not going to come to that,” Elsie said. She hesitated. Andrew put a hand on her shoulder. “But if it makes you feel better, sure. I promise. Do you want your handkerchief back?”

Hawkeye was packing up his things. 

“Nah,” he said. “Keep it.”

When he turned to leave, Erin crossed the room, picked Elsie’s mug of tea from the table and pressed it into her hands. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” Erin muttered. 

Hawkeye was quiet in the hall. He gripped the handle of his father’s old, monogrammed bag tightly. He looked paler already, like he’d been putting on an act and it was too strenuous to keep it up any longer. He looked like he was in need of some encouragement, and Erin had always been very good at that. 

“That was a nice thing you did,” Erin said. 

“I don’t see patients anymore, really. Don’t say anything to Beej, will you?” he said, breathlessly. 

“Okay,” Erin said, brow furrowing. She was under the impression that Dad wanted Hawkeye to return to medicine. She didn’t understand why it should be a secret. 

“It’s just, I uh, I have some trouble with babies, little kids…you know? It’s not my area. I uh, it was the same way when I first met you. I got very nervous,” Hawkeye said. 

Erin could understand that. Babies were very fragile. 

“If you like I can give you some pointers from the babysitting class I took at the YMCA,” Erin said, seriously. 

She’d taken the class but had yet to acquire a single babysitting gig. Every time one of the neighborhood moms asked Erin got all bent out of shape worrying about potential catastrophes. Maybe the baby food would be too lumpy and the infant would choke while she was feeding it. Maybe it would cry and cry the whole time she was there and the parents would think she was terrible and neglectful and full of some inherent badness that only innocent newborns could detect. Maybe the power would go out or she’d start a fire trying to cook dinner or the kid would break out in a spontaneous fever. 

Mrs. Williams at the YMCA said that catastrophizing wasn’t productive and that good babysitters were level-headed and prepared. 

“That’s okay, Erin,” Hawkeye said. He exhaled, half-laughing. His shoulders relaxed a little and Erin thought she’d really achieved something. 

“A lot of things make me nervous,” she confessed.

They’d reached the door of the apartment. 

“Yeah?” Hawkeye said. “Like what?”

Like long hallways and big puddles and multiple choice questions and Mom’s lipstick expressions that looked so pitying sometimes she couldn’t take it. Like planes and elevators and book reports and her room in Dad’s old apartment, where the walls were so thin she could hear when he woke up gasping, so she knew he could hear it when she had a nightmare too. Being 16 soon made her nervous. She felt too big and too small for her body all at once, and silly for her splintered nerves. She didn’t have any real problems, not like the problems that came out of hospitals or wars. 

“Anything. It’s like my brain gets frozen and all I can think of is the worst thing that could happen,” she said. 

“Is that why you clam up around your father?” Hawkeye said. 

Erin crossed her arms and looked down at the floor. She kicked at a fraying bit of carpet by the door jam. 

“It’s a lot of things,” she said. “I always say the wrong thing, so it’s better not to talk.”

Hawkeye raised his eyebrows and looked at her with a brand of wry skepticism that made her feel like she was missing a joke.

“You’re being awfully encouraging, Dr. Pierce,” she said. Her face went pink again. 

His expression changed instantly. “I’m sorry. I mean it. Come on, I’ll make us some lemonade before the others get back,” he said. 

Erin sat at the table while Hawkeye cracked big ice cubes out of their tray and into a pitcher. She’d been quiet while he cut lemons and dissolved sugar into water. She noticed him glancing up at her while she pretended to work on a crossword puzzle.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, after a while. That was a Dad classic line if Erin had ever heard one. 

“I’m not upset,” Erin said. 

Hawkeye laughed. 

“What?” Erin said, blushing deeply, feeling mocked and hypersensitive. 

This was why she had so much trouble at school. Every time someone whispered or giggled or shot an affected expression in her general direction she got paranoid and jumpy. She started dropping things, like a whole stack of tests she was supposed to be handing to the girl sitting behind her in geography. And then all eyes really were on her. Her hands would start shaking for no reason. Or the lunch lady would ask her to repeat herself a third time because she had gotten all mumbly trying to order a ham sandwich. Maybe she was destined to be one of those shut-ins who read books all day and got her groceries delivered and who everyone had wild stories about like Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Erin was more like herself when she was alone. There were fewer things to fixate on and ruminate over. There weren’t any people around for her to entertain or disappoint with her grating idiosyncrasies. The fact of the matter was that if she and Dad really talked, he wouldn’t like her and Erin didn’t know what she’d do if Dad didn’t like her.

“Can I tell you a story?” Hawkeye said.

“Fine,” Erin said. She was still collecting stories, after all. 

“Your father and I got leave together a couple times, during the war. It really should have been more than a couple times, but something would always come up right before we were supposed to go—fighting would pick up and we’d be swamped with wounded or the whole MASH would come down with some nasty cold and they’d need all healthy hands on deck or Radar’s guinea pigs would get loose and he’d beg us to come check all the tents with him—anyway, anyway, the first time we had leave together they gave us a couple days in this hotel in Tokyo and all Beej wanted to do was sleep, but I wanted to go out some place and meet people and drink, you know, the usual shenanigans.

"Well…I guess you wouldn’t know, but the nice thing about leave is the nightlife, and all the lights in Tokyo, every color you’ve ever seen on a sign for some dive bar, and walking through the streets tipsy, without a coat, and when you’re tipsy Japanese sounds like music, I think, and just being in a crowd of all these musical strangers reminds you why you keep going, right? At the 4077th things could start feeling fake real fast. Fake people, fake blood, fake dirt, fake food. When things got bad and we were losing boys in OR it…well, you don’t want to hear this. It’s not the point,” Hawkeye said. He shook his head aggressively.

Erin’s throat was very dry. “Go on,” she said. 

“I’m trying to show him what I mean, because it’s the first time we’re in Tokyo together and I’m worried it might be the last and I don’t want him to sleep the whole time and miss it, you know? The people, the lights, the music etc. And he’d been feeling down. He wouldn’t say so, but I could tell. And when you were down like that during the war, the best thing to do was go out and let people remind you why you’re alive.

"So, we go because I’m very persuasive when I want to be, and the whole night I’m trying to make it worth his while because I know he’s upset and he’s just indulging me. And he lets me talk him into a few beers and some sake and we run into some other guys on leave and I’m doing all the talking because Beej has gone all stone wall of silence on me and he keeps smiling like he’s not irritated, but I know he is. I keep asking him if he’s upset and he’s all, I’m fine, Hawk. I’m fine and asking me where I want to go next and I’m starting to think it’s all been a big mistake, dragging him along, and the only person I’m impressing is myself. And I wish he’d just come out and say he’s mad, but Beej doesn’t do that. He just denies and denies until he blows up, and back then it was worse because there was so much to blow up over and he missed you and your mother so badly that there was always some anger in the back of his head, building up.

"We get out on the street, and I’m a little drunk and so is he, and I’m trying to explain what I mean, but it’s cold out and Japanese doesn’t sound like music yet and the lights are making my eyes go all squinty and it isn’t working, so now I’m angry and I’m also sad because it’s BJ and it’s me and it’s Tokyo, and then he stops me, hand to my chest and says Hawkeye, you seem a little upset in this completely infuriating, I told you so way and so I yell at him, I say no I’m not, you’re the one who’s upset and he starts laughing, the bastard!

"He starts laughing and then I can hear the music and see the lights and the ground feels real and everything and I remember hating him for that, for how he could never just say what he meant. He had to make it some big game where I was wrong when all I was doing was cheering him up. He couldn’t say thank you, he could just laugh like that and grab my arm, and pull me along to the next bar because we’d switched places, I guess. We were always flip flopping emotions, back then. I think that happens when you live with someone for long enough,” Hawkeye said.

Erin chewed on her lip. Hawkeye had a way of telling stories that made her a little breathless, like she was there with him in Tokyo in 1952. 

“I guess I’m a little upset,” Erin said, finally. “Is that what you want me to say?”

Hawkeye grinned. “I was just going to say that you sound exactly like him, sometimes. And you can’t both do the stoic, silent thing. It makes for some pretty boring conversations,” he said.

She’d taken the words to heart. She’d thought about them while knitting Elsie’s baby’s hat and hovering, by the couch or the table when Dad came in with big sighs and tired eyes. She thought about them now, picking through the eggs she still didn’t like, and concluded that maybe saying something was better than nothing. If Hawkeye thought so, it was probably true.

Erin reached across the table to clear Hawkeye’s plate along with hers. They’d both made sporting efforts with their breakfasts. Hawkeye had cut his omelet up into twelve little pieces, eaten seven of them, and picked the cheese out of the other five. Erin had eaten all the cheese out of the middle and all the crispier edges of the egg. She scraped the remains into a tupperware and put it in the fridge. 

“People ask after you, when you don’t come along. Mr. Finch calls you the little nurse,” Hawkeye said. 

Erin rolled her eyes, but she felt inwardly grateful. She liked to be missed. It was close to being needed.

“I already said I’d go,” she said.

Hawkeye walked back from post‐op with his eyes on the stars. He tripped a few steps and then caught himself, careening hard left and then back to the right, putting his arms out like the wings of a plane. There were more nights like this than he could count in Korea, where exhaustion hung thick like fog, and Hawkeye found himself blinking up at the sky, quickly, to wake up his eyelids, and thinking about how all the people he’d ever known were under the same sky he was, maybe not looking up, maybe asleep already or just waking, maybe with their eyes trained on uneven ground, so they never tripped.

He was supposed to feel comforted by thoughts like that, he thought. For hundreds and thousands of years people had looked up and felt comforted by the idea that though the sky was big, it was big for everyone. Bigger for Radar , BJ would say, bigger if you’re hiding in a foxhole and the clouds are on fire , Hawkeye would add, and they’d throw their heads back in unison, like it was funny.

Dad tried to teach him constellations when he was small, but now Hawkeye could only remember the big and little dippers. It was more fun to make up your own, anyway. He remembered stretching out in the grass in the summer in Crabapple Cove, with his arm straight up, connecting dots (fishing rod, octopus, slice of pizza, mitten, lawn mower) until Mom called him in for dinner.

That’s pretty complex, Ben: a lawn mower in the sky? Mom would say, and put her arm around his shoulders, pulling him in the doorway. She didn’t like when he was out playing after dark, but she knew if she told him he’d pout. 

“You’re back awfully late,” BJ said, looking up from his letter, scanning Hawkeye for something, injuries maybe? Or new signs of malaise? It was a new bit they had going, this exaggerated concern from Beej. It sat between them like an indecipherable chess board, and itched like a rash. It had coincided with promising updates about the peace talks. 

“I was workshopping my standup routine for Corporal Bridges,” Hawkeye said.

“Is he still out?” BJ said.

“Yeah, he makes a great audience. When he thinks something’s funny his eyes get all squirmy behind his eyelids. It’s true,” Hawkeye said. 

He shrugged off his jacket and sat across from BJ. Their knees brushed. Hawkeye could smell sweat and campfire and cinnamon from the open tin of snickerdoodles Peg had sent, half‐devoured, beside them. He picked up a crumbly piece of one and stuck it in his mouth. It was sweet and stale, and he felt mildly guilty for enjoying the hard work of a woman whose husband he’d had three erotic dreams about in the past week. (In his defense he’d been sleeping a lot, and the peace talks were heating up for god’s sake.)

“Uh huh,” BJ said, his concern evaporating, halfway. Hawkeye felt accomplished when he could manage halfway.

“It’ll make a good side gig, after the war,” Hawkeye said.

“What will?” BJ said. 

“Standup,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ set his letter down. He braced his hands against the chair’s armrests. He leaned forward, and then back, before he realized Hawkeye wasn’t giving him a command. 

“Oh, standup,” BJ said.

They were out of rhythm tonight. When he got home from the war, these were the kind of nights that would rattle around in Hawkeye’s memory like pinballs.

“Any news?” Hawkeye said, around a mouthful of cookie crumbs. He nodded at the letter.

BJ sucked in a breath. 

“Peg’s been sending me lists. You know, groceries, home improvement projects, Erin’s favorite toys, books she’s read, books she wants me to read, ice cube trays ranked by convenience of shape,” he said.

“My dad makes a lot of lists,” Hawkeye said. 

“Our letters are getting more stream of consciousness I think, or freeform. I think maybe she’s tired, because lately it’s just pages and pages of lists. A couple are coffee stained. Does your dad ever send things like that?” BJ said.

He held up what he was reading. Peg’s distinctive inky scrawl was sluggish on the page. There was a coffee ring at the center, where she’d used the letter as a coaster.

“I’m sure she’s tired,” Hawkeye said.

“I keep starting lists back and getting stuck,” BJ said. He folded up Peg’s letter into neat thirds, and then unfolded it. He ran his fingers over the length of the page like he was trying to memorize the very shape and feel of it.

“What kind of lists?” Hawkeye said.

“Things I want to do when I get home, things I want to tell Erin, I don’t know…lists for the future I suppose,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye put another cookie in his mouth. It was grainy. He chewed and chewed and chewed.

“Too many ideas?” Hawkeye said.

“You can have the rest of those, if you want,” BJ said.

“I don’t,” Hawkeye said, but he picked up the tin and tipped the remaining crumbs into his mouth. His throat felt like the desert.

“I guess,” BJ said. He frowned.

“I’ll help you,” Hawkeye blurted, before he could stop himself.

BJ tilted his head back, eyes on the top of the tent. 

“I think that’s cheating,” he said.

“Cheating?” Hawkeye said, voice leaping up an octave, eyebrows rising.

BJ laughed at the ceiling. “You already orchestrate my present, Hawk. I’m not sure I’m allowed to have you lay out my future too,” he said.

Hawkeye shrugged. He wanted to say that he wasn’t orchestrating anything. They were pulling one another along. They were rooted in place and crashing into each other, like bumper cars. They were connected distantly and inexorably, like points in a constellation. 

BJ held the letter up over his head, arm outstretched, staring up at it, squinting at the letters, looking through the paper.

“I hate that she’s worn out, but when she gives me lists of things I can do, things she needs my help with, things I should remember about home, once I’m back there, it helps,” he said.

“Helps,” Hawkeye repeated.

“I remember they need me. Sometimes I think I’ve been gone so long I don’t remember being anywhere but here. How long have we been here, Hawk?” BJ said.

“A million years,” Hawkeye said.

“How do you need someone you’ve been without for a million years?” BJ said. 

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, curling so his head bowed, and Hawkeye could see the knobs of his spine, disappearing down the back of his shirt and the uneven hair at the nape of his neck, where Hawkeye had done a messy job of trimming. 

“Easily, Beej,” Hawkeye said.

Chapter Text

Hawkeye thought Erin might be the smartest kid he’d met. She was smart in the usual ways; he found her, legs crossed in his armchair, reading most mornings. And she’d pick just about anything off of her father’s bookshelf, regardless of the book’s heft or complexity. Beej said she’d exhausted the small stack of volumes she’d brought from home within the first two weeks. He’d bought her everything she showed even a slight interest in at the bookstore, he recounted, head in hands, sitting at the edge of their bed.

“I looked like a fool. I know it. I don’t know what came over me. She probably thinks I’m trying to buy her affection,” BJ said. 

Around Erin, Beej got kid before a test nervous and Colonel Flagg paranoid. It was funny, because BJ was lovely with other people’s kids. He was lovely with the kids he treated. Hawkeye had seen him talk down panicked preteens with magic trick ease, before he set their broken bones or x‐rayed their chests or prepped them for surgery. The thing that made him so good, Hawkeye thought, was that he never talked down to little kids. He was always straightforward and honest and didn’t make light of the irrational fears that sprung, vivid and complex, from little kid imaginations. It was his negotiatory prowess, like in poker games and bets and talking Hawkeye into some scheme or prank or accepting an apology. His eyes got all bright and serious and then all you wanted to do was go along with him.

“I’m sure she didn’t think that,” Hawkeye said.

“I bought her a bird encyclopedia, Hawk. I don’t think she even likes birds,” BJ said. 

“Maybe that’s what the encyclopedia is for,” Hawkeye said. He smiled, and BJ groaned. 

Hawkeye watched Erin read that bird encyclopedia, attentively, with her eyebrows furrowed. And then he’d watched her take out a spiral bound sketchbook and draw birds, badly, for several hours after she’d finished it.

She was smart in unusual ways too. She had that uncanny, only child ability to make her own fun in exceedingly boring circumstances. When BJ’s list of tourist activities dwindled, and Hawkeye had taken her to every movie twice, Erin spent several afternoons digging lost objects out of the cushions of their furniture with a variety of tools (takeout chopstick, magnet duct taped to a rubber spatula, nail file to get crumbs out of stubborn seams) and organizing them into categories. 

“These are coins ordered by grubbiness,” she explained, when Hawk had come into the living room and found her sprawled on the carpet before a line of dirty nickels. “And these are buttons ordered by prettiness.”

“Awfully subjective, don’t you think?” Hawkeye said, tucking his hands in his pockets. He was about to ask her if she wanted grilled cheese for lunch, but he didn’t want to deprive her of one of her excavation tools. 

“Oh no,” Erin muttered. She was a peculiar combination of opinionated and shy that was hard not to find charming. “I’ve got a flashlight to get a good look at the dirt, you know, and the oxidation on the pennies.”

“I meant the buttons,” Hawkeye said. “But it’s good to know you’re being thorough.”

She wasn’t always sedentary, or cooped up in the apartment. Peg had been worried about that, BJ said. She’d said Erin liked to isolate, or stay in the same spot all day.

She went on solo shopping expeditions and returned with odd snacks. She sprinted from one end of the courtyard and back, practicing for track. She opened all the windows and did cartwheels in the living room, while playing loud records. 

“She’s BJ’s kid, of course she’s got a big personality,” Margaret said. Her elbows were beside Hawkeye’s on the balcony railing. Steam was rolling off her mug of coffee. 

“Personality that evaporates the second Beej gets home,” Hawkeye said. 

He’d seen it happen. The instant she heard the door she sat up straight like there was a metal rod down her spine, and she put away whatever book or art project or strange masterpiece of an afternoon snack she was working on. Then, the rest of the day she was all shrugs and monosyllables and timid questions. 

“He’s her father. She doesn’t want to disappoint him. Surely you know the feeling,” Margaret said. She sipped her coffee and something shifted across her face. 

He didn’t really know the feeling, but he’d never had a father like Margaret’s, nor had he ever been the daughter of a divorced couple.

“How could she disappoint him?” Hawkeye said. 

“Never mind,” Margaret said. 

“Hey listen to this,” Hawk said, leaning forward, letter in his hands. 

BJ had hardly walked in the Swamp’s door, but conversations with Hawkeye were often like that. They dropped off and picked up every time they were separated and reunited. Hawkeye could start telling him a joke in the mess tent at breakfast, stabbing at his powdered eggs, scowling at or sniffing limp strips of bacon, and finish it 12 hours later, strung out over his cot with his boots half off. It was really all one big conversation, when it came to Hawkeye. 

BJ was coming from post op, with a splitting headache. It was probably because his brain had been rattled around last night in the OR from shelling overhead. They’d had to cover the patients and crouch under the tables to steady them, and protect themselves. BJ had found his way over to Hawk, the way he always managed to do when he was worried. It got so whenever he heard a loud noise or felt Radar’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake, or the earth started to move in a way it didn’t usually, the first thought BJ had was where’s Hawk . And he’d be reaching out, blindly, with a firm grip. 

He did it last night, balling his fist up in the shoulder of Hawkeye’s scrubs as they lurched off balance. Hawk was less steady on his feet than usual. He’d slept poorly and they’d been standing there operating for 13 hours and his knee was bothering him. (Though he didn’t say so outright. He’d just been leaning left, and was rubbing his right knee. He was doing it even then, squatting on the floor.) BJ wondered if perhaps he’d been paying too much attention, but then there was another crash and Hawk stumbled and fell, bruising his elbows and slamming the knee in question on the concrete. 

He had a brace on it now, and was moving stiffly. 

“New nudie mag?” BJ said.

“I said listen, not look,” Hawkeye said, expression goofy with exhaustion.

BJ sat down across from Hawkeye and Hawk put his feet in his lap. BJ reached out for the knee brace, on instinct. Hawk was wearing shorts, despite the cold, and a blue cardigan that covered the bruises on his elbows. His legs were dotted with goosebumps and there were holes in his socks.

“I told you about that tree that fell on the house, busted up the attic window?” Hawkeye said.

“Sure,” BJ said. A bad storm swept through Crabapple Cove a month ago. Dr. Pierce Sr. had set a few broken bones and spent a few afternoons helping neighbors clean debris from their yards and streets. 

“Well he got someone in to fix it…guy I went to high school with, Murray Cottrell, and while he was there he made a list of about 15 other things he thinks Dad should do to fix up the house, to make it more modern, he says, something about market value. Apparently all the windows should be replaced, really, because it’s drafty and the cabinets are ugly and the porch’s rotting and everything needs a fresh coat of paint,” Hawkeye said, waving the letter around. “Can you believe that, Beej?”

“Believe what, that Murray's trying to bleed your dad dry?” BJ said. 

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. “No, I mean that the house is in some state of ruin. Dad said he made a compelling argument. He even gave him a tour, or a‐a‐a—home inspection! It feels like I was just home. I mean, it feels like I’ve been here an eternity, but I was just home and all of a sudden Dad’s making the house out to be ancient, borderline haunted, like the place on Elm we used to bike by and throw stones because the grass was overgrown and all the windows were broken anyway,” he said.

“A stone’s throw from throwing stones,” BJ said.

“I don’t know, maybe it was always in decline. I just didn’t realize. And I certainly don’t expect Dad to make a bunch of renovations, but he seems insistent. You know he’s leaving the house to me…you know, when he…when he leaves it to me?” Hawkeye said. 

He set the letter down and ran a hand through his hair. BJ’s hand was still at Hawkeye’s knee, tracing patterns over his kneecap, assessing the purplish bruising, forgetting himself the way he always did when he found reason to touch Hawkeye. 

“Who else would he leave it to, Hawk?” BJ said, gently.

Hawkeye looked stricken. “I don’t want him to waste his money. It’s not worth fixing everything up for me ,” he said. 

Why not? I’d fix up any place for you.

“Well if it’s the windows, it—”

“You don’t get it, Beej. That’s-that’s—money he could use to travel, or save for retirement. He never used to talk about changing the house. I never told him I’d come back and live there, certainly not, well…” Hawkeye trailed off, eyes rising to meet BJ’s as if he’d forgotten his rambling had an audience in the first place. 

“What is it, Hawk?” BJ said. 

“It’s not as if I’m going to have a family there,” Hawkeye muttered. He pulled his feet out of BJ’s lap and put them on the floor, wincing.

“Oh,” BJ said. “Why not?”

Somewhere in the deep recesses of BJ’s brain, where his half-formed, life-altering desires resided—like strange, hitherto undiscovered creatures at the bottom of the ocean—was the thought that maybe he would have a room in Hawkeye’s house in Crabapple Cove. Maybe he’d sit on the porch and keep kids from throwing stones. Maybe he’d paint and maintain the lawn and fix the windows so Hawk never got cold. 

“Why not?” Hawkeye repeated, slack jawed, and BJ felt stupid for asking. 

Something very tired and very sad passed across Hawkeye’s face. He leaned over to rub at his tender knee and the creature in BJ’s brain stirred. He imagined carrying Hawk up the stairs in their (their?) house in Crabapple Cove. He imagined the creaking wood floors and Hawkeye’s face pressed to his shoulder, arms slung around his neck. 

Hawkeye shook his head vigorously, maybe shaking off their collective gloom or irritation or the pathetic longing BJ was sure was emanating from him like heat. 

“Maybe I could’ve swung it before the war, but now I’m sure I’m one of those perpetual bachelors,” Hawkeye said. 

He crossed his legs and leaned back, tucking his hands behind his head in a motion that BJ thought was supposed to look casual, but didn’t, because when Hawkeye was being casual he moved like water, and this was more like an out of practice figure skater, hoping muscle memory was convincing enough. For most people it probably was.

“You don’t mean that,” BJ said.

He did mean it. BJ could tell by the way his gaze was sliding to the floor. Hawkeye’s eyes were spectacularly blue, moreso, it seemed, when he was serious. Sometimes when BJ thought about going home his daydreams blurred out into a series of sensations: Peg meeting him at the airport, her lipstick kisses on the side of his face, Erin’s chubby toddler hands, lights on the highway, Mill Valley in the morning, with dew in the grass. And then all of a sudden there was Hawkeye, filling in blanks BJ hadn’t realized were there. 

There was Hawkeye at his kitchen table, eating Peg’s cooking, drinking a beer and throwing his head back to laugh. There was Hawkeye in his passenger seat, carpooling to work, fiddling with the knobs on the radio. Time got tricky and warped in daydreams, so much so that sometimes BJ could swear what he was dreaming up was actually a memory. He’d pause, standing over a patient, scalpel dangling for a moment before someone called his name. Captain Hunnicutt? Time, memory, it was all very confusing.

Hawkeye pulled the sides of his cardigan around himself, crossing his arms over his ribs, moving gingerly with his injured elbows.

“Really, Beej? Who would have me, you?” he said, looking at the floor. 

“Of course I would,” BJ said. 

It was supposed to have come out like a joke. (He’d been practicing his delivery of these kinds of jokes, training his voice not to falter so they didn’t sound stilted or sheepish. It was hard, because they usually felt sticky and tough in his mouth, like expired taffy.) But just now, it had sounded embarrassingly sincere. BJ felt a little nauseous.

“You’re spoken for. Don’t you remember?” Hawkeye said, in a joking cadence that got a little bitter right at the end.

“I remember,” BJ said.

Hawkeye stood, hunching, favoring his good leg, and BJ felt impossibly small, looking up at him.

“I’m going to shower. Are you coming?” Hawkeye said. 

“Okay,” BJ said, mouth dry, hands going a little numb. 

His brain was flooded with more daydream memories: Hawk with a towel around his hips, his face bright and blurry in a steam fogged mirror, Hawkeye lounging on a bed in a damp robe, knobby knees up, reading a magazine, Hawkeye in peacetime, Hawkeye’s toothpaste in his sink. 

“It’s all a little silly,” Hawkeye said, shivering under the cold water.

“What is?” BJ said. He was trying not to look at him: at the dark hair slicked over his forehead, at the points of his shoulders and collarbone, and the streams of water making their way down his chest. 

“Painting the house, fixing the windows, when the army’s over here painting Korea with GI blood and we’re fixing up the draft’s draftiness,” Hawkeye said. His head tipped back and BJ watched him: pale throat, the bob of his Adam's apple, two day’s stubble on his jaw.

“You’re proposing a pause on civilian home renovations?” BJ said.

“I’m not proposing anything. I just said it’s silly,” Hawkeye said.

BJ’s brow furrowed. Hawkeye loved silly things. He loved pranks and parties and bad movies and children’s games and all the other trivial distractions that kept their heads screwed on in intolerable conditions. 

“Your dad wants to leave you something that’ll last. What’s silly about that?” BJ said.

BJ’s parents weren’t going to leave him anything. He remembered when they dropped him off at his freshman dorm, in undergrad. BJ had two suitcases and a beat up bike. His mother bought him lunch at a gas station. His father waved goodbye out the car window. He didn’t even get out of the car. BJ remembered sitting on the plasticky mattress in his half of the room, twiddling his thumbs and staring at his big feet while his new roommate’s family fussed over his luggage and their dinner reservations. They invited him along and BJ’s face had burned, apologetically. 

“I don’t need anything,” Hawkeye said, aggressively lathering soap into his hair.

“Uh huh,” BJ said.

Hawkeye looked at him, face scrunched. “What?”

“Nothing,” BJ said.

“No, no, no, come out with it. I don’t like your tone,” Hawkeye said.

“You can’t just appreciate the gesture? You’d rather have shitty windows,” BJ said. The water was getting icier.

“All I’m saying is that I don’t see the point in planning for some hypothetical future that isn’t going to happen,” Hawkeye said. 

“You’ve got to live somewhere,” BJ said, irritation rising and prickling under his skin. 

“I don’t need the whole house,” Hawkeye said. 

“Your father has the whole house right now,” BJ said. “And there’s nothing wrong with having something concrete to look forward to, something more than just the end of the war.”

Hawkeye smiled at him, wryly. “Easy for you to say. Everyone and everything is going to be right where you left it, Mr. Mill Valley,” he said. 

It wasn’t true. Hawkeye knew it wasn’t true. He was just saying otherwise to be mean. That, or he was even more sentimentally, delusionally, optimistic than BJ had realized. 

“You’re so damn judgmental,” BJ said.

“Me ?” Hawkeye said. “What about you ?”

“You’re worse, because you pretend like you aren’t and then the second things don’t go your way you freak out,” BJ said. 

He’d lost the thread of his anger. Sometimes he got riled up at Hawk just for the sake of getting riled up. Sometimes he couldn’t stand it that Hawkeye was so sincerely and effortlessly good and honest and purposeful, because BJ wasn’t. BJ had to work at all the things that came naturally to Hawkeye, and half the time he was failing. 

Sometimes when Hawk went on and on about the horrible, unfair, mind‐shattering atrocities of the war and about how they ought to do something about the horror of it all, BJ didn’t feel riled up or called to action, like he figured he was supposed to feel. Instead he felt supremely tired, and even a little annoyed that Hawkeye couldn’t take a single day off of the righteous, martyr routine. It was exhausting: all his letters to Truman and McArthur, his manic stunt at the peace talks, his insistence on running himself ragged in OR, even when he was sick or tired or losing his mind.

Hawkeye was the kid who shook the seats at the top of the ferris wheel, who talked back to his teachers and supervisors and COs and even the whole army itself. He flirted with men in bars on leave, outrageously, obviously, in a way that made BJ squirm with anxiety. His body was allergic to anything military (saluting, rank, olive drab, mess tent food, guns) and he didn’t care who knew it. That was all Hawkeye, and it would never not be Hawkeye, and it made him someone who had a target on his back. It made him someone liable to get hurt, which scared BJ. Hawkeye was just too busy being himself to care. 

Sometimes BJ hated him for how much he loved him. 

Hawkeye’s face was flushed. He shut off the water and reached for his towel. “What are you arguing with me for?” he said. 

What makes you so sure you’re going to end up all alone? And why are you shrugging it off like it doesn’t mean anything? What’s wrong with settling down? With keeping a family home from falling apart? How are you so sure of the future that you can say which hypotheticals are going to happen? You’re so sure of everything, aren’t you Hawk? You’re so sure the things you do mean something. 

“I don’t know,” BJ said. “The same old reasons, I guess.”

The war would keep on being unbearable. Their work would keep on being gut-wrenching. The war was going to end, and BJ couldn’t take Hawkeye home with him. 

Hawkeye sighed and toweled off. He reached for his robe and BJ trained his eyes on the ceiling. 

“I’ll be happy just to have a real roof over my head and real food and Dad , you know. I’d rather have Dad than the house,” Hawkeye said. 

“I don’t think you get a choice, Hawk,” BJ muttered. 

“Fuck, Beej. I know I don’t. I know that,” Hawkeye said.

“Hawk, I—”

“Forget it,” Hawkeye said. 

He stepped out of the stall and stood near the door, crossing his arms protectively over his robe, hair dripping, expression cloudy. He lingered there for a moment. BJ shut off his own water. 

“Are you coming?” Hawkeye said, voice rough and halting and vulnerable.

“Yeah, uh, yeah give me a second,” BJ said. He rubbed his towel over his head. He tried to slow the pounding of his heart. It was a challenge around Hawk, sometimes. It was a test. 

Back in the Swamp Hawkeye tossed and turned for longer than usual. BJ looked over at him in the dark and imagined they were somewhere else. He’d reach out and hold him if he could. It was like he was always on the edge of doing it. 

“BJ? You awake?”

“Try counting sheep, Hawk,” BJ said. 

“No, I wanted to tell you something,” Hawkeye said, words slurred with sleep. 

“Hmm?”

“I want you to visit. You and Peg and Erin. To see Dad, but also when the house is mine, if it’s mine. If I get back in one piece,” Hawkeye said. 

It would only take a few steps. He was so near. BJ imagined himself drawing back Hawk’s blanket. He imagined the quiet shift of their bodies, crowded together. He imagined Hawkeye, warm, and solid, with his lips at BJ’s ear. He imagined the way they’d fit together. It was a dream and a memory. 

“BJ?” Hawkeye said, uncertain.

“You’ll get back in one piece,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye and BJ’s first date was at a nice Italian restaurant, some place where BJ had to call and make a reservation. They’d been in Seattle two months and Hawkeye had left the apartment a grand total of six times. He felt a little silly, putting on dress pants and a nice sweater and matching socks. BJ was wearing a tie, which Hawkeye found absurdly funny from his place flung over their bedspread. 

“You’re wearing a jacket ?” BJ was standing over him, buttoning his cuffs. 

He had no right looking that good, Hawkeye thought. BJ’s hands were on his hips. He smiled down at Hawkeye, nervously, if Hawkeye was reading the furrow of his eyebrows correctly. 

Hawkeye was having trouble sitting up. Every time he tried he felt more like his bones were made of heavy metal. He’d gotten dressed slowly, and horizontally. 

“It’s a nice place,” BJ said. 

“You look nice,” Hawkeye said, mouth stretching wide, eyes half-lidded. 

He reached up for the edge of BJ’s jacket and BJ took the hint, leaned down, and kissed him. It was a long kiss, a thoroughly nice kiss, the kind of kiss that made Hawkeye want to skip dinner and go on kissing him for hours. 

“You’re sure you don’t want to stay here and do this?” Hawkeye muttered, half into BJ’s mouth. 

It would be much easier to remain horizontal, Hawkeye thought. And they could do plenty of worthwhile things horizontally. 

It occurred to Hawkeye that they were doing things backwards: falling in love, moving in together, and now a first date, someplace fancy, with candles.

“Hawk—”

Hawkeye kissed him again, to shut him up. BJ hummed, and Hawkeye grasped at his tie to keep him close. He liked this immensely. He liked the warm weight of BJ over him. He liked the way their bodies fit together. He liked BJ’s knee between his thighs. He liked his hands: one at Hawkeye’s ribs, the other holding himself up, palming the soft quilt beneath them. He liked the goosebumps that prickled on BJ’s skin wherever Hawkeye touched him. He liked the way BJ’s pupils were blown when he managed to pull away. Hawkeye still had him tethered by his tie. He was tempted to hook his fingers in BJ’s belt loops and make him stay. Instead, he let him hang back, arms crossed, the sleeves of his good jacket wrinkled. BJ looked down at him, his expression soft with worry but still a little flushed with arousal. Hawkeye was content with the knowledge that if he wanted to he could convince BJ to skip dinner, stay home, and fool around.

“I’m getting up. Don’t you worry,” Hawkeye said. He reached his hand out and BJ helped him up.

BJ scanned Hawkeye’s face and Hawkeye tried not to look as tired as he felt. Everything made him tired: getting dressed, brushing his teeth, shaving, putting on clean socks. And he hadn’t even gotten out of the door. 

“I can call and cancel,” BJ said. 

“No, no, no, don’t do that. I’m sure we’ve got a nice table,” Hawkeye said, smiling ridiculously. He’d heard him on the phone, weaseling his way into a last minute reservation. “I’ll let you get me drunk on a nice bottle of wine.”

BJ straightened his tie. “How nice?”

Hawkeye shrugged. “How much do you love me?” he joked.

BJ leaned in and kissed him again, cupping his face. 

“A lot,” BJ said. 

This was a new BJ bit: getting all sweet and sincere whenever Hawkeye mentioned love. It had the effect of melting Hawkeye wherever he stood and dissolving the next joke on his tongue like a mint. 

Their table was crammed on the wall directly beside the kitchen. Every time a sweaty, irritated looking waiter, carrying a tray of steaming pasta, sparse, artsy appetizer, or bottle of wine, passed them the kitchen door swung open and whacked the back of BJ’s chair. He scooted closer so his stomach was pressed to the edge of the table and his elbows were on the tablecloth. Hawkeye didn’t mind because the shuffle gave them an excuse to tangle their legs together beneath the table. He could feel Beej’s dress shoe at his ankle and his knee at his thigh. 

Candlelight played over BJ’s face. Hawkeye leaned in close so he could hear him over the chatter from the rest of the dining room (silverware hitting plates, ice rattling in glasses, talking, laughter, a child in a high chair, pumping her feet). Hawkeye’s head swam for a moment. 

“Do you want to share an appetizer?” BJ said, looking at him over the menu. 

“I’m not that hungry,” Hawkeye said. 

“You haven’t eaten all day,” BJ said. 

“How do you know that?” Hawkeye said.

“Margaret told me,” BJ said.

Hawkeye frowned. Margaret had been off that day. He’d lay on her bed, pestering her with his nonstop monologuing while she bleached her hair. When she’d finished she humored him with a few rounds of Go Fish in the living room. She’d tried to persuade him to eat lunch.

“How about calamari?” BJ said.

He was really trying, the way Margaret had tried. She’d made them both sandwiches, but he’d only managed to take a few bites of his before he felt sick. 

“Sure, Beej,” Hawkeye said, balancing his chin in his palm.

They ordered their food, and a reasonably expensive bottle of wine. Hawkeye drank his first glass too quickly while BJ did his usual tiptoeing around the subject of Hawkeye returning to work. It was a little game they played. BJ would mention things in passing: job openings at the free clinic, med school exams that needed proctors, volunteer positions at the goddamn blood drive. 

BJ thought Hawkeye belonged back in an operating room. It wasn’t that simple, really. He’d been out of the game for a long time. When he got back from Korea, Hawkeye had seen patients at his father’s practice. He’d done the easy things: physicals, vaccinations, check ups, some minor surgeries. Family medicine in Crabapple Cove wasn’t stressful. There was no picking through prone bodies for pieces of shrapnel. There were no races against time, no panicked, slapdash surgery. 

He’d tried, in several false starts, to work at bigger hospitals in the city, to go back to the fast pace of some place like the ER. But he’d never been able to stay in one job too long. He’d be seized by panic during surgery. He’d get light‐headed. His hands would shake. He wouldn’t be able to trust himself. He’d spiral and he’d quit, retreating back to Dad’s practice. Daniel Pierce had always provided a safety net that Hawkeye hadn’t realized he needed. 

For a while he’d intended to move out, to get an apartment and start fresh somewhere, or to travel. He'd made some brief attempts at European travels, but maybe he ought to have tried harder. Europe could be fun alone, he thought. He could make friends abroad. He could make friends anywhere. He could go to art museums and cafés and cathedrals and wineries and be so surrounded by other tourists that he’d forget how lonely he was. But then again, he’d been away from home for an eternity, and a greater part of him wanted to root himself at the kitchen table with Dad, drinking coffee, reading the paper, and admiring the windows that had been replaced in his absence. The house was sturdy. The house was safe. And Hawkeye had been gone for so long.

He always felt a little like he’d failed. It was supposed to be temporary. He’d had a whole life when he’d left for the service. He remembered reassuring Dad. It’s just a pause. It’s just a smudge mark on an otherwise decent life. I’ll be back and on track before you know it. He remembered being scared. He remembered lying through his teeth. The war had taken the clear, set, plans of a bright-eyed, perhaps overly ambitious, indisputably talented young surgeon and turned them into a haze. The war wasn’t a smudge mark, it was more like a whole bottle of ink spilled over any plan he thought he had. 

BJ didn’t realize, Hawkeye thought, that things hadn’t gone back to normal. But BJ had never cracked up and been sent away. BJ could compartmentalize without bouts of mania or lapses in memory. BJ didn’t have to go back to his father’s house and try to explain to everyone who’d known him and were so sure of his trajectory, that he wasn’t going to be the trailblazing surgeon he was supposed to have been. 

He stopped trusting himself at the end of the war, and he’d never really started up again. 

“You know I don’t care what you do as long as you’re happy,” Dad said, or maybe it was BJ, sitting across from him. 

“Ben, did you hear me?” (So it was Dad.) 

“I heard you,” Hawkeye said, vanilla extract in hand. 

He looked down at the cinnamon flecked custard and the butter softening on the counter. He was making French toast, like he always did when he had a particularly rough morning. The night before he’d been in Portland, having dinner with the Hunnicutts. 

Dad crossed the room and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot. He leaned against the counter, mug in his palms, wearing a flannel and a navy blue sweater Hawkeye knitted for him. It was funny. When Hawkeye was little the roles were reversed. Dad would make breakfast and Hawkeye would linger in the doorway, still in his pajamas. He’d hop up to sit on the counter while Dad cooked and shook his head at him. 

Hawkeye was vaguely aware of a beginning to this particular conversation. He remembered recounting details of the previous night’s dinner. He’d said something about how BJ was doing real work at a real hospital. That was what had inspired Dad’s comment. Hawkeye hadn’t gotten to the part where Beej looked self-consciously happy and tipsily off-kilter, or the part where Hawkeye met the famous Erin and Peg and all his organs started to constrict because it was much easier to ignore the fact that the man you were in love with had a wife and daughter when they were just photos and words in letters and not flesh and blood people. 

“I don’t know. I’m getting pretty good at making French toast. Maybe I should get a job as a line cook. Or I could work my way up: waiting tables during the week and appendectomies on the weekend,” Hawkeye said.

He put a slice of bread in the custard to soak, then flipped it. 

“I think you’d make better tips if you did it the other way around,” Dad said.

Hawkeye grinned. “You’ve never gotten tipped for an appendectomy?” he said.

“Sometimes they let me keep the appendix in a little jar,” Dad said.

Dad crossed his arms. His glasses were sliding down his nose and his expression was light. Dad always played along, even when Hawkeye’s jokes were subpar.

“Sometimes I feel a little guilty,” Hawkeye said, meeting Dad’s eyes.

“For what, Hawk?”

“For being your mopey, freeloading, adult son who still lives at home,” Hawkeye said.

Dad frowned. “Have I done something to give you the impression that I see you that way?” he said, seriously, and Hawkeye’s guilt compounded. 

“No, Dad, of course not,” he said. He rubbed a hand over his face. 

“This is always going to be your home if you want it to be, Hawk. I don’t care if you raid the liquor cabinet or use up all the hot water or get your dirty shoes on the couch,” Dad said. “I’m always going to be happy that you’re home.”

“Thanks Dad,” Hawkeye said, ducking his head like he was a kid again. He’d inherited some of his father’s blinding sincerity, but he was a little too downtrodden and cynical to take it now.

For a long time, despite arguments and grief and single-father fiascos and bouts of teen rebellion, it had been the two Pierce men against the world. Hawkeye had forgotten, while his life was on pause, but it was still true. 

“After everything you saw, I wouldn’t blame you for putting big city hospitals out of your mind. There’s no shame in taking your time. You know that. Surely BJ knows it too, ” Dad said. 

BJ seemed more dedicated to his work than ever. From his letters it sounded like he worked all the time. 

“I’m fine, really,” Hawkeye said. “It’s not a big deal.”

Hawkeye wasn’t sure if he was talking about seeing BJ’s happy family or the fact that BJ’s career was speeding ahead of his or that his heart was getting broken all over again, this time in slow motion. It was all fine, and it all wasn’t. 

“You talk about the boy like he hung the moon,” Dad said.

“He’s not a boy. He’s a married man. And he’s moved on, clearly,” Hawkeye said.

He concentrated on not burning the slices of French toast in his pan. The whole reason he was making breakfast was to avoid thinking about BJ, but he could feel Dad watching him and testing the waters. 

“He asked to see you,” Dad said. 

“He was in the area,” Hawkeye said.

“He took you to dinner,” Dad said.

“To meet his family,” Hawkeye said. He blushed, from his cheekbones down to his collar, the way he used to blush when Dad teased him about a high school crush.

Hawkeye had lots of crushes and failed romances he’d waxed poetic about in his youth. The list was too long to count on both hands (though Dad had tried to list all the people Hawkeye had claimed to be in love with, to prove he’d been paying attention, or maybe to prove Hawkweye was being a little ridiculous every time he claimed he’d never love again, or maybe still just to coax a grin out of him, when Hawkeye’s whole body was lifeless and limp with teen heartbreak.)

“They should come stay, sometime. Maybe when their little girl is older. I could fix up your old tire swing. You could take BJ to the beach,” Dad said.

“Dad.”

“Hawk.”

“I really can’t talk about this,” Hawkeye said. 

He flipped the first slices of the French toast. The first pieces were always a little doughy and underdone. Dad said it was part of the process.

Hawkeye didn’t know how to say that he wasn’t sure he’d get over this one, that sometimes missing BJ felt like a hammer on his ribs. He didn’t know how to say that he still felt like he existed in two places at once, like maybe he’d left a part of himself in the 4077th’s time capsule, or in the dirt where the Swamp had been. 

He didn’t know how to say that he couldn’t risk going back to hospital work because if he lost his mind again he’d find a way to bring Dad down with him. They were bound to each other like that. 

Dad sipped his coffee. Hawkeye dumped the two underdone slices onto his plate and put two fresh ones in the pan for Dad. He drummed his hands on the counter, anticipatorily. 

He flipped the French toast: golden brown, practice makes perfect, Dad would say. 

“Well,” Dad said, cutting through the silence. “When you can talk about it, you know where to find me.”

“You know I don’t care what you do as long as you’re happy,” BJ said. (It was BJ this time, across from him.) The appetizer had arrived, and then the entrees. Hawkeye had had more wine. BJ was looking at him with his big, pretty, distracting eyes, and something fizzed beneath Hawkeye’s skin. 

“I am happy,” Hawkeye said. He was trying to be. He was better than before. It was a lie in service of the truth. BJ made him very happy, when he let him. 

He sipped his wine. He stabbed at the ravioli BJ had talked him into ordering. 

“You sound like my dad,” Hawkeye said.

BJ raised an eyebrow. “Do I?” he said, gently.

“He always wanted me to be happy. He never wanted me to be anyone other than who I was,” Hawkeye said. 

He leaned his elbow on the table and BJ reached out and touched it, his fingers warm through the gaps in Hawkeye’s sweater. 

“I’d say the same to Erin,” BJ said.

“Do you?” Hawkeye said.

“Do I what?” BJ said. 

“Say the same to Erin,” Hawkeye said.

BJ frowned, thoughtfully. Hawkeye figured that if he had to think about it then he probably hadn’t. He wondered, guiltily, if Beej was looking after him when he should really be putting all his spare time and energy into being a good father to Erin. He worried that he’d dragged him to Seattle, even though at the time it had seemed like BJ was doing the dragging. He worried that they weren’t doing the right thing, that maybe BJ should be back in California with his family. BJ said that Hawkeye and Margaret and Helen were family too. 

“You could go visit, if you needed. You know that, right? I’d be okay,” Hawkeye said.

BJ’s frown deepened. “I know you would. Why do you think I need to rush back to Erin and Peg?”

Hawkeye shrugged. 

“It’s a faux pas to mention kids and ex‐wives on first dates,” BJ said.

“It’s a faux pas to eat garlic bread,” Hawkeye said, grabbing BJ’s garlic bread off his plate and taking a bite.

“She could come here,” BJ said.

“Who?” Hawkeye said, mouth full. 

“Erin,” BJ said.

“Erin,” Hawkeye repeated, turning her name over in his mouth like it was a skipping stone. In his mind’s eye Erin was still an unruly toddler, though he knew this was very much not the case. 

“It’s just an idea,” BJ said. He leaned back in his chair and the kitchen door swung open and bumped him. He leaned in again.

“It’s a good idea,” Hawkeye said. 

“I have those, occasionally,” BJ said, a smile curling on his lips. “I’ll talk to Peg about it. Maybe she could spend one of her breaks here. I could take some time off work.”

Hawkeye hummed. BJ stabbed at the last of his own pasta. 

“Do you want dessert?” BJ asked.

Hawkeye shook his head. BJ didn’t fight him on it. 

“Wanna know another first date faux pas?” Hawkeye said.

“Dining and dashing?” BJ stage whispered.

“Dr. Hunnicutt, I’m shocked,” Hawkeye said.

“What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say putting out,” Hawkeye said.

“Oh,” BJ said. “Should we go home?”

Hawkeye sipped the last of his wine and batted his eyes at him. 

“My place or yours?” he said.

Chapter Text

“How is it going?” Peg asked, too pointedly, after Erin handed BJ the phone and slunk back to Margaret’s room. 

“I’m sure she said,” BJ said. He rubbed his palm over his face.

It had been a week of tenuous conversations sandwiched between long silences. Whenever BJ came into the room Erin muted herself, even mid‐laugh at something Margaret had said. There had been small wins. On Wednesday after work BJ and Erin sat on opposite sides of the couch and read their respective paperback novels for an hour and a half. There had been very little conversation, but the unease that hung thick all the other times they’d spent alone together in the apartment diffused a little. Though, BJ thought maybe Erin had just been so absorbed in her book that she’d forgotten he was there.

“Maybe you were right. Maybe she would’ve been better off at a summer camp,” BJ said. 

Peg laughed, light and airy like when they first met. She’d always laughed at his jokes back then, even if they weren’t funny. 

“From what she tells me, it sounds like she’s having a grand old time,” Peg said.

“Oh, well anyone would with Hawkeye,” BJ said. 

“Of course,” she said.

He imagined her at the kitchen phone, arms crossed, leaning against the counter. 

When she remarried, Peg redecorated the kitchen. She painted the walls mint green, hung new curtains, and fashioned a shelf to house her new army of potted plants that grew and grew until leaves and vines were dipping into the sink. The wedding gifts the second time around had been less lavish, she’d told him, while examining the user manual for the blender she’d just unwrapped, but that was to be expected.

“We’re not young and clueless anymore. People figured we didn’t need as much help the second time around,” she’d said. The call had begun as a discussion of Erin’s upcoming parent teacher conferences and ended up as a detailed inventory of Peg’s wedding registry. 

“Speak for yourself,” BJ had said, rifling through barren cabinets in the divorcée bachelor pad for a cereal box that wasn’t empty or left with stale crumbs. 

Peg hummed. “The next time around you’re going to need all the help you can get,” she’d said.

“If there is a next time around,” he’d said.

BJ could hear Erin down the hall. Her cautious, barefoot steps creaked over the floor. 

“How are things? How’s work?” BJ said.

“You’re deflecting,” Peg said. 

“Maybe, I’ve been known to do that,” BJ said. 

“She said Hawkeye’s out visiting one of your neighbors,” Peg said.

“The couple in 3B. They’re expecting a baby. He made cookies or something. He was gone when I got home,” BJ said. 

In truth he’d been annoyed. Margaret and Helen were on a date, and when he got home Erin was laying upside down in Hawkeye’s easy chair. All the blood had rushed to her face and when he asked her how long she’d been in that position she shrugged. When he asked where Hawkeye was she’d gotten nervous and evasive. He suspected there was something she was leaving out, which frustrated him. And, selfishly, talking to Erin was a whole lot easier when Hawk was around. He’d been counting on him being home that evening. 

Then Peg called, which gave BJ a good twenty minutes of distraction.

“That’s sweet,” Peg said. “And it’s good he’s talking to new people.”

“It’s…yes, it’s good. Everything’s good, Peg, really,” BJ said.

“I’m not worried,” she said. 

And BJ exhaled. He believed her.

“I’m going to hang up now so you can talk to your daughter,” Peg said.

“Thank you,” BJ said. “I’m trying.”

Lately, all it felt like BJ was doing was trying and failing. It reminded him of the old days, when soldiers came in sick and broken in ways he’d never seen before, ways he would never have seen in his residency and hadn’t seen since. Back then if he was trying and failing, in the OR at least, Hawkeye could always swoop in and save him. He was quick: on his feet, in his speech, in his creative solutions, and plan B strategizing when the usual way wouldn’t work. 

BJ was jealous of Hawkeye’s quickness before he loved him. And even after he loved him (that was quick too, though the admission was slow) he was still a little jealous. Hawkeye was gifted. Hawkeye had something BJ would never have. It was some extra unit of devotion and kindness and skill and of course BJ was eager to keep up, to outpace him, to make him better by being his sporting, occasionally vindictive rival. But if he didn’t, it didn’t matter all that much. Hawkeye would just level him with a crooked smile: cocky and loving and stupidly bright, and BJ would sulk and reprimand the cruel part of himself that wanted to outsmart the man he loved, and who loved him.

Was it so wrong for Hawkeye to win all the time, when he won honestly, and he was gentle with the loser’s feelings?

All summer BJ had been losing.

He figured that his current jealousy, regarding Hawkeye’s easy camaraderie with Erin, would also pass. It was good, he reminded himself, that they were getting along so well. They were a lot alike, and they both needed a friend.

Erin came back into the kitchen holding a jigsaw puzzle of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. She held it up hesitantly.

“Would you maybe want to…if you’re not too tired from work we could…uh, start this? I found it in Margaret’s room,” Erin said.

“You like puzzles?” BJ said. 

There was that shrug again. Erin looked down at the table and then over to the door. She set the puzzle down and picked at her fingernails. 

“I like them enough,” she said. 

BJ dumped the puzzle out onto the table and sat down. Erin took the seat across from him and they started separating the edge pieces. 

They worked quietly. BJ handed Erin pieces that fit with the section she was working on and she did the same, sliding possibilities across the table with her thin fingers. Her knee was bouncing under the table.

“Didn’t they make you do a paint by numbers of this one in art class?” BJ said. He glanced up at her. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her expression was focused. She looked a little like Hawkeye during surgery.

“It was Starry Night,” Erin said. 

“Right,” BJ said. 

He remembered it now, on the fridge. She’d filled in all the colors so precisely. It had taken her twenty minutes longer than the rest of her classmates. Her teacher said that she’d stayed through recess to work on it. He remembered the note on her report card, too: Perhaps it would be beneficial to remind Erin that she doesn’t need to do everything perfectly. She seems to put a lot of pressure on herself.

“Is that photo album yours?” Erin asked, without looking up.

“It’s Margaret’s,” BJ said. 

He looked over. The big, spiral bound, album was open on the coffee table. Margaret had taken a lot of photos in the last days of the war, like she was trying to make a yearbook. There were some early photos too, ones with Frank, ones with Trapper. 

“How come you don’t have any pictures from the army?” Erin muttered. She slid over a corner piece and glanced up at him. 

“I’ve got a few,” he said.

“Not an album,” Erin said.

“No, not an album,” BJ said. 

“Why not?” Erin said. She met his eyes and didn’t look away. Her face was going pink, and he got the idea that how he answered was especially important. 

“It can be painful to think of the war, even though I met a lot of good people,” BJ said. 

“Because you saw a lot of people die?” Erin muttered.

BJ held his breath. “I saw a lot of injustice. A war’s almost all injustice, Erin,” he said. “Some of the people in Margaret’s album didn’t make it home.”

Her head bobbed. “You don’t want an album full of things that make you sad?” she said.

“You could say it like that, I suppose,” BJ said. The borders of the puzzle were taking shape, slowly. Hawkeye had been gone too long, he thought, for a friendly neighbor visit. 

“Then why do you have albums of Mom and me?” Erin said, half under her breath. 

She was trying to make herself small in the chair: hunched shoulders, hair in her face, palms pressed between her knees, head bowed as if in prayer. She never did that when she was little. She never tried to make herself small. She was always standing on her tiptoes, or clomping around in her mother’s heels. She climbed trees and swung high on the swings at the playground. She was always looking down at him: when he helped her up to the monkey bars, when she balanced her little arms atop his head because he had her on his shoulders, when she borrowed his reading glasses and her eyes were all big and distorted and the frames were sliding down her nose. She was nervous and meticulous and flighty, but she was never small.

“Erin,” BJ said. “Do you think you make me sad?”

Her head bobbed again, but she was still grabbing for pieces of the puzzle, moving them around, fitting them together. He put his hand over hers. 

“You make me so happy I can’t even find the words to tell you. That’s what makes me sad. I’m the one who makes me sad,” BJ said.

Erin laughed, and then choked on it. She cried the same way he did: big and dramatic with shaking shoulders and hiccups. BJ got up and put his arms around her. Her nose was pressed to his ribs. She was dampening his shirt. 

“Sometimes I think everything is my fault,” Erin said, voice muffled. 

BJ had had the same thought. He’d had it picking up the pieces of the still he’d smashed. He’d had it the day he told Peg he’d been drafted. He had that thought for every patient he lost, even now. He didn’t remember thinking like that as a kid, though if he was honest with himself, he was starting to forget a lot of being a kid. 

He wasn’t like Hawkeye. When it really mattered, he never knew what to say.

“I know,” BJ said. “But it isn’t.”

Erin clung to him the way she did when she was very small. 

“I know I worked a lot, when your mom and I were together. I know there were things I tried to keep from you. I bottled up the things that were hurting me. I was trying to keep my sadness and my anger and my confusion from spreading to you. It took me a long time to realize how foolish that was. It made me a bad husband and a bad father. It created such distance between me and you, and between me and your mother. None of that is your fault, it’s mine, sweetheart, I’m sorry.” he said. 

She stilled against him. “Mom says we’re a lot alike. Do you think that’s true?” she said.

Peg used to say that. Sometimes she meant Erin was getting too tall. Sometimes she meant Erin was sulking or scheming or otherwise being impossible (Peg’s words.) Sometimes she meant Erin was being exceptionally kind or jealous or expressive with her hand gestures. It was a compliment and an insult. 

“I think you got all of your mom’s heart and resourcefulness and good sense and you got my stubbornness and sense of humor,” BJ said. 

Erin laughed. Her breath was hot. She drew back and wiped her eyes with her fingers. 

“Hawkeye says I’m funnier than you,” she said. 

“He’s almost always right,” BJ said. 

“I get worried that I’ll disappoint you. I’m not very brave. And everything you do is brave, you know? Because you save people and you fix things,” Erin said. 

She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. BJ took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. He hadn’t known that she thought about him like that. BJ had conceived of himself as a coward for many years. Part of him thought he’d always be a coward. 

“You’re my favorite person in the world, Erin. Nothing could change that,” BJ said.

“You promise?” Erin said. She sniffled. 

He looked at her: red nose, wet eyelashes, eyes intense, bottom lip still a little wobbly. He knew what Peg meant, when she said they were alike. He knew it was a kind thing to say. Erin had all of the best parts of him. Peg would know. She was one of the people who could draw them out. 

“I promise,” BJ said.

The door opened. It was Hawkeye. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. He took in the sight of them. “Everything okay?”

“We’re just doing a puzzle,” BJ said. He met Hawk’s eyes and gave him a look of reassurance. Hawkeye’s shoulders relaxed.

“I thought we might grab something at the deli. They’re open late. We can sit at the counter and people watch,” Hawkeye said.

“What do you think, Erin?” BJ muttered.

Erin nodded. She shot up. “I’m going to go wash my face,” she said, and disappeared down the hallway. 

“What happened?” Hawkeye said, when she was out of sight. 

“We talked,” BJ said. “It was good. Don’t look so worried.”

Hawkeye’s expression shifted. He crossed the room and took BJ by the hips. 

“I’m glad it was good,” he said. 

“Where were you?” BJ said. 

“Delivering cookies to 3B, didn’t Erin say?” Hawkeye said. 

“You were gone a long time,” BJ said. 

“We just got to talking, is all. I’m trying to get to know the neighbors,” Hawkeye said. 

Hawkeye has been getting more attention around the building. It seemed like everyone who came up the stairs when Hawkeye and BJ were descending had something to say to him: a hello, how are you, or a thank you for some act of kindness of which BJ had no knowledge. Hawkeye was dismissive when BJ asked questions. I’m here all the time. Of course people know me. 

It was a hopeful development. Social butterfly Hawkeye was the norm. With any luck, depressed, shut-in Hawkeye was on the way out. BJ just couldn’t shake the feeling Hawk was concealing some detail, and that perhaps Erin was in on it.

For example, the pregnant couple in 3B. 

BJ was under the impression that pregnant women still made Hawkeye nervous, the same way kids and babies and the hallways in the pediatric wing did. 

“Just talking?” BJ pressed, gently. 

“Just talking. Did you miss me, Beej?” Hawkeye said. 

Hawkeye smiled his bluffing smile. BJ could spot the bluffing smile a mile away, but he was sure Hawk didn’t know he could. There was an uncomfortable, squirming feeling in the bottom of BJ’s stomach. 

“I’m going to change,” he said. 

Hawkeye sprawled out on the bed, propped on one elbow, while BJ peeled off the clothes he’d worn to work and recounted, in pieces, the last hour he’d spent with Erin. 

“Yeesh,” Hawkeye said, which was not quite the reaction BJ was anticipating. 

“What do you mean, yeesh ?” BJ said. He pulled on a t-shirt, and then a sweatshirt over top of it. When he was feeling defensive he always needed layers. 

“I mean Peg’s right. You two are the same. You take on the burden for everything, like you’re doing the world some big favor and then you stew in your perceived shortcomings until someone drags the whole mess out of you,” Hawkeye said. 

“She’s 15,” BJ said. 

“I know. How old are you?” Hawkeye said. 

BJ sighed. “I didn’t know she took so much on. I should’ve, but I didn’t,” he said. 

Hawk’s head fell back so he was looking up at the ceiling. BJ examined the stubble at his jaw, down his neck, and was struck with a memory of him outside the OR, sitting on the bench with his back against the wall: bloody scrubs, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, massaging his cramping hands, and ignoring BJ’s suggestions that they head back to the Swamp or the mess tent for a cup of coffee, until BJ grabbed him by the elbows and pulled him up. 

“I guess I’m surrounded by people who take too much on,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye’s chin dipped and he looked at BJ through his eyelashes. That was the same too, though Hawk looked less tired, and there wasn’t any blood or sweat on his face. He still looked like he’d work until he dropped if BJ didn’t steady him and say enough was enough. BJ had not seen this particular expression on Hawkeye’s face in a long, long time. It made something in his chest seize. It made him want to kiss him. 

When Erin knocked on the door and said she was ready her face was still a little blotchy and pink, but less so than before. The three of them fumbled at the door: pulling on shoes, patting pockets for wallets and keys, discussing optimal deli orders. And then they were out in the cooling night air, in a squashed line on the narrow sidewalk. 

It was the first time the three of them had been out someplace, BJ thought, as Erin shifted on the stool between him and Hawk. She unwrapped her ham and cheddar and extracted her pickle from the paper and passed it to BJ. Hawkeye had gotten a basket of their house made kettle chips and the three of them were doing more crunching than talking. He wondered what they looked like, to an outsider. He wondered if they could ever register as a family unit. It was an ambitious thought.

“You wanna trade?” Hawkeye asked Erin, gesturing to one half of his pastrami sandwich. “Sorry Beej, hers looks better. You always get turkey,” he said, nose wrinkling. 

Erin accepted the terms of the trade. BJ ate both Erin and Hawk’s pickles and let Erin have a few sips of his coke, even though he was worried the caffeine would keep her up all night. 

Erin leaned on BJ’s shoulder, gently, like she was testing it out. She took another bite of Hawkeye’s sandwich. Hawkeye looked over at BJ. The neon deli sign was making the whole front window glow, and reflecting red and blue light on Hawk’s face. The look said isn’t this frightfully sweet and domestic? Fatherly, even? 

BJ rolled his eyes. 

They’d talked, years and years ago, about kids, before that kind of conversation really meant anything.

“Well, how’d you feel, when Erin was born? Everyone always says it’s instant, like you’re knighted with fatherhood. Like your heart grows three sizes or something,” Hawkeye had said.

He poured himself more gin and fumbled with a jar of olives. He raised his eyebrows at BJ’s empty glass and BJ nodded.

“Right, right, knighthood…that’s why you see so many new fathers leaving the hospital with armor. I was hoping for a sword. That’s what you really need around an infant,” BJ said, holding up his glass. 

Hawkeye grinned. He leaned over and poured generously into BJ’s glass. Some of the gin sloshed on the floor and BJ mopped it up with his sock. 

“Really, though, Beej. I’d like to know,” he said. Hawkeye sat back down across from him and hunched forward, elbows to knees. 

“Oh,” BJ said. He sipped his drink. He felt the usual embarrassment and exhilaration of Hawk’s eyes on him. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know ?”

“Let me think,” BJ said.

“Some knight you are,” Hawkeye said. He threw his head back and laughed. 

The day Erin was born was an adrenaline blur. He remembered it was scorching hot. He had to throw a bath towel down on the leather of the passenger seat so Peg wouldn’t burn her legs while he drove to the hospital. He remembered glancing back at the baby seat at every red light, confirming it was still there and assembled properly. He remembered helping Peg out of the car. He remembered how strong her grip was, through the first contractions. He remembered pacing in the waiting room, while a group of more experienced fathers laughed at him, said he’d be there awhile, why not sit down or grab a drink or read the sports section. He remembered the first time he held her. He came into Peg’s room and there Erin was, in her mother’s arms. 

Peg was glowing, the way she did when she was tremendously happy. He tucked sweaty strands of hair behind her ears. Her chin tilted up and she kissed him, deeply. 

“Hold her. She’s perfect,” she said. 

Though he was a doctor, though he knew birth was a science and not a miracle, he felt as though he, Peg, and Erin were the only three people alive, and that nothing like this had ever happened. The 6 pounds and four ounces of Erin Elizabeth Hunnicutt, which seemed to belong solely in Peg’s arms, tucked quietly and securely against her chest, was passed to him. 

Erin stirred and fussed. She wiggled a little as he found where she fit against him. He wondered if she could feel his heartbeat, if it was too quick and was agitating her. Her face was pink and her eyes were swollen and her features were so small and new that he felt he could look at her for hours. He didn’t realize he was crying until Peg’s hand was at his knee. 

“Darling, you’ll get her all wet,” she said. 

“I guess it’s all at once,” BJ said. “As soon as she was in my arms I couldn’t imagine letting her go. She was so warm and she was ours. I guess…” he hesitated. “I guess it’s like falling in love all over again.”

Hawkeye had a faraway look on his face. “Dad said that the day I was born it was like his brain was on fire. He put his clothes on backwards. He pulled on push doors. He almost brushed his teeth with soap. He used to say it was like your whole world gets turned upside down, when you become a father,” he said. 

Hawkeye sipped his drink. He leaned his chair back, precariously, and rocked back and forth. BJ had noticed that Hawk always needed his hands and feet occupied. Sitting still wasn’t in his repertoire. 

“Do you ever think about being knighted?” BJ said.

He didn’t want to talk about what came next: the sleepless nights, the fighting, the sitting beside Erin’s crib and trying to memorize her every movement so that when he was in Korea he could close his eyes and play images of her in his brain like a slideshow, her tiny fingers wrapped around his thumb.

Hawkeye grinned, but his eyes were big and serious and vulnerable.

“Sometimes,” he said. 

The kettle chips were gone.

“What time is it?” Erin asked. She yawned. 

“9:30. Ready for bed?” Hawkeye said.

“No,” Erin said. But she yawned again.

They walked back to the apartment. Erin leaned on the railing, coming up the stairs. 

“Hi, Hawk. Hi Erin,” came a voice from above. 

A heavily pregnant woman with a man at her elbow smiled at the three of them.

“Where are you off to this late?” Hawkeye said. 

“Oh, just a walk around the courtyard. I’m cooped up there all day. I know what you said, but I really can’t stand resting all the time, Dr. Pierce,” the woman said. 

Hawkeye froze. BJ watched his shoulders tighten. 

“Did Hawkeye give you the baby hat?” Erin said.

“He sure did,” the man behind the woman said. 

“You know she’s available for babysitting,” Hawkeye said. “She’s CPR certified and everything.”

“Hawkeye,” Erin said, voice edging into a whine. 

Hawkeye turned to look at BJ. He wondered, for a second, if he’d forgotten he was there. 

“Elsie, Andrew, this is Erin’s dad, BJ Hunnicutt. Beej, meet Elsie and Andrew from 3B,” he said. 

“Oh, yes, the other doctor. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Andrew said. 

“Erin’s a lovely girl. She’s been a big help, like a little nurse in training. I’m sure you’ve heard,” Elsie said. 

“It’s nice to meet you both,” BJ said. He hadn’t heard, actually. He hadn’t heard anything.

The couple passed them. Andrew helped Elsie: hands on her shoulder and the small of her back. She was moving slowly and deliberately, the way Peg did in the days before Erin was born.

“Do you want to explain, now?” BJ said, when Hawk came out of the bathroom. Erin was asleep, so BJ kept his voice low.

“Explain what?” Hawkeye said, but he blanched. 

“She called you Dr. Pierce. I thought you were just over there to bring cookies,” BJ said. 

“And talk,” Hawkeye said.

“I wasn’t aware it was a regular thing. I didn’t know Erin was involved,” BJ said.

“I asked her not to mention it,” Hawkeye said. “I’ve been sort of…I’ve been seeing patients, as it were, just in the building. Nothing formal, just some basic medical advice. Erin comes along sometimes.”

BJ sighed, heavily. He was sitting on the bed. His whole body folded over. “Why did you ask her not to mention it?” he muttered.

Hawkeye squirmed in the doorway. He smoothed his hair from his eyes. “I didn’t want you to make something out of nothing,” he said.

BJ scoffed. For months, Hawkeye had been refusing to engage in anything remotely close to medical work. Back when they first moved, BJ had been convinced that all he needed was to see patients, to go back to surgery or some clinic work or even just sit in on some lecture. He was sure Hawk’s eyes would light up the way they used to. He was certain the solution, for Hawkeye, would always be his career. Hawkeye was a surgeon. He was a brilliant surgeon. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t operated in a while. It didn’t matter that Crabapple Cove or San Francisco or Seattle weren’t Korea. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t desperate, frightening, meatball surgery anymore. He’d pick it up again, and he’d be good at it. He’d be better than before. They’d work together. They’d save each other like they always did.

He didn’t push. He couldn’t push, all those weeks Hawkeye had barely left his bed, and later, when normalcy was flimsy, when Hawkeye’s grief still hung heavy in the apartment, when his energy was carefully rationed, and he flinched when BJ came home wearing scrubs.

“It’s not nothing,” BJ said. “How long has it been going on?”

“Just since Erin’s been here. Elsie was having Braxton Hicks contractions and was scared. I got Margaret to put her in touch with a midwife, but Erin convinced me to keep checking in on her. She’s terrified of hospitals, Beej. And word sort of spread from there. I’m not doing anything crazy, really. I consulted on a couple broken bones and the flu, you know. I make sure the elderly pick up their prescriptions and don’t get bed sores. I brought Elsie some vitamins. Basic stuff, Beej.  Everyone in the building calls this the apartment with the doctors. I’m surprised no one’s put a red cross on the door,” he said.

“Dr. Pierce and Nurse Erin,” BJ said.

“Are you angry?” Hawkeye said. 

“I’m not—why’d you keep it from me, Hawk? This sounds promising. This sounds like maybe you’d like to get back to work,” BJ said. A strange cocktail of emotions was twisting around in his chest.

Hawkeye put his face in his hands. “Because I knew you’d say that. I knew you’d use it as a point in your favor,” he said.

“In my favor ?” BJ said.

“Yes. You’ve got this fantasy world where I come to work with you and nothing goes horribly wrong. But you don’t get it. I’m done. I don’t come back from this,” Hawkeye said. He gestured vaguely to himself in a way that made BJ deeply upset. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m serious. I’m no good in an operating room anymore. I’m no good. I’ll crack up again. It’ll be worse than before. I know it.”

“That’s not funny,” BJ said.

 He didn’t want to picture worse than before . He thought about going to see him at the institution, about how he’d looked like a stranger, and then again, meeting him in the uneven lamplight in a motel parking lot, about how afraid he’d been that they wouldn’t even recognize each other. Hawkeye would be some place BJ couldn’t reach. He’d pull away and close off. He’d give BJ a taste of his own medicine. 

“I know it isn’t,” Hawkeye said, looking stricken. “I know you hate to hear it, Beej, but there really are some things you can’t fix.”

BJ blushed, shamefully. So Hawk thought he could see right through him: doctor, soldier, husband, knight. He sucked in a breath.

“I’m not trying to fix everything. I’m just confused. You said you couldn’t see patients, and now you’re seeing patients,” BJ said, evenly.

“It’s different,” Hawkeye said.

“It’s a start! I know you miss it. I know you,” BJ said. 

“You don’t know anything,” Hawkeye said.

Hawkeye’s jaw was set. He shook his head. He wrapped his arms around himself and shuttered. BJ knew what fear looked like on Hawkeye. He knew its variations and symptoms and dimensions (angry scared, sad scared, horror movie scared, there’s a big bug in the kitchen scared, claustrophobic scared). He’d seen the way his eyes darted and his knees folded to his chest. He’d seen him: blank face, shaking hands, tense shoulders, chattering nervously, when the 4077th was under fire. He’d been beside him when he startled awake, sweaty, and dry lipped, after a nightmare. 

“What are you so afraid of, Hawk?” BJ said.

“I’m not afraid ,” Hawkeye said.

“Hawkeye,” BJ said.

He threw up his hands. He darted back into the bathroom, and BJ got up and followed him. 

“What are you doing?” BJ said. 

Hawkeye crouched in front of the faucet. “I’m running a bath, because I’m angry with you,” he said.

“Hawkeye,” BJ repeated.

Hawkeye stood up, and then they were nose to nose, beside the bathtub. Hawkeye wouldn’t look at him. BJ took hold of his left wrist, putting his fingers over Hawk’s pulse. 

“What?” Hawkeye said.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye laughed, harshly. “You won’t let it be,” he said. “Fine. What happens when I go back to work, and it goes badly, and I’m a mess again? I’ll tell you what happens Beej. It’s the same thing that always happens. You get sick of me, and you run.”

“You still think I’m going to leave,” BJ said. 

“Can you blame me?” Hawkeye muttered. 

The water was still rushing behind them. BJ reached behind Hawkeye and shut it off. 

“So this is how it’s going to be? I’m going to be proving it to you until we’re side by side in the Pierce family plot,” BJ said. 

“You’re right. It’s a bad joke,” Hawkeye said. 

“So you were lying before. You do miss the OR. You know you’re not done being a surgeon,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye waved his hands. “I can’t talk about this. I’m taking a bath,” he said. 

“Hawk—”

“I mean it. Leave me be,” Hawkeye said.

BJ sighed. He fished in his pocket for his cigarettes. 

Hawkeye laughed, harshly. The room was getting hot with steam. 

“Look at you, one fight and you’re taking up smoking again. You never change,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ tiptoed past Erin in the dark and down the stairs into the courtyard. It was cold and his hands shook when he lit up. He inhaled deeply until some of the fog in his brain lifted. He’d been dismissed to the dog house. Several thoughts presented themselves in quick succession:

One. Maybe Hawk was right. Maybe BJ was incapable of change. Maybe he was an old dog and new tricks were beyond his grasp. Maybe he would run again, no matter how certain he was that things would be different, that he’d be a better father and a better husband (he’d not used that word in front of Hawk, but it was what he felt.) Maybe he needed all the help he could get and no one would be there to provide it.

Two. BJ was incapable of standing the idea that he was the thing keeping Hawkeye from surgery.

Three. If Hawk had lied about seeing patients, and Erin was in on it, then what other things had he lied about? Hawkeye and Erin could be conspiring against him on any number of things. The jealous, paranoid part of his brain told him it must be true. He’d failed with Erin. Of course she preferred Hawkeye to him. Of course the people he loved most had it out for him, and didn’t want him around. Hawk was right. He started thinking like a teenager when he was distressed. 

The pregnant woman from the stairs, Elsie, was approaching. BJ put out his cigarette and waved at the smoke. 

“I’m sorry,” BJ said. “I didn’t realize you were still down here.”

“It’s alright. It’s nostalgic. My dad smoked cigars,” she said.

A breeze swept through the courtyard: jingling windchimes, rustling laundry strung out on balconies, catching in the afghan wrapped around Elsie’s shoulders.

“Where’s your husband?” BJ asked. 

Elsie smiled. “I banished him upstairs for five minutes. He’s gotten to hovering, now that my due date is so close.” she said. 

“He worries?” BJ said. 

Elsie nodded. “It’s sweet. But a little suffocating,” she said. 

She looked him up and down. He was struck by how young she looked: dark, unkempt hair, long floral skirt, mud covered sandals, big brown maternity tunic, inquisitive green eyes. 

“I told Andrew that between me and him and Dr. Pierce, this baby’s going to be all worry. He’s been real sweet too, your Hawkeye,” she said. 

BJ’s shoulders tensed, involuntarily.

“You seemed surprised on the stairs. I thought perhaps we’d overstepped. I know Hawkeye’s house calls aren’t the typical way people go about things,” Elsie said. 

“Well, Hawk’s…he always says he’s semi‐retired. I didn’t know he was seeing patients at all. That’s why I was surprised,” BJ said.

“Hawkeye said you all served in Korea. You and him and the nurses I still haven’t met,” Elsie said. 

“In a medical unit, yes. That’s where we all met,” BJ said.

“And Erin was just a baby?” Elsie said.

BJ swallowed, thickly. “Yes, she was,” he said.

Elsie sucked in a breath, slow and steady. BJ worried that there was still smoke lingering. She braced her hands on her stomach and chewed on her lip.

“I worry that Andrew will be called up. I worry a lot about the kids dying over there,” she said. 

“So do I,” BJ said. It didn’t come close to expressing the fury and the dread and the nausea he felt turning on the TV or the radio for the news. If he was looking for evidence that nothing ever changed and no one ever learned, the fighting in Vietnam seemed apt. 

“I’m sorry to bother you, doctor. I figure you’re also looking to be alone,” Elsie said.

“Actually, I’m the one banished,” BJ said.

Elsie laughed. She reached out and touched his shirt sleeve. The two of them swayed for a moment, in the wind.

“You’re worried about him?” she said, voice hushed. “Coming out of semi‐retirement?”

“I’m always worried about Hawkeye,” BJ said, afraid, as he often was, that he was giving too much away. He used to get like that during the war, when Hawk put his arm around him or when BJ’s attention was too fixed on the light that poured from Hawkeye’s expressions. 

He’d tried to put the worry in letters, some of it at least, but nothing came out right. 

Dear Hawk,

I’ve been thinking a lot about how silly this is. I drop Erin off at preschool and I take the dog around the block and I do the dishes and I go to work in operating rooms that are clean and safe and well lit and competently staffed and I wonder what it was all for if I can’t be happy here. This is what I wanted, right? You know me better than anyone, so tell me. 

Dear Hawk,

Are you eating enough? Are you sleeping? I’m not, really. Peg says I should start taking something. I bet you aren’t sleeping. You had trouble with that.

Dear Hawk, 

I meant it when I said I don’t get along with anyone the way I get along with you. I thought maybe when I got back home I’d find someone I could be close with the way we were. I thought, at least, I could find a little of the person I was before I left, stored in Mill Valley for safe keeping. I know the war made me a worse man. It made me hard and selfish and cynical and I don’t know how to get back. I sure as hell haven’t found anyone like you out here. 

Elsie was watching him. “There’s a lot of worry wrapped up in loving someone,” she said. 

“And in having your first baby,” BJ said. 

Elsie smiled. She checked her watch. “That’s my five minutes. Goodnight, Dr. Hunnicutt,” she said.

BJ knocked on the bathroom door. He’d shed his clothes down to a t‐shirt, boxers, and his socks (pulled up long over his ankles in a way Hawk found funny, because it made him look old) and was pressing his ear to the wood.

“It isn’t locked,” Hawkeye said. 

“Is that an invitation?” BJ said. 

“Sure.”

Hawkeye was stretched out in the tub, sunk low so only his head, toes, and the pale slopes of his shoulders stuck out of the water. He’d used some of the lavender soap BJ had bought him on Peg’s recommendation and the air was moist and fragrant. 

BJ sat down on the lid of the toilet. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What for?” Hawk muttered. He didn’t look at him, just at the wall tile.

“For never changing,” BJ said.

 Hawkeye sighed. He sunk lower, so his chin brushed the surface of the water.

“Sometimes I forget that our relationship hasn’t followed the typical timeline, so to speak,” BJ said.

One side of Hawk’s lip curled up. “Whatever do you mean, Beej?” he said.

BJ did the math. They met in 1952. They’d spent a million years in Korea. They wrote letters for 12 years and change, two and a half years of painful radio silence, and were now coming up on a year together in Seattle. They’d been friends. They’d been rivals. They’d been far apart and they’d been so close BJ felt he’d memorized Hawkeye (the landscape of his smiles, his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe or slipping under BJ’s shirt in the morning, with icy fingertips, the rhythms of his jokes, his singing in the shower, the cadence of his rants, his silhouette in the sunshine). They were lovers, though it didn’t feel like quite the right word. It was something more than that. 

“We haven’t been a couple all that long. If you think about it,” BJ said.

In Korea they were intimate in every way but physical. In Korea they were just short of a couple. People used to joke that they behaved as if they were married. BJ was prickly when it came to that particular subject, though he tried to hide it. Hawkeye’s sense of humor was boundless, with no defensive gaps. 

“I think about it,” Hawkeye said. 

“I understand if you doubt my ability to commit,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye guffawed. “Usually that’s my line,” he said. 

“I’m trying to be serious,” BJ said.

“I know,” Hawkeye said. His eyes were soft and his tone was generous. 

“You’re it for me, Hawk. I’m not…I don’t want you to think I’m fooling around. In sickness and in health and all that,” BJ said. His palms were sweating.

Hawkeye’s eyebrows rose. “Is this a proposal? You had to wait until I was indecent, vulnerable, and covered in bubbles?” he said. 

Part of BJ wanted to get down on one knee on their bathroom tile, in his boxers, to show Hawk how serious he was. All the cracks about how they argued and joked and dressed and filled in each other’s blanks like an old married couple, cumulated, in BJ’s mind, into the future where they were, in all senses but legal, married. 

“I’m saying you don’t get rid of me. I’m saying I’m in this for the long haul. I’m in it if you never go back to work. I’m in it if you do and something happens. I’m here if it gets hard again, if it’s worse than before. I’m here if we fight every day. You spent a war keeping me from falling apart, Hawk. I owe you, and I love you. I’m always going to be here,” BJ said. 

He wondered if that was what Hawkeye wanted too, Hawkeye who had it in his head that BJ’s presence was temporary and predicated on some degree of normalcy. Part of BJ wanted to shake Hawk and tell him that his whole world was tugged up by its roots the day they’d met. Hawkeye kept him steady. Hawkeye made the upheaval make sense. BJ was getting too tired to run from him. He was ready to come home when he was called.

“Come here,” Hawkeye said.

BJ knelt by the tub. He could do that, at least. He was on both knees, but it was close.

Hawkeye kissed him, pressing his damp hand to BJ’s jaw. BJ sighed into his mouth. There were more tender, embarrassing words on the tip of his tongue. It was a proposal. He could call up Father Mulcahy and ask him if he’d officiate some sort of ceremony, over the telephone. 

He thought he ought to buy a ring first.

Chapter Text

Erin picked up the phone. 

“She’s in labor,” Andrew said. 

“She’s in…are you at the hospital?” Erin said. She tugged on the phone cord and whipped around, looking down the hallway for Hawkeye. 

“Elsie hid it when her water broke and now she’s having contractions. I told her we needed to go, but she wouldn’t listen. She’s early, Erin. I called the midwife but she’s tied up. She said to call you, and an ambulance. Is Dr. Pierce there?” Andrew said.

“I’ll get him,” Erin said. 

Hawkeye had been up late last night. She’d heard him stalking around the kitchen and pacing out on the balcony, despite his obvious attempts to tiptoe and not bump into anything. She’d wondered what was keeping him up. Last week she’d heard him and Dad fight, the evening the secret of Hawkeye’s house calls got out.

Dad and Hawkeye didn’t argue the way Mom and Dad did. Mom and Dad had a pattern: big, explosive yelling (Dad), something sharp and quick back (Mom), quieter, passive aggressive barbs (Dad, muted for Erin’s sake), and exhausted compromises so everyone could sleep at night. They didn’t outright fight in front of her. They waited until the doors were closed. On more than one occasion Erin had heard the phrase I don’t want our daughter to think we’re the kind of family that fights all the time.  

When she was tiny, and her emotions were too big for her body, she would throw tantrums in the park, at the grocery store, or while Dad was buckling her into her car seat. She would be reasoned with in hushed voices. Mom would pet her hair and wipe her eyes when all she wanted to do was scream and scream. And then Dad’s face would be in front of her, with its disappointment like a sedative, and her little lungs would run out of breath. They weren’t the kind of family that fought all the time. Erin thought that maybe a fight was important, when the alternative was long, frustrated silence, and keeping the door shut for our daughter’s sake . She got to thinking she was a pawn in their marriage game, which only made her want to scream her head off more.

Dad and Hawkeye had a different rhythm. She heard her father in the living room, and watched the light spill from the hall through the door. She watched him leave: brooding, subdued, cigarettes in hand. She heard the tap in the bathroom, and the quiet that settled over the apartment again. Dad came back: gentler, smelling strongly of smoke, placing his hand on the arm of the couch where she was sleeping, like he knew she was awake or just wanted her to know that he was near. And then the voices in the next room were soft, not resigned, just soft. She heard doors open and close. She heard the tub drain and laughter. Mom and Dad’s fights never ended in laughter.

Since that night things had been peachy. The next morning all three of them had finished Margaret’s puzzle. The evening after Hawk and Dad went out on a date. Helen and Margaret moved all the furniture in the living room, put on one of Margaret’s records, and took turns teaching Erin how to waltz. 

Erin set the receiver down on the counter and dashed down the hallway. She banged on Hawk and Dad’s bedroom door. 

“Ten more minutes,” Hawkeye said, voice groggy and faint through the door. “Ten more minutes, Radar, please. I can’t even hear the choppers,” he said.

Erin opened the door. 

“Hawkeye,” she announced, with all the air in her lungs. “Elsie’s in labor.”

His head popped up from the blankets.

“Fucking hell, Erin,” Hawkeye said. And then, immediately. “Fucking hell, I’m sorry for swearing.”

Margaret had brought home a home birth kit the day Hawkeye told her about Elsie and Andrew. Erin retrieved it, and pressed it into Hawkeye’s hands after he’d fumbled around for clean clothes and was standing panicked, in the kitchen, with the phone balanced between his face and shoulder.

“Don’t move her, and boil some water. We’ll be right there. Just‐just‐okay…it’s going to be okay, just stay calm,” Hawkeye said. He hung up the phone.

Hawkeye ran his hands through his hair. He looked very pale and startled. His hands shook around the birth kit. There was the sound of clanking glass and metal. He looked the way Erin felt before parent teacher conferences and picking seats on the bus for field trips. Ordinarily, Erin was the person who was most scared in any given situation. (Sometimes she was the only one who was scared.) Now, she felt she was being called to action. She would be the calm one, if Hawkeye could not. 

“What do you need?” Erin said, rolling up her sleeves and standing up very straight. 

Hawkeye’s face colored and his gaze sharpened.

“Clean towels,” he said. “And call and leave a message for your father. He’s in surgery but he’ll come home when he’s done. Just say…just say I need him, at his earliest convenience, and that it’s not an emergency.”

It was a relief to hear Hawkeye say it wasn’t an emergency, given that Erin’s ears were ringing.

The door to 3B was open. Andrew was pacing in front of the door to the bedroom. He looked more startled and pale than Hawkeye, so Erin patted him on the shoulder, passed him the towels, and used her most confident, professional tone to tell him everything would be okay. She tried to channel Margaret. She was certain Margaret had the best bedside manner. There was water heating on the stove. Erin said she would knock when it was boiling. 

Andrew nodded. Erin could hear Elsie cursing and Hawkeye being loudly reassuring. Andrew went in and Erin waited by the stove. She hovered and delivered supplies for a while, crouching by the door and listening closely when she wasn’t expressly needed. 

Elsie’s yelling got louder, and louder still. Erin heard Hawkeye instruct her to push. 

“Good, good, good, almost there Elsie you’re doing fabulously,” Hawkeye said. 

Erin stared at the floor. She wondered when the ambulance would arrive, and if she’d be able to hear it come. She wished, for a moment, that she was like Radar, and could sense things before they happened. 

When Hawkeye told her stories about Radar she’d thought that it would be awful to have premonitions during a war. It would be awful to be the harbinger of suffering beyond your control. Now, she wished she could say with certainty that a baby was about to enter the world, safe and whole and loved instantaneously, just before it happened. 

Erin opened the door for the paramedics.

“My dad’s in there. He’s a doctor. We live upstairs,” she said, in lieu of a more complicated explanation. It felt close enough to the truth. 

“Thanks very much, young lady,” one of the paramedics said, his hand at her elbow. The other was already on his way into the bedroom. 

Erin was crouched beside the door again when she heard the high shriek of a newborn. Her eyes filled with tears, on instinct, and all the brave, confident, air evacuated her lungs. A moment later, Hawkeye tore out of the room, right past her and into the hall.

Erin followed. She found him on the stairs, shaking like a leaf, with his head in his hands.

“Hawkeye?” Erin said. She edged toward him, cautiously. 

“Erin,” Hawkeye said. He looked up at her with the same panic she saw in him the day she showed up at the apartment. He was crying, like she was. “Are you okay?” he said. 

“Are you?” she said. 

“Elsie’s okay, and the baby. She’s perfect, the baby…she-she-I held her in my arms,” Hawkeye said. 

He hadn’t answered her question, but Erin hadn’t answered his either, so she let it slide. 

He put his head down again, sniffling pitifully. Erin squirmed. She knew she wouldn’t be a good nurse, since she was always balking like this, at the first sign of tears. 

“I’m fine, Erin. I just need a minute alone,” he said. 

“I can’t leave you alone,” Erin said. 

“Why?” Hawkeye said, head still down, sharp elbows spread wide, hair greasy and gray and sticking up in wild tufts. There was blood on his shirt.

“Dad said not to,” Erin said. When she’d given Hawk’s message, Dad gave a message right back. 

Hawkeye looked up at her. He opened his arms and she stepped into the space he’d created, kneeling on the steps. He was crying harder now, like a storm was passing through his body. She held on tightly to keep them both from falling over and pressed her face into the hollow of his chest, though Hawkeye smelled strongly of all the unpleasant odors of birth, and salty with fear.

“I was scared to hold her,” Hawkeye muttered, voice rough and mucusy. His cheek was pressed to the top of her head. 

“Why?” Erin said. She thought that holding the baby would be the easiest part, once all the hard work and potential for disaster was through. 

Maybe he meant that the baby was small and fragile and slippery. Erin had held a newborn once, at a shower for one of Mom’s friends. All the little girls wore their best dresses (white or pink or peach with ribbons at the waist and big skirts that stuck out so they looked like a carton of decorated Easter eggs) and sat in a line on the couch, arms open, skirts fluffed, to hold the baby for their allotted ten seconds. Erin’s knees bounced in anticipation as she waited her turn. She was at the far end of the couch and was the last in line. Mom said to make sure to support his head, and when the baby was finally placed in her arms, he started to cry. He hadn’t cried for anyone else, and so Erin thought she’d been marked. All the girls giggled and bowed their heads and for the next week no one would let her be Mommy when they played house. (She was always the little sister, or worse, the dog.)

When a baby was first born, it needed to cry. A baby’s first cry was how the doctor could tell an infant’s lungs were working. Mom said that when Erin was born she took her time to cry out, and everyone in the room held their breath. 

“It’s all okay, Hawkeye,” she said, when he still hadn’t answered. 

“I was scared to hold you,” Hawkeye said. “You wouldn’t remember. You were little. Beej tried to hand you to me—he kept forgetting I can’t, well I can’t I—”

“It’s okay, Hawkeye,” Erin repeated, like a prayer.

Hawkeye held her tighter. Erin’s knees were going numb on the stairs. 

“I wished I could. I wished so badly that I could have held you. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again. But I couldn’t. My hands started shaking and I was sure I’d drop you.  This time I was sure again, until the baby was in my arms, I was sure,” he said. 

Erin didn’t know how long they sat on the stairs. It was long enough for the paramedics to come back down. They reassured her that Elsie and the baby were just fine and she reassured them that they were okay too, despite their hunched posture and sea of drying tears. It was long enough for Andrew to poke his head out of the door, see them there, disappear, and return with a thermos of coffee, which Erin took, gratefully, and offered her congratulations. It was long enough for several neighbors to pass them by, neighbors who knew Hawkeye, and put warm hands on Erin’s shoulder, seeming to have grasped the situation instantly when they heard the baby cries from 3B. And it was long enough, as it turned out, for Dad to come home.

Erin was sitting on the step above Hawkeye now, with her arms around him and her chin hooked over one of his shoulders. She heard Dad’s quick footsteps before she saw him, out of breath at the bottom of the stairs. 

“It’s okay, Dad,” Erin said. She felt Hawkeye’s shoulders tense. He looked up, and Erin watched Dad’s expression shift and fold in on itself: worry to fear to relief to understanding and a protective urgency that brought him the rest of the way up the stairs. 

“Let’s go home,” Dad said. 

Erin stood first, and then she and Dad helped Hawkeye up. It was mid‐afternoon, and the rest of the day passed in a rosy blur. Dad ushered Hawkeye into the shower, and then back to bed. He made them all sandwiches and covered Erin with a heavy quilt when she fell asleep on the couch. When she woke up, Margaret was kneeling at her side, saying things Erin was too sleepy to process, about how she was brave and good and the best nurse for the job. Erin laughed and blushed, giddy and overly warm. She sat up, with the quilt around her shoulders. She said yes when Margaret offered to brush and braid her hair.

Erin sat on the floor and Margaret turned on the TV. She was gentle with the brush, even over the tangled ends of Erin’s hair, messier now after her nap. Dad was in the kitchen again, cutting vegetables for some sort of soup that clashed dramatically with the heat of July, but was appropriately comforting. Helen was helping him, slicing an onion and sniffling. The sliding door to the balcony was open, dispelling some of the kitchen’s heat. 

“Is Hawkeye still sleeping?” Erin said, her voice quiet under the sonic backdrop of the evening news. 

“Your father says he’ll be up for dinner,” Margaret said. She took the end of a comb and parted Erin’s hair in a long, straight line that tickled her scalp. 

Erin nodded. She understood. She was still tired, herself, and she hadn’t helped anyone have a baby. Crying was tiring enough. 

“Elsie and Andrew called. They asked for you but your dad didn’t want to wake you,” Margaret said. 

“What did they say?” Erin said. 

Margaret put her pretty, manicured hands on Erin’s shoulders, and leaned close so Erin could smell her perfume. 

“They said thank you, Nurse Erin. They said the baby’s name is Beverly, Beverly Francine Patterson. Isn’t that lovely?” Margaret said. 

“Lovely,” Erin repeated. 

Her eyes were welling again. She didn’t know how real nurses did it. If you saw enough babies being born did it lose its magic? She hadn’t even seen Beverly, just heard her name and the first sounds from her little lungs. She hadn’t held her, like Hawkeye had. 

When the soup was done, Dad and Helen brought Erin and Margaret bowls and the four of them sat, huddled around the coffee table to eat. Hawkeye didn’t emerge, and Erin ate two big servings of soup (well…broth, potatoes, a few of the carrots, and very little of the celery, leaving it in a soggy clump at the bottom of her bowl) before rising to her feet and declaring that she was going to go check in on him. 

“Bring him some soup,” Dad said. The three of them were looking at Erin with wide, curious eyes, like she was some rare oddity or lost princess. She was still wearing the quilt like a cape, standing barefoot with her stance wide and her shoulders slightly stooped. 

Hawkeye was curled up on his side with his arms hanging off the edge of the bed. He was awake, reading something in a spiral notebook. He looked up at her standing in the doorway. Erin smiled. She was balancing the soup bowl in one hand and holding up her quilt cape with the other. 

“Are you hungry?” she said. 

“I’m sorry if I got snot on you,” Hawkeye said. 

His wrists dipped and the spiral notebook closed. They sized each other up. His eyes were still puffy from crying, but the color had returned to his cheeks. He was sprawled like a discarded handkerchief. He watched her as she set the soup on his bedside table and sat cross‐legged on the floor in front of him, her quilt lowering to cushion her. 

“It’s okay,” she said. She leaned forward and nudged the soup closer to him. Dad would be worried if Hawkeye didn’t eat anything. “What are you reading?” she said.

“It’s my dad’s old calendar,” Hawkeye said. “I don’t know why, really, but it’s been comforting.”

“Did he have a lot of appointments?” Erin asked. 

Hawkeye nodded. He smiled. “ Semi‐retired was a loose term for him,” he said.

“It’s the same for you,” Erin said.

“He was a workaholic. It runs in the family,” Hawkeye said.

“I would have liked to meet him,” Erin said, and she meant it, deeply. 

Her grandparents on Dad’s side were gone, and she’d hardly even known them. And she didn’t see much of Grandpa Hayden either. He lived too far away and could never hear her on the telephone. She’d have liked to connect the dots from Hawkeye to his father, since they had been so close.

“He would have loved you, Erin. He would have been surprised that I had any sort of claim on a kid, I think. Not that I…well you know what I mean. He wanted grandkids. He never said so, you know, because it was a sore subject after the war, but I knew that he did,” Hawkeye said.

Erin watched him, intently.

“I was only thinking about it because the paramedics seemed to think you were my daughter. It’s an easy mistake, I guess. I just thought it was funny,” Hawkeye said. 

Erin could see more than amusement on his face. She thought about what he’d said, about wanting to hold her when she was little and being terrified he’d drop her.

“I told them I was your daughter,” Erin said. 

“You did? Why?” he said.

She shrugged one shoulder and wrapped the quilt tighter around herself. She thought about that day in the diner when Dad had told her about Hawkeye. It was a secret that helped a lot of things click into place. It was a secret that shifted the big ideas she had about him around in her mind. To Erin, Dad had always been a doctor first, then her father. She had not spent much time thinking about Dad as a person. She had mostly thought of him in relation to her. He was a character in her life, big and important, but looming out of reach. It did not occur to her that he had fears and doubts and failings the same way that she did. It did not occur to her that the divorce was anything other than a dissolution of her little family. Even when Mom held her hands and squeezed, her face bright and elegantly made up, framed with a veil, on the day she married Erin’s stepfather Henry, it had not occurred to her that her parent’s divorce could be the righting of an old wrong.

“I don’t know. It felt true,” she said. And then, meek, quiet, like it was stuck in her throat: “Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Hawkeye said. He opened his arms and Erin rose from the floor and crawled into the bed. She pressed her face to his shirt again. Hawkeye’s palm rose to cradle the back of her head. She lifted the edge of the quilt so it was draped over both of them and she closed her eyes. 

She could hear the TV in the living room and Margaret and Helen talking while they did the dishes. The sun was setting, in deep, warm light that she could feel on her face, bleeding through the thin skin of her eyelids. 

The door opened again and Erin had a dim awareness of Dad crossing the floor. The mattress dipped and then his hand was on Erin’s shoulder, arm slung over Hawkeye. She heard crying in the apartment below, and then an anticipatory silence, like holding your breath until your lungs hurt, or like the hill on a roller coaster. It was dark when she fell asleep: deeply, dreamlessly, listening to the steady beat of Hawkeye’s heart.

When Hawkeye was a teenager he made a sport of stirring up trouble. It was harder than it sounded, because there wasn’t a lot of trouble to be stirred in Crabapple Cove, at least not the fun, intelligent trouble (Dad’s label) that Hawkeye preferred: climbing the water tower with Tommy, greasing up the bottom of sleds and holding races at sundown when the snow was hardening and the trees were toughest to dodge, inventing elaborate card games at which his friends always accused him of cheating. 

Hawkeye got in plenty of stupid trouble, too, the kind of trouble that drew Dad’s eyebrows together with exasperation or worry or worse with disappointment that rattled around in Hawk’s brain.. He egged the house of the fascist assistant principal and got suspended for three days of righteous stewing and arguments with Dad. He popped a tire on his bike trying and failing to do tricks in the grocery store parking lot and crashed into and dented Pastor Brown’s car. Not such a great day for Ben the non‐believer . He went to parties, on occasion, and drank. And sometimes, at these parties, he started running his mouth to the wrong person and got his face beat in. 

It was a week after his 17th birthday. He remembered because he’d felt a little guilty using birthday money to buy beer. He hadn’t spotted anyone he knew and was consequently lurking in a corner of the kitchen, drinking too quickly (he didn’t know how to pace himself back then) and smiling too much. He was hovering nervously at the periphery of several boisterous conversations waiting for an opening to jump in and introduce himself.

Tommy said the problem was that Hawkeye was too smart and too bold and dumb, insecure people gave him shit to bolster themselves. 

“They resent people like us because they know we’re going to get out of here and make something of ourselves and they aren’t,” he’d said, grinning like a madman, bucket hat pulled low over his eyebrows, while they fished in the creek where they weren’t technically allowed to fish (more trouble). 

Teenage Hawkeye was all about getting out. Teenage Hawkeye took home for granted. 

The fun thing about house parties (when he was in the right mood), was that they were a who’s who of people Hawkeye had fooled around with under bleachers and in the back seats of cars and in other people’s living rooms atop couches with hard, decorative, pillows that Hawk always managed to kick across the room with his clumsy fervor. 

He’d never gone steady with anyone. 

It wasn’t for lack of trying; Ruthie Bishop had laughed in his face when he asked her, sophomore year. They’d gone on a handful of lovely dates. He’d made her laugh so hard that cream soda came out of her nose on their last date, and she’d been a good sport about it, wiping her face with napkins, and swatting him on the arm. That made her girlfriend material, he thought. She was an excellent kisser. She had terrific blonde hair that she always kept up in a ponytail. 

“Hawkeye Pierce, when have you ever been serious? I thought we were just having fun,” she’d said, when the hurt was clearly written across his face.

He’d cried over Ruthie, but now when he saw her at parties he smiled and waved. If she wasn’t going with anyone he’d hook his arm around her waist and ask if she was in the mood for some fun. She was always happy to see him. 

It was different with boys. He expected less. Less was expected of him. Rob Hannigan had a car and a fake ID and knew a bar they could go to dance real close. He didn’t mind driving an hour and a half to get there. Hawkeye would go out with him on a Saturday (swapping spit and cigarettes and spending all night pressed against each other) and on Monday Rob would avert his eyes if he saw Hawkeye in the hall. 

That night he was looking for Marty Shapiro. They had chemistry together and chemistry together, and Hawkeye fancied himself in love. (Teenage Hawkeye knew very little of love, and thought he knew everything.) They sat beside each other at assemblies, and when the lights dimmed and they put on those tacky, informational reels, Hawkeye would put his hand over Marty’s knee and Marty would put his hand over Hawkeye’s hand. Marty had knobby knuckles and long fingers and a smile that was always halfway between sardonic and genuine.

“You’ve got such a way with words, Hawk,” he’d said once, smiling that smile, and Hawkeye had let himself be charmed.

When he couldn’t find him he drank more and when he did find him he was with some girl Hawkeye didn’t know, all over her in a desperate sort of way. A couple misplaced jokes, a little flirting and stumbling, and Hawkeye had gotten himself tossed out with a bloody nose and his hands and left eye all bruised. 

God, who was it? Some beefy jock…he could barely remember. Tom Harris? The Tom who lived three doors down and busted his knee playing college ball. It could’ve been him. Hawkeye remembered getting lifted by his shirt and backed into a wall. He remembered dodging and scratching and then throwing a few punches. He was quick in high school and scrappy. He remembered the way the crowd closed in and then parted, rising and falling like a wave. He remembered Marty and his girl on the couch. She was in his lap. His hands were twitching around a bottle. Hawk got dragged out right past them, humiliatingly, and he could feel Marty’s eyes on the side of his face, his gaze a hot coal. 

It was raining, he remembered, and he’d walked there, like a chump. It was dark and he was still a little drunk. Home was only ten minutes away, but his teeth were chattering and his shoes were soaking through and his eye was swelling into a perpetual squint. Teenage Hawkeye liked to make a big show of his rotten luck, like there was no one who suffered more than he did. There was no one whose face was more roughed up at that moment. There was no one whose heart was busted into more pieces. There was no one more drenched or whose head spun more when he fumbled with the keys to the front door. There was no one who missed his mother as much as teenage Hawkeye did, as he always did, sharply, deeply, whenever he’d had too much to drink. 

He laughed, forgetting that Dad was asleep, at the enormity of his suffering. He was already thinking of ways to spin the night into something funny to tell Tommy when he saw the bruises. Tommy would see right through him, but he’d play along. Teenage Hawkeye didn’t know how graciously Tommy played along, for Hawkeye’s sake, until later. 

He wished he’d paid more attention, years later, standing in the mud beside Tommy’s gravestone. When his boots started to sink he thought the earth might swallow him up. He’d feel a phantom tap on his shoulder, when it was just the wind through the trees, and convince himself that it was Tommy, and that it all had been some elaborate practical joke.

Teenage Hawkeye got the door open and dumped himself onto the couch. The ceiling spun and his stiff fingers struggled with his boot laces. He lifted the collar of his shirt to soak up some of the blood that dripped from his nose. He stared at the ceiling with his good eye, and was dimly aware that he was getting the upholstery wet and dirty. 

“Hawkeye?” Dad’s voice was far away. A light flicked on in the kitchen.

“I’m fine, Dad,” Hawkeye said, but his voice came out wobbly. 

Dad drew nearer. One of the lamps in the living room came on and Hawkeye squinted with his good eye too. His head ached. 

Dad had on his reading glasses and the striped pajama set that would make Hawkeye’s chest heave years later when BJ pulled it from Dad’s rapidly emptying dresser and asked if it was worth keeping. He’d been up reading, and waiting for him, Hawkeye realized. 

“More trouble, Hawk?” Dad said. He smoothed away the hair that was sticking to Hawkeye’s face and placed his hand on Hawkeye’s forehead. 

“Stupid trouble. Not even fun trouble. And I didn’t know it was supposed to rain,” Hawkeye muttered. 

Dad nodded. His glasses were sliding down his nose. Hawkeye thought Daniel Pierce had a wise face, an old man’s face even when he was young. His face was one of the many reasons Hawkeye thought Dad knew everything. His face, his jokes, and the diplomas on his office wall were all compelling evidence.

“Are you going to ground me?” Hawkeye said, once Dad had gotten him some water, instructed him to change into dry clothes, and hauled out the first aid kit.

Dad blotted at the cuts on Hawkeye’s hands with a soaked cotton ball. Hawkeye winced. 

“I don’t know, kiddo. Your face seems punishment enough,” Dad said.

“That’s reassuring,” Hawkeye said.

“I thought you were through with fighting.  We had that whole discussion about protecting the tools of the trade,” Dad said. He squeezed Hawkeye’s fingers, gently. Even teenage Hawkeye knew he would be a surgeon. 

“I am through,” Hawkeye said, tilting his head to one side. His mouth tasted like bad beer. 

Dad hummed.

“The fights just keep coming to me. I’m a lover, not a fighter,” Hawkeye said.

Dad gathered Hawkeye’s bruised hands in his grasp and kissed them, lips pressed to the white of the bandages.

“If you say so, Ben. I always thought you were a little of both,” he said.

When Hawkeye fell in love with BJ it felt like his heart was breaking. It started slowly. BJ was a lot of things to Hawkeye before he was someone he loved in the dramatic, soul‐crushing, teenage sense of the word.

BJ was a distraction, when Hawkeye was sick over Trapper and his lack of goodbye. 

He was a curiosity, those first few weeks when he did strange, proper, boy next door things like make up his cot every morning and hold open doors and take Hawkeye’s tray for him at the mess when they were done eating. 

BJ was eye candy. He was an object of lust, made all the more enticing by his unattainability. It wasn’t serious, because they were good friends. It wasn’t worth mentioning, because it was easy to get lonely in Korea. BJ didn’t know that yet, the way Hawkeye did. It wasn’t anyone’s business but his own who Hawkeye thought about when he jacked off. 

He was his best friend. They were in sync in an instant. They were joined at the hip. Hawkeye had never been able to read someone’s mind the way he read BJ’s. He’d never been matched in the OR. He’d never been so driven to compete and to argue and to collaborate. 

He was going to be the one who got away. When it became clear that Hawkeye would be unable to curb his growing affection, when it was clear he loved him, it was already doomed. Teenage Hawkeye would cry at weddings. Teenage Hawkeye liked the part where they promised to be together forever. Teenage Hawkeye would appreciate that BJ was Mr. Fidelity, so far from home. Hawkeye was getting too much practice with heartbreak over things that could never be.

BJ was leaving, the bastard. How foolish could you get, falling in love in the middle of a war, with a man who couldn’t say goodbye? BJ couldn’t say anything, when you really needed him to, when the walls were closing in around you and your memory was getting fuzzier than it had ever been, all BJ could do was offer you a drink and spout some bullshit about his baby at home. 

And then he was back. Hawkeye remembered that first time they slept together, in Beej’s depressing little apartment, in the middle of the day. He remembered how shy he was, taking off his clothes. Hawkeye couldn’t take his eyes off him. It had always been that way, he realized, and would be, forever. 

BJ was warm and patient and picking up all the cracked pieces of the rest of their lives, though he still failed, though he’d made mistakes and wasted time and was still trying to find the soft part of himself that had hardened in Korea.

And he was laying beside him, chest pressed to Hawkeye’s back, close enough that Hawkeye could feel his heartbeat. He could feel Erin’s too, at her wrist. She was curled up, with her forehead to his collarbone. They were sandwiched together and the room was pitch black. 

That afternoon BJ had stripped him of his bloody clothes, instructing him to sit down so he could unlace his shoes, and raise his arms so he could peel off his bloody shirt. Hawkeye’s whole body had gone limp and wobbly, so he let BJ wash his face too, and put toothpaste on the brush for him. BJ held his hand and helped him into the shower. He waited in the bathroom and wrapped him in a towel when he was finished. 

Hawkeye didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. He shifted, and felt BJ’s stubble against his cheek.

“Easy, Hawk,” BJ muttered, half‐asleep, mouth close to Hawkeye’s ear. 

It was probably instinct. Hawkeye thrashed around when he had nightmares and BJ had gotten used to calming him without even opening his eyes. It had gotten so any time Hawkeye moved BJ would roll over and say something reassuring. He said Erin slept like Hawkeye when she was a baby. She used to kick in her crib.

“Like she was possessed,” BJ had said. “I’d get worried and pull the crib right up next to the bed so I could watch her.”

Dad said he did the same thing, when Hawkeye was small. 

Hawkeye’s head swam: exhaustion, residual adrenaline, the afterimages of dreaming, the comforting weight of BJ pressed to his back, and Erin’s soft hair beneath his fingertips. 

BJ sighed, long and slow and content. Something in Hawkeye’s chest unraveled, mercifully. For the first time in a long time he was confident that BJ would still be there when Hawkeye woke up.

“Easy,” BJ repeated, voice thick with sleep. His arm around Hawkeye’s chest tightened.

Easy .

Chapter Text

The morning of her birthday, Erin came barreling into BJ’s room, still in her pajamas, inquiring about a missing bracelet that had supposedly slipped off her wrist when she was rummaging through BJ and Hawkeye’s closet. 

“I’m sorry, you go digging through our closet when we aren’t here?” BJ said. He’d thrown a quilt over the remaining birthday presents he’d been wrapping on the bed, while Erin stood there, mouth agape, eyes flicking thoughtfully as she searched for an appropriate excuse or lie. She was, he thought, with a stab of affection in his ribs, his daughter.

“I was investigating places to hide if there was an intruder, you know? Or a bomb threat. Or for hide and seek,” Erin said.

“Try again,” BJ said.

Erin smiled her toothy smile. Her hair was tangled and staticky. She’d been on the phone with Peg up until a couple minutes ago, presumably when she’d noticed the missing bracelet. 

“It’s that ugly one with the charms that Henry got me for Christmas. I don’t even know why I brought it but Mom will be mad if I lose it,” she said. She crossed her arms and hit him with those pleading, puppy dog eyes. “And I was curious. You guys have a lot of stuff in there.” 

Erin tilted her head in the direction of the closet. BJ sighed and slid open the wood paneling. The closet was cramped, with Hawk’s clothes on the left and BJ’s on the right. The rod was crowded with so many hangers that it had begun to sag a bit. (BJ blamed Hawkeye’s heavy sweaters, some of which were stuffed in boxes on the closet floor, to make extra room for BJ’s ties and dress shirts, and belts slung haphazardly over other clothes.) Now that he was looking, it was obvious that someone had snooped through their belongings. Erin had cleared herself a path around the boxes of winter wear and letters and miscellaneous knicknacks. She’d knocked over the pump for Hawk’s bike tires and moved the jar of spare change BJ had been meaning to take to the bank for months now. It occurred to him that their little life was getting too big for this particular closet. But that was a train of thought for another day. 

“Go ahead,” he said, and Erin crouched on the hardwood to look. 

“Are you mad?” she muttered, face lost in the hem of one of Hawkeye’s long, wool coats. 

“No. I would’ve snooped, if I were you,” BJ said. And in general, he was trying to lower some of the high, well‐guarded walls he had up around her. 

He’d spent the last week thinking about Erin’s face when he’d met her and Hawk sitting in the stairwell. She’d looked so calm and assured, despite the tears in her eyes, and the way Hawkeye was shaking in her arms. She’d looked grown up in a way he hadn’t seen before. Or maybe it was just that he hadn’t realized. From all accounts Erin was poised and quick under pressure: when Andrew had called, when the paramedics arrived, when Hawkeye needed someone. She’d been everything they needed. She’d been the best nurse for the job.

“I like Hawkeye’s pink shirt,” Erin said.

“It’s mine,” BJ said, an instinctive smile curling on his lips. Hawkeye said BJ should wear more pink again. He’d threatened to take matters into his own hands with some white shirts and red socks. 

“Well, I like it,” she said.

“Did you look in my boxes? Read any letters?” BJ said. He’d stored perhaps too much memorabilia from the war on his side of the closet. 

“You and Mom wrote a lot,” Erin said, sitting back on her calves and turning to look at him. She looked embarrassed, but only a little. 

“We had a lot to say,” BJ said.

“I saw your wedding ring, and the dog tags,” Erin said. 

BJ hummed. 

“Mom wore her ring after you moved out,” Erin said, eyes scanning his face. “For a little while, so people wouldn’t ask questions.”

“Are you asking why I don’t wear mine?” he said.

Erin nodded. 

“I guess…well I guess it seemed dishonest, to Hawkeye. I bought those rings for me and your mother. And I don’t mind questions, at least I’m trying not to,” BJ said. 

Erin considered this, quietly, looking down at her knees. BJ could hear Hawk in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets and muttering to himself. He was supposed to be devising a grocery list for Erin’s birthday dinner, but BJ wouldn’t be surprised if he’d gone and gotten himself distracted. 

“The first varsity meet I ran in, everybody kept looking at me, and I hated it. I did really well. I mean, I came close to placing, and everyone was cheering, and I didn’t get too in my head for once. Sometimes when I’m running all I can think about is how I’m going to lose,” Erin said.

She pursed her lips. BJ watched her, carefully.

“And at the end, when they have the winners stand up on the podium and take their pictures, some of the girls look so happy to be up there. They’re beaming and waving at their families, you know? And then when it’s me I can’t stop looking at the ground. I’m happy, but I get so embarrassed. It’s like I don’t even want people to know. I wish I could stop that. I wish I could stop feeling so ashamed of wanting to do well, of wanting things in general,” she said. 

That’s what a ring was: a declaration of wanting. 

“Your birthday wish list did seem a bit sparse,” BJ said.

Erin rolled her eyes. “I like looking at all this stuff. I like snooping, but I’d rather you show me. I want you to. I want you to want to,” she said.

“Okay,” BJ said, voice wavering. His throat felt hot and tight. He was afraid he might cry, watching her crouched among the ornaments of the past, situating herself comfortably at the midpoint of his and Hawkeye’s things. 

She lifted a shiny bit of jewelry with charms, the bracelet. She got up and crossed the room, to the door. 

“Erin?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you been snooping through anything else? Jacket pockets, maybe?” BJ said.

She hovered in the doorway, and grinned. 

“It’s for him, isn’t it? That’s a silly question. Who else would it be for?” she whispered. 

BJ nodded. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a beautiful idea,” she said. 

Beautiful . He hadn’t expected that. He was used to judgment, when it came to his relationship with Hawkeye. Actually, maybe it was more accurate to say that he assumed he’d be judged inferior, no matter what he did.

There was a crash from the kitchen. 

“I’m okay. I’m okay. I just knocked over every pot and pan we own,” Hawkeye called, exasperated. 

Erin looked at BJ, pointedly, her eyebrows raised.

“So,” she said. “When?”

“When I get up the nerve,” BJ said. 

Erin frowned. “Hawkeye makes you nervous?” she said, like it was a ridiculous idea.

BJ thought about all the times Hawkeye had made his pulse quicken or his heart beat out of his chest. The first couple weeks at the MASH, before he’d gotten used to how tactile and affectionate Hawkeye could be, it was like BJ’s heart was going a mile a minute all the time: heart pounding in surgery, heart pounding listening to distant gunfire from his cot in the Swamp, heart pounding when Hawk slung his arm around both of BJ’s shoulders, or leaned in close so BJ could smell his sweat and his coffee and liquor and the warm, earthy scent of his hair. He thought about Hawk, submerged in their bathtub, rolling his eyes at the idea of a proposal, even though BJ’s heart was beating so aggressively he was sure Hawkeye could hear it. It was a wonder the man hadn’t given him a heart attack.

“Sometimes he doesn’t believe that I mean what I say,” BJ said.

Erin leaned in the doorframe. She crossed her arms and chewed her lip. She looked like Peg, in college, when she was pouring over some poorly composed paper of his and puzzling out how to break the news of his incompetence gently.

“I think you’ve got to be serious, you know? No jokes,” she said.

BJ raised an eyebrow. “No jokes?” he said.

“Some people make jokes when they’re feeling defensive or insecure,” she said, deadpan. “It doesn’t always inspire confidence.”

BJ laughed. “Is that so?” he said.

“Yes,” Erin said, face breaking into a smile that showed the crooked teeth she’d inherited from him.

“You’re really wise beyond your years, you know?” he said.

“I get that all the time,” Erin said.

There was more crashing in the kitchen.

“Shit, fuck, damn, sorry Erin,” Hawkeye said.

Erin rolled her eyes. She tucked a long strand of hair out of her eyes and leaned away from the doorframe.

“Happy birthday, kiddo,” BJ said.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said.

Margaret had taken the lead on decorating for Erin’s birthday party. When BJ got home with the groceries she was standing on one of the kitchen chairs, hanging steamers in sunset colors. 

“You’re sure she doesn’t want a cake?” Margaret said. 

“That’s what she said, right Beej? That’s what she said?” Hawkeye said. He was still in the kitchen, now with his hands covered in flour, in the middle of kneading pizza dough. 

“Just root beer floats. Ice cream’s melting,” BJ said. He set down his bags and fished out the ice cream. 

“You look like you’re the one who’s melting,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ put the ice cream in the freezer and stood in front of the box fan in the window, letting the sweat dry in his t-shirt. Hawkeye looked over his shoulder at him. 

“Can’t take the heat, old man?” Hawkeye said, smiling, wryly. There was flour in his hair. 

“Who are you calling old man?” BJ said. He crossed his arms and leaned on the counter.

“You’ve got a 16-year-old daughter,” Hawkeye said.

That particular detail was still a bit baffling. Peg had given him a list of potential birthday gifts. Erin was too modest to present a list herself. For the past week she’d throw her hands up any time Hawk or Helen or Margaret asked her what she wanted to get or eat or wear for her sweet 16. Her birthday had snuck up on BJ. It did make him feel old, having a daughter who’d be driving soon, who would be looking into colleges, and who wanted sensible things like new tennis shoes and notebooks for her birthday. 

He’d gotten her several of the sensible requests, a whole mess of records that the girl at the shop (who looked a little older than Erin and was patient and helpful when it was clear BJ had no idea what he was looking for) recommended, and a necklace with a little ruby pendant (her birthstone) that he’d found when buying Hawkeye a ring. 

“I got your pepperoni and three different types of cheeses, which did seem a little excessive, Hawk,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye was busy detaching sticky bits of pizza dough from his fingers.

“Nonsense,” Hawkeye said. 

The ring had been in his pocket for a week and a half. If Hawkeye had seen it, moving from pocket to pocket, he hadn’t said anything. He was waiting for the right time, and hoping Hawk wouldn’t think it was stupid that he’d gone out and bought a ring even though they couldn’t actually get married. He was hoping Hawk would want to wear his ring, when he’d been so conspicuously without one in all the years they’d known each other. 

“Do these look crooked to you?” Margaret said. She had her hands on her hips and her hair pulled out of her face with a clip that was lopsided and in danger of falling out entirely.

BJ looked up at the big loops of streamers, dipping over the living room like the apartment was a high school dance. They were, indeed, crooked, but not exceedingly so. He’d picked up a package of balloons, as she’d instructed, in the same yellows and purples and reds and oranges. 

“Dear god, say no. She’s been up there fiddling with them for half an hour,” Hawkeye said. 

“They look great, Margaret,” BJ said. And she sighed, dramatically, and stepped down from the chair. 

“Houlihan, we could use a hand in here,” Helen called, from the bedroom. When BJ left, Helen had been curling Erin’s hair. When he’d peeked in to say goodbye, there had been clothes all over the bed and Erin had been digging through a bag of nail polish. 

Margaret abandoned the streamers and disappeared down the hall. 

“Can I help you with anything?” BJ said, rising slowly from his perch by the fan. 

He unloaded the rest of the groceries slowly: pizza toppings, canned tomatoes, fresh basil and oregano, a couple bottles of champagne, sparkling grape juice for Erin and Helen, root beer, balloons, gum (instead of more cigarettes), milk, eggs, blueberries for pancakes in the morning. 

“Nah, this needs to rise for a while,” Hawkeye said. He deposited the dough into a bowl and covered it with a towel. He wiped his face with his forearm and intercepted BJ at the fridge, leaning over the door and looking down at BJ where he was hunched, trying to fit all of the beverages onto one shelf. 

“Do you want a drink?” BJ said. 

“If it’s cold,” Hawkeye said.

They stepped out onto the balcony and leaned over the railing, elbow to elbow. BJ threaded his fingers together and looked down at the courtyard below them. 

“Elsie brought you some tomatoes from her plant. I ran into her on the stairs,” BJ said, eyes directed carefully away from Hawkeye. 

“I don’t know what part of you need your rest she doesn’t understand,” Hawkeye said, without heat. He took a long sip of their shared beer and BJ’s eyes slipped over to him.

She’d shown him some photos of the baby too. BJ had set his bags down in the hall and listened to her gush about Beverly. That’s why the ice cream had melted. Elsie had extended the invitation again. Hawkeye had yet to go see the baby he’d delivered. 

“Don’t look at me like you’re reading my mind,” Hawkeye said. He passed him the beer can back to BJ. It was slick with condensation. 

“I’m not. This is how I always look at you,” BJ said. 

“Well, quit it,” Hawkeye said.

“Quit looking at you?” BJ said. He took a long sip of their beer and felt Hawkeye’s eyes on him, felt the warmth of his smile in his periphery. 

“No,” Hawkeye said.

BJ looked over at him, eyebrows raised.

“You couldn’t if you tried,” Hawkeye said. 

“No, probably not,” BJ said.

The quiet settled between them comfortably. BJ had a strange pride in the fact that Hawk could be quiet with him. He wasn’t desperate to fill every silence. He wasn’t brimming with his usual, nervous energy. Maybe it was because he was the one who could read BJ’s mind. 

Hawkeye smoothed some hair from his face. He looked less pale, and less tired, and he’d been eating better (today: toast, eggs, coffee, leftover soup, a taste test of the pepperoni). He looked good. BJ had worried, that first day, that the birth of the Patterson baby had spooked him. 

BJ turned and met his eyes. Hawkeye sighed, and then he smiled.

“I’ll go see her. I’ll go see all of them. I just need a little time,” he said. 

“I know,” BJ said. “I’m not worried.”

Hawkeye hummed. “It’s okay if you are. Worried, I mean,” he said. 

He took another sip of their beer and passed it back. Their shoulders brushed and BJ could feel Hawk’s warmth through his t‐shirt. He wondered if Hawkeye knew that back then, back when they’d first met, that no one really touched BJ the way he did. It wasn’t easy with anyone else. With Peg he always stiffened up, even a hand on her waist or the meeting of feet beneath a table felt awkward, like an intrusion. It was different with Hawk. Sometimes all he had to do was touch him to know how he was feeling: the way the hair on his arms stood up, the defeated slump of his shoulders, the firm grip of his hand on BJ’s shoulder or hip or thigh. 

So Hawkeye was warm with contentment, or just warm with heavy summer air. He was leaning BJ’s way. BJ put an arm around his waist and Hawkeye grinned. He moved closer, slinky, and languid, tilting his head to one side in a goofy play at seduction.

“If I asked to marry you, what would you say?” BJ said.

(He wasn’t sure what came over him, maybe the heat, maybe Hawk’s hands around their beer, maybe the bead of sweat rolling down his jaw, or his smile, or Erin’s blessing, or the high, fuzzy part of his brain that made him do crazy things whenever he was overwhelmed by his own emotions.)

Hawkeye laughed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why don’t you ask me, Beej?”

The sliding door opened behind them, and they both turned to see Margaret, looking a little panicked and a little determined. 

“BJ, can you get Erin’s mother on the phone?” she said. 

The curls were not falling in the right way. It wasn’t Helen’s fault. Erin kept blinking at herself in the mirror (her narrow face, her light dusting of freckles, her chapped lips, and her big doe eyes that always had people asking if she was frightened) and thinking she looked like a chaotic collage someone had made up of pictures cut from different magazines. The big, bouncy curls were magnificent and shiny and wholly unlike her, like someone had put a big wig on a lifeless mannequin. 

“Don’t panic. We’re going to figure this out,” Helen said, and Erin schooled her face into an even expression. She steadied her wobbling lip. 

The plan had been a full birthday makeover. Margaret was going to repaint her nails and let her pick out a pair of her earrings. She’d given Erin her birthday gift a day early. It was a beautiful deep blue pinafore dress with big pockets, that Erin had received while turning a deep crimson and thanking her over and over again. The fabric was soft and light like something out of a dream. Helen was in charge of hair and makeup, and Erin was glad they’d started with hair because she was getting so overwhelmed by the sight of herself, half‐obscured by curls, that she thought she might cry. 

Margaret was sitting on the bed, with her legs crossed, looking closely at Erin and puzzling over the problem at hand like it was something out of one of her medical textbooks.

“I’ve got a clip? Or we could scrap the curl idea and do some French braids?” Helen said. 

Erin wasn’t opposed to a clip, but braids didn’t seem nearly special enough for her 16th birthday, not when Hawkeye was making pizza, and Dad had bought supplies for rootbeer floats. Mom had called her first thing in the morning, even though she’d already sent a card:

Dear Erin,

Happy birthday, my sweet girl. I know I’ll have to get used to being apart on your birthday, since you aren’t a little girl anymore. But this is the first, so you’ll have to excuse me for missing you like this, and getting all sentimental. I hope you have the best day with your father.

All my love,

Mom

“What do you think, Erin?” Margaret said. She and Helen had assembled an army of clips and bows and ties to tame the mountain of hair curled on Erin’s head.

She hunched over to look at them and her hair fell in her face, the way it was always doing. Mom was always suggesting headbands, but Erin was too busy hiding. She’d hunch forward and let the curtain of her hair fall into her vision, like it could make her invisible, like what she wanted most was not to be seen.

“I think I want to cut it off,” she said. “Do you think we could do that?” 

Margaret’s face broke out into a smile. She and Helen looked at each other, conspiratorially.

“Absolutely,” Helen said.

“Let’s call your mother, first,” Margaret said.

“You’re sure?” Dad said, smoothing his hands over the length of Erin’s hair. He was flattening Helen’s hard work, but it was going to waste anyway. 

She’d ambushed him on the balcony, where he and Hawkeye were drinking. Mom’s only request was that Erin braid her hair and bring it home in a bag. It fell nearly to her waist, unbraided, and was heavy in the heat.

“How short are you thinking?” Hawkeye said.

“A little above my shoulders,” Erin said, motioning with her fingers, and Dad reached up to cup her face, pressing soft strands of Erin’s hair against her cheeks like a scarf. 

“You’re sure ?” he repeated.

“Come off it, Beej. It’s a terrific idea,” Hawkeye said. 

“Helen’s sharpening the hair cutting shears,” Margaret said, hovering in the doorway. 

“I know. It’s a great idea. I’m sure Helen will do an excellent job. I’m just saying my goodbyes,” Dad said.  

He kissed the top of her head and Erin laughed. After all the arguments they’d had when she was small, when he was trying to comb out the tangles in her long hair and she was complaining and screeching when he pulled too hard, he was still sad to see it go. 

It was a process. Erin and Helen sectioned off Erin’s hair into little ponytails. Helen handed her the shears so she could make the first cut. Erin watched herself in the mirror, and selected one of the ponytails at the front. There was a satisfying snipping sound, and then Erin had a handful of her own hair.

“No going back now, huh?” Helen said. 

Hawkeye made his own pizza sauce, and the dough, and he infused some olive oil with herbs to drizzle over the finished product. When Erin had suggested pizza, she had meant delivery. He knew that, and had chosen instead to give BJ a grocery list and shoo him out of the kitchen. 

“How much pepperoni?” Hawkeye said.

Erin was standing at the counter with her newly cropped hair, wearing her birthday outfit: white t‐shirt, blue pinafore, big gold hoop earrings, white socks, and black mary janes. 

In the living room, BJ was peeling the foil off the champagne bottle and Margaret was lining up glasses. Helen was sifting through Erin’s birthday records.

“Not too much or it’ll overpower the three cheeses,” she said. 

Hawkeye nodded, and spread the appropriate amount of pepperoni over the pizza.

“Do you feel older?” he said.

Erin huffed, leaning back against the counter. The fan was blowing her hair up in chaotic bursts. 

“Why does everyone always ask that? Do you feel older on your birthday? I don’t even know what it means to feel older,” she said.

“Well, you’re very young,” Hawkeye said. He considered her question. “I don’t think I stopped feeling like a kid until my late 20s,” he said.

“Dad said I could have one glass of champagne,” Erin said. 

“I’m sure he’ll hold you to that,” Hawkeye said, raising his eyebrows. 

Erin mimicked the expression. 

“I like champagne,” she said, challengingly. 

“Do you?” he said.

“It’s fancy,” she said, by which, Hawkeye gathered, she meant that it made her feel grown up.

Hawkeye thought about all the trouble he’d gotten in at her age (the drinking, the pranks, the goofing off for attention from shitty friends) and wondered if Dad had worried for him the way he now felt a stab of worry for Erin.

He put the pizza in the oven.

“Do you want to open your present now?” Hawkeye said, wiping his floury hands on his apron.

Erin ground her teeth. She looked down at the floor, long eyelashes brushing her cheeks.

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” Erin said, demure, bashful, polite in a way that made her resemble her mother, or Beej, in uniform, when he first shook Hawkeye’s hand and smiled that cordial, accommodating smile. Hawkeye much preferred the Hunnicutts when they were unrestrained: laughing too loud, hair a mess, smiling with teeth, forgetting the masks they put on around other people.

“Well, I started working on it before you said that, before you got here, really,” Hawkeye said. 

She looked up at him. “Did you make me something?” she said.

He started knitting Erin’s sweater the day after he and BJ had discussed her coming to visit. It was probably overkill, he’d thought at the time, given that Erin hardly knew him and might reject him outright once she found out who he was to BJ. He’d talked himself through the worst outcomes, as he knitted and purled and lost his place and had to undo a couple of rows to pick up dropped stitches. He’d worked on it feverishly, before she arrived, and kept it hidden once she was there. On bad days, when it took hours to even move from his bed, he’d work on one of the sleeves, trying to estimate the length so they wouldn’t be too long on her. 

She followed him into the bedroom and he handed the sweater over, wrapped in brown paper with a ribbon. Erin sat on the edge of the bed and unwrapped it carefully. It was red and heavy and made with the softest yarn he could find. Erin splayed her fingers over the sweater, holding it like it was something fragile and sacred.

“I know it’s too warm for it and you won’t get much use out of a big sweater back home, but I uh…I’ve got a house in Maine. It’s my dad’s house,” he said, palms sweating. “I was thinking maybe for one of your breaks from school we might…you could, you know…you could visit,”

Erin looked up at him. Her hands were balled up in the sweater. 

“Is that where you and Dad went, back to your dad’s house in Maine?” she said.

Hawkeye nodded. 

“He helped me organize Dad’s things. After the funeral I…well, I needed some help, with the affairs, with the house,” he said.

“It’s the house you grew up in?” Erin muttered. She hugged the sweater to her chest.

“It is,” Hawkeye said.

“What’s it like?” Erin said.

Hawkeye grinned. “Uh, it’s Crabapple Cove. Everyone’s in each other’s business, you’ve got to drive hours to get anywhere exciting, the roof leaks when it rains, and it’s absolutely beautiful. There’s a tire swing in the front yard and a duck pond and when it snows the trees get so blindingly white. There are these big icicles we used to pull off branches and use for sword fights. I was thinking you could have my room, if you want. Beej and I could fix it up for you. We could fix up the whole place, you know? It would be there for you, if you wanted. If you ever needed a place to stay, you know,” he said. 

“I’d like that a lot,” Erin said. 

She slipped the sweater over her head. Her hair stuck out with the static electricity. She was going to overheat, he knew, as she rolled up the sleeves. It fit her perfectly. He could almost see her in the kitchen back home, standing on her tiptoes to reach one of Dad’s favorite mugs in the cabinet, reading on the porch, bundled up in the red sweater, in a nest of Hawkeye’s mother’s quilts, reading one of Dad’s old books. 

For so long the future had seemed blurry and indecipherable. At any moment Hawkeye’s life could collapse in on itself like a dying star. BJ’s letters stop coming. Dad dies. His hands start to shake when he sees a newborn. Hawkeye gets left again, holding the ticking time bomb of his own brain, or his heart. 

But there was Erin, looking at him like he was dependable, like he was the one steadying her and not the other way around. And all at once he knew everything would be okay. Okay was a relative term anyway. Okay was Erin Hunnicutt in a handknit sweater, in pajamas and wool socks, curled up on the same couch where teenage Hawkeye had cried his eyes out and did his homework and dripped maple syrup, eating breakfast on Sunday mornings.

Erin hugged her chest. She looked down at her knees and then up at him.

“You know I’ve had a little trouble at school?” Erin said. 

“Your dad may have mentioned,” Hawkeye said, gently.

“People think I’m weird,” she said, picking at the hem of the sweater.

“I don’t think you’re weird,” Hawkeye said. “But maybe that’s because people think I’m weird.”

“Margaret says being a teenager is just hard,” she said. 

“She’s right,” Hawkeye said. “You know in college, it’s cool to be weird.”

“Is it?” Erin said, pulling her knees to her chest.

“Yeah, kid,” he said. 

“Okay,” Erin said. Her head bobbed. She put her feet back on the floor and hopped up. 

She crossed the floor and hugged him, pressing her face into his shirt. 

“Thanks, Hawk,” she said.

They spent the rest of the evening in Erin’s orbit. Hawkeye managed not to burn the pizza, or his tongue on the hot cheeses while they ate and played several rousing games of Scrabble. There was some dancing in the living room. Margaret and Helen took turns spinning Erin in big, dizzying circles, while Hawkeye and BJ cackled on the couch. There was more champagne. (Erin snuck an extra half a glass.) 

BJ stuck a candle into Erin’s root beer float, and they all sang at double speed so she could blow it out before it collapsed into her ice cream. 

It got later, and before long Erin was asleep on the couch with her head in Margaret’s lap. They’d been watching a movie, but Erin’s eyelids were drooping at the first commercial break.

BJ was finishing up the dishes when Hawkeye got up and met him in the kitchen. He poured them the last of the champagne. BJ spit the gum he’d been chewing out into its wrapper.

“Are you fiending for one?” he asked.

“No,” BJ said. His face was flushed.

“Are you lying?” Hawkeye said.

“Only a little,” BJ said. He sipped his champagne and turned back to the sink. He’d had enough to be tipsy, Hawkeye could tell, because he was rinsing plates with the same careless flair that Hawkeye recognized from all the times he’d clumsily gathered up empty glasses at the Officer’s Club.

“I can finish those,” Hawkeye said.

“Shush, you made dinner already,” BJ said. 

“I think she had a good time,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ’s head bobbed. He slid another plate into the drying rack. 

“She liked the sweater,” he said. “Next time you’re going to completely outdo me on the gift giving front you could give me a heads up.”

Hawkeye sat down at the kitchen table and stretched out his legs. “Well, consider this a heads up for next year,” he said.

“Yeah?” BJ said.

“I’ve got a lot of birthdays to make up for. Technically, I owe Erin 15 birthday gifts,” Hawkeye said.

“I don’t think it works like that,” BJ said. He shut off the faucet and dried his hands with a dishtowel. He folded his arms and Hawkeye watched him: head tilted, cheeks pink, eyelids drooping, smiling unguardedly.

“She liked that necklace. She put it right on,” Hawkeye said. 

BJ laughed. There was something distant and fond in his face.

“What?” Hawkeye said. 

“It was sort of a last minute purchase. I was there to buy something else and I saw it,” BJ said. 

“What were you there to buy?” Hawkeye said. 

Wordlessly, BJ took a box out of his pocket and set it on the table.

“See for yourself. It’s for you,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye couldn’t open it, in case he was wrong, so he just stared at the ring box.

“You’re not,” he said.

“Not what?” BJ said. His arms tightened around himself.

“Proposing,” Hawkeye said. “It’s a joke. There’s a rubber spider in there or uh…uh smoke bomb.”

BJ frowned. “Do you want it to be a joke?” he said. 

“Of course not,” Hawkeye said.

“Then why do you keep acting like it would be ridiculous for me to propose?” BJ said, drawing closer, leaning so he was, torturously, down on one knee. 

“I’m not, uh…” Hawkeye had run out of air. He held his breath. He looked BJ in the eye, and saw that he was serious. 

BJ picked up the ring box and opened it. It was a simple gold band. Hawkeye sniffled, involuntarily. His eyes were welling up. 

“Hawk,” BJ said.

“Yeah?”

“I know we can’t make it official, legally, and whatnot, but we could have a party? We could invite anyone you like. We can do it here or in Maine or in Paris for all I care. We could dress up and go someplace nice, or we can do it in the backyard. It could be a picnic or an eight course meal. It could be Vegas. It could be a shotgun wedding. It could be just for us, if you wanted. Or we could tell everyone we know. I just…I think it’s important that you know how much I’d like to marry you,” BJ said.

“Fuck,” Hawkeye said. A strangled sound was escaping his throat.

“What do you think?” BJ said. He set the ring down and cupped Hawkeye’s face in his hands.

“I think yes,” Hawkeye said. “Of course yes. Absolutely yes,” he said. 

And he kissed him. And he closed his eyes and drank up the feeling of the summer sunset through the curtains, and BJ’s hands on him, and champagne, and salty tears, and the sounds of the city settling into evening, the traffic ebbing and flowing like the creeks back home, teeming with commuters or shiny scaled fish and geodes. 

BJ pulled away and Hawkeye felt cracked open, high, and wild. He couldn’t get the stupid grin off his face, even as BJ slid the ring on his finger, and turned back to the dishes piled in the sink. 

Chapter Text

BJ nudged him and Hawkeye rolled over, grabbing a fistful of BJ’s shirt to keep him from getting out of bed. 

“If you want to come, you’ve got to get up now, Hawk,” BJ said, twisting out of his grasp. 

“Get up?” Hawkeye said, mouth gummy. “It’s Saturday.”

He was still half-asleep, brain hazy from a particularly nice dream: Beej and him and Erin picking apples at an orchard, a picnic in the cool grass, a styrofoam cup of hot cider, falling asleep in the passenger seat, neck stiff, craning to look up at the stars through the smudgy window in Beej’s car, BJ’s hand on his knee, Erin sprawled in the backseat, reading aloud from a travel guide. 

BJ was pulling on his pants and smoothing his bedhead. Hawkeye stared at him in the dim lamplight. BJ had grown out the beginnings of a beard since they’d moved to Maine and had been steadily replacing his old wardrobe, in ways Hawkeye found fascinating. Beej liked button downs in warm tones and patterned sweater vests and ties in bold colors and suit jackets with big collars and jeans and corduroys he wore so often they got a little threadbare at the knees. Hawkeye liked seeing BJ in anything but olive drab. He liked that he got to see BJ in clothes of his choosing (not the military’s, not the Mill Valley suburban dress code) and he liked that the image he had of BJ in his mind was shifting. For a long time, BJ, when Hawkeye pictured him, was always wearing his fatigues or his scrubs (or nothing at all). But now Hawkeye had seen Beej so many ways and in so many states of dress and undress that there couldn’t be a default image of him, or if there was it was this BJ: half out of his pajamas, looking a little frazzled and exasperated at the foot of their bed.

Since it was Saturday, the only responsibility in Hawkeye’s mind was breakfast. He was going to bake muffins, he thought. They had a couple of overripe bananas on the counter that BJ had been saying he was going to take to eat at work for a week now and hadn’t. Since it was Saturday, Beej didn’t have to coax him out of bed at 6, with promises of a fresh pot of coffee and engaging conversation on their commute to the city.

Since it was Saturday, Hawkeye didn’t have to make their twin lunches and find clean socks and water the plants in the living room while Beej showered. He didn’t have to feed Viola (Vi), their calico shelter cat with a scar down her nose and the most contemptuous eyes Hawkeye had ever seen on an animal until at least 8:30, when she came yowling and scratching at the door. He didn’t have to stand on the porch, shifting his weight from foot to foot and breathing out misty, dragon breaths in the morning chill while Beej warmed up the car. He didn’t get to scrub up next to BJ and pass him in the hall and gossip about the interns at lunch and later meet in the parking lot to drive home. He didn’t get to watch Beej take their exit off the highway and turn into the drive, park the car, and lean over and kiss him before the engine had even quieted.

“I know it’s Saturday, Hawk. I’ve got to pick Erin up from the airport. If you want to sleep in, it’s okay,” BJ said.

Hawkeye sat up. “No, no, no, I’m up,” he said. “I want to come see her,” he said. “I said I would.”

The housewarming party had been BJ’s idea, naturally. They’d been in Crabapple Cove for almost a year, but the whole process of unpacking and renovating and starting new jobs had delayed the unveiling of the whole project. (The project being, Hawkeye thought, dizzyingly, the rest of their lives together).

BJ had arranged all the dates and booked the flights and sweet talked the busier of their prospective guests into taking some time off. Erin was on break from UC Berkeley. She was going to stay with them, in Hawk’s old room, through Thanksgiving and go home with her mother for Christmas. Peg and Henry had agreed to stay a week and play tourists. Hawkeye was putting them up for cheap in a nice little B&B a friend of Dad owned, and had promised to show them all the sights, a supremely funny prospect all things considered, but not one he was dreading. Peg was fond of him, and Henry was a little wary but mostly fond. They’d all gotten to know each other too well, inexplicably, during BJ and Hawkeye’s Las Vegas wedding/honeymoon (a long story for another time).

Margaret and Helen were staying in the guest room for a long weekend, before Margaret started her residency. Helen had to drag her away. Margaret had become semi‐nocturnal in med school. Hawkeye thought about all the times she’d found him awake in that Seattle apartment and tried to coax him back to sleep, with tea or gentle words or the offer of her shoulder to lean on, sitting on that couch in the living room. 

God, Hawkeye missed that couch sometimes, the whole apartment really. It was funny, how he could resent a place until it was time to leave.

In the car, BJ turned on the radio. The road stretched out before them, empty and dark. BJ looked over at him, sideways, and smiled. Hawkeye was wearing one of Dad’s old sweaters (he could do that now, without his eyes welling up) and had a beanie pulled over his messy hair. 

“Collegiate Erin,” Hawkeye said. “What if we don’t recognize her?”

“What could she do in six months to become unrecognizable?” BJ asked, through a yawn.

“Dye her hair, change her name, grow a mustache,” Hawkeye said. “Actually, what if she doesn’t recognize us?”

BJ exhaled, half‐laugh, half‐scoff. “Because you haven’t shaved? Or because moving again turned the last of your hair gray?” he said.

Hawkeye cataloged the changes Erin might notice, since they’d last seen each other. He wasn’t so rail thin anymore, or pale. He didn’t wipe away the fog on the bathroom mirror and find a gaunt stranger looking back at him. In fact, when he looked at the photos of him and Dad in the hall, he thought he was starting to look more like Dad. They had the same expressions and smile lines and their hair looked the same when it was wind tousled.

He’d gotten orthopedic sneakers at Beej’s suggestion, so for long surgeries they matched in scrubs and masks and old man shoes. He had the same bad posture, though maybe it was a little better than before. Margaret had talked him into trying yoga, for his bad back. He’d been getting himself bent into odd positions that he couldn’t get out of without BJ’s help. He had a wrist brace too, for a bout of carpal tunnel (brought on by knitting or kneading bread dough or surgical demonstrations for the residents.)

He’d been sleeping through the night, and waking when he was supposed to, apart from this early Saturday morning, and in general he had a greater reserve of energy stored up since the last time he’d seen Erin. Sometimes it was energy for stupid things, like twisting his ankle trying to shovel snow in the driveway or falling off a step stool painting an accent wall in his and Beej’s shared study. But other times it was energy for dinner parties and weeding Dad’s old garden and proofreading Beej’s papers and popping bottles of champagne over the sink and letting the bubbles sputter down his hand. 

None of these physical adjustments would make him a stranger to Erin, he realized, but Hawkeye in 1970 would be unrecognizable to Hawkeye in 1967 or 1952 or teenage Hawkeye, for that matter, who might be surprised that he was even back in Crabapple Cove.

Teenage Hawkeye would be more surprised that he had a ring on his finger (the same ring, for three years) and that he was going to the airport with his husband to pick up his stepdaughter. 

“She’ll recognize you,” BJ said. 

BJ put his hand on Hawkeye’s knee. He rubbed his thumb over his kneecap, back and forth, gentle and nervous. He’d done the same thing at Erin’s graduation, sitting next to him in a flimsy lawn chair, their dress shoes in the grass. Beej’s suit was too tight and he kept yanking at the knot in his tie. Hawkeye was on BJ’s left and Peg was on his right. Hawkeye and Henry were the bookends for the Hunnicutt party. In truth, Hawkeye wasn’t sure he’d be asked to attend. He thought Beej would be going solo. He’d said as much on the plane, leaning on BJ’s shoulder, a little loopy from the pill he’d taken on the drive. She insisted, Hawk . 

“Do you see her there, in the third row? She’s got honor cords,” BJ whispered, hand warm on Hawkeye’s knee.

“I see her, Beej,” Hawkeye said.

The ceremony was out on the football field, in the sunshine. The kids were all clumped together, heads ducked, laughing, clutching their graduation caps to their heads as the wind picked up and caught in their black gowns. 

He could spot Erin easily. She was talking energetically to the girl sitting next to her, gesturing wildly. Her hair was in thick curls and when she and her friend turned around to look at them, just before the proceedings began, she was smiling brightly, and pointing in their direction. 

When Pomp and Circumstance started playing, BJ’s eyes got misty, and when Erin’s name was read and she crossed the stage, he cried in earnest. Afterward, they took photos: Erin and Peg, Erin and Beej, all three of them together, and then the B team. Hawkeye took the photos of Peg, Henry, and Erin, and when it was time for BJ, Erin, and Hawk’s photo Peg urged Hawkeye to squeeze in closer on Erin’s left so she could get them all in frame. 

“You’ve got a lot of parents,” he told her, leaning so he was nearer to her height. 

Erin shrugged. “Extra graduation presents,” she said. 

In time she escaped into the crush of her gowned classmates: hugging, chatting, waving, and taking off heels to run across the grass. Erin had quite a few friends in the crowd, it seemed. Hawkeye kept hearing her name called as he and BJ helped the teachers fold up chairs and bring them in the gymnasium. 

Hawkeye had been apprised of Erin’s high school career in bits and pieces, mostly from Erin herself, who liked to tell animated stories about the Olympic feats of girl’s track, the Greek drama of student council, and the Shakespearian comedy of the prom decorating committee. 

She had something of a reputation, BJ explained, for making up complex scavenger hunts for which the kids in the know formed highly competitive teams. According to Peg they all showed up in the driveway and yard on Saturday afternoons, dumping their bikes in the grass, huddling close together, swapping theories for that week’s game, sipping soda from cans, and taking notes, until Erin opened the garage door and handed out stapled packets she’d drafted on Peg’s typewriter and made copies of on the mimeograph at school. She’d become something of a neighborhood legend, the way she’d organized a mass of teens into dashing about the suburbs from noon until sunset.

Erin had a big chalkboard record of the team standings, and on the class camping trip at the beginning of the summer, the game’s devotees flocked to Erin’s tent for her to crown the winners.

“It all sounds very elaborate,” Hawkeye said, as Erin laid her planning documents for next year out over the kitchen table. 

She shrugged. She had a fantastic amount of puzzles and clues outlined in her chicken scratch handwriting: sudoku, anagrams, coded poems, riddles, drawings you had to turn sideways to understand, little maps with indecipherable keys, knock knock jokes, instructions to listen to records backwards or obtain a highly specific set of items from the corner store. He could see the appeal, and the ensuing antics.

“It’s fun when people can figure it out,” Erin said, chewing on the end of her pencil.

She’d found her niche, as Hawkeye knew she would, without stowing away any of her quirks or subduing her frenetic energy. He wondered what big plans she had for Berkeley.

“She’s going to a pool party,” Peg said after Erin briefly reappeared in her graduation gown, grabbed the tote bag with a beach towel sticking out of it from her mother, and disappeared again into the crowd. “She’s riding with some other kids. Apparently she’s tied up for the whole afternoon, party hopping,” she said, eyebrows arching.

Hawkeye spotted her up the hill, arm and arm with another girl, holding her shoes in her free hand, hair a deep blonde in the California sun. 

She wouldn’t be unrecognizable either. Hawkeye could recognize Erin Hunnicutt anywhere.

“This is it. You should put your shoes back on,” BJ said, as they neared Arrivals. 

Erin’s plane had just landed. Hawkeye stood beside BJ, wringing his hands, at the terminal while other people’s families reunited. She saw them before they saw her, because there was nothing, and then there was the blur of Erin’s bright green rolling suitcase, and Erin herself, wearing Hawkeye’s birthday present sweater, and a thousand watt smile.

She dropped her suitcase at their feet and hugged Beej first. 

“Hi Dad. You look different,” she said, and they all laughed. She was taller, Hawkeye thought, though logically she wasn’t. Maybe her posture was just better.

“How was your flight, kiddo?” BJ asked. Erin drew back and he cupped her face in his hands. 

“I had a middle seat,” she said. “No leg room.”

Beej reached for her suitcase and her carry-on backpack and Erin’s gaze slid over to Hawkeye. He had some joke prepared about her not being prepared for her first New England winter. (She was wearing the red sweater, sure, but she had a long skirt beneath it, and her legs were bare.) Now that she was looking at him, though, the joke died in his mouth. She had gotten taller, he was sure of it. Hunnicutt kids probably grew like weeds. Her hair had grown out a little and she’d cut herself a crooked set of bangs. Her eyes crinkled when she smiled the way BJ’s did. Hawkeye hadn’t noticed that before. 

He didn’t have time to make a joke, anyway, because Erin turned and then she was leaping into his arms. He caught her by the waist and then lifted her off the ground (bad back be damned) while she held on tight. 

“Hi Hawk,” she said. “Did you miss me?”

“Desperately,” Hawkeye said. He put her back down.

BJ put his arm around Erin and she leaned into his side. Hawkeye wished he had a camera so he could capture the moment, the Hunnicutts in Maine, like Dad had said. 

“Let’s go home,” BJ said.

When they moved to Crabapple Cove, BJ had taken his time unpacking. The house was covered in a layer of dust, so he’d opened all the windows and attacked the problem with a feather duster, dishtowel, and broom. For a while it seemed that all he was doing was whipping up the dust and making himself sneeze, and that maybe he’d never get rid of it all. The dust bunnies would just settle in different places, resisting BJ’s presence.

Hawk would be out buying groceries or things for the house and BJ would pace in the living room, surrounded by cardboard boxes and a swirl of dust, paranoid and panicked with the thought that the house was somehow rejecting him. 

He kept losing things in the kitchen. Hawk had found him on his knees with his head in one of the cabinets on more than one occasion. One of the porch steps had broken under his weight, sending him careening into the honeysuckle bush in the yard. The dryer had been eating his socks (only his, never Hawkeye’s), and no matter how thoroughly he oiled the door hinges, they started squeaking again the second his back was turned.

On this particular day, BJ gave up mid-afternoon, stretched out on the couch, and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose in the wake of a headache. That was how Hawkeye found him, coming in the front door with an armful of grocery bags and a spring in his step. 

“I’m sorry I took so long. I kept running into people who didn’t know I was back,” Hawkeye said. “I gave Phyllis Walton the whole spiel, though, and she’s the hub of local gossip so either that’s the end of all the questions or I’ve just thrown us to the wolves. She didn’t seem phased when I told her I had a man in the house.”

He set down his bags and rolled up the sleeves of his flannel button down. He put his hands on his hips and studied the grocery bags for a moment, brow furrowed in concentration, before looking over at the dejected way BJ was sprawled.

“How’s the unpacking going?” Hawkeye said.

BJ groaned.

“Oh come on, Beej. I know it looks like a lot, but you’ll feel better once everything’s out of boxes. And I told you you can move any of mine or Dad’s old stuff. Dad and I have similar aesthetic sensibilities, but I’m amenable to changes. This is your house too,” he said. 

BJ’s stomach flip flopped. He felt like a rude houseguest. It wasn’t anything Hawkeye had done, it was just BJ himself. He felt too tall and too loud and too sensitive to the way the floors creaked and how cold their bedroom got in the morning, before he’d had the chance to put on a sweater and socks. Sometimes he found himself staring into space in the general direction of Daniel Pierce’s bookshelf. 

They hadn’t gotten rid of any of Dr. Pierce Sr. 's library. When they were in the house together the first time, Hawkeye, drunk on his father’s rum, holding the mostly empty bottle loose in his hand, would trace his fingers over the volumes’ spines and get this faraway look on his face. BJ thought it might be easier if Hawkeye talked about what he was feeling, but he never knew how to ask. 

“I got stuff for clam chowder. So just let me know when you’re hungry,” Hawkeye said, unpacking the first of the grocery bags. 

BJ groaned again, and covered his eyes with his forearm. Hawk was quiet for a moment, and then BJ heard his footsteps approaching. 

“Scoot down,” Hawkeye said, and BJ obliged. Hawkeye sat down and BJ resumed his previous position, this time with his head in Hawkeye’s lap.

“Or you could keep everything in boxes if you like. It could be a bold new design choice. I’d buy that,” Hawkeye said. He ran his fingers through BJ’s hair. He put one hand over BJ’s forehead, to check his temperature. 

“Are you sure I really fit in here?” BJ muttered.

Hawkeye exhaled. “I thought we were through with this?” he said.

“Hawk—”

“You fit wherever you want to be, Beej,” he said. 

BJ opened his eyes. Hawkeye was looking down at him, exasperated and fond. 

“Do you want to tell me how you’re feeling?” Hawkeye said.

BJ groaned a third time.

“Really, Beej, I mean it. I think it’s a good exercise. We should both get in the habit of it. It’s good for you, like stretching, or orange juice,” Hawkeye said.

“I think I’m having some trouble adjusting,” BJ said.

Hawkeye moved his hands so one was at BJ’s collarbone and the other was over his heart.

“Is that so?” Hawkeye said. “It’s not just that you hate opening boxes and putting things away?”

BJ did hate putting things away. He always had one foot in the past: a product of nostalgia or a lifetime of ruminating on his past mistakes. 

Hawkeye’s hands were moving lower, finding BJ’s hands, tracing the ring on his finger, settling at the base of his ribs. God, sometimes Hawkeye’s hands were all it took to settle him, like he was a spooked horse and not a middle-aged man. 

“I sort of feel like an intruder. I don’t want to touch anything,” BJ said. 

“I want you to touch things, Beej. I want you to touch everything,” Hawkeye said. He grinned, ridiculously. “Who exactly are you intruding on?”

BJ had thought about it, back when Erin was small, when he and Peg were at their most turbulent, and getting out of bed in the morning was like pulling teeth, that he should go to Maine. Just to get away for a bit, just to escape the riptide of his life. He’d thought about it too often, really. He thought about Hawkeye at the front door, about what he’d look like, about what he’d say, about whether or not he’d be happy to see him, about how it might not be Hawkeye at the door. It might be Daniel Pierce. BJ was sure he’d shrink at the sight of Daniel Pierce at the door. He was sure he’d say the wrong thing and Hawkeye’s father would shut the door in his face. He was sure he’d mess it up, and be barred from seeing Daniel’s son. 

“Is this about Dad?” Hawkeye said. 

“Yeah, maybe it is,” BJ said.

“He always wanted you to come visit. I always wanted you to,” Hawkeye said.

“I know,” BJ said. “I wish I…I wish I could go back, you know that.”

Sometimes all the wasted time seemed like a chasm. He wanted to shake his past self, and tell him things didn’t have to be the way they always were.

“He would’ve liked you Beej,” Hawkeye said.

“You can’t know that for sure,” BJ said. 

“I’d know better than you,” Hawkeye said.

He couldn’t argue with that. 

“Dad liked all the people I was in love with, or at least, all the people I was really in love with,” Hawkeye said.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” BJ said.

Hawkeye twisted his hands up in the fabric of BJ’s shirt. His headache was disappearing now, and the dust was lifting like a fog. 

“Just that I’m a little in love with everyone, all the time,” Hawkeye said.

BJ smiled. “Right,” he said.

“Right, but you’re still special,” Hawkeye said, seriously.

“You made it sound like I’m just any old Joe Schmoe that you happen to love,” BJ said. 

“You’re on a shortlist of really fantastic Joe Schmoes, Beej, is that sufficient?” Hawkeye said. 

“Sure it is,” BJ said.

BJ sat up. Hawkeye looked at him, eyebrows raised, still mid‐bit, silly and enamored and evidently unconcerned with the perishables still sitting out on the counter.

BJ leaned forward and kissed him. Hawkeye made a surprised, delighted little noise, and BJ shifted so Hawkeye was pinned beneath him. This was a real affront to Daniel Pierce’s lovely home, BJ thought, pulse quickening. He kissed the line of Hawkeye’s jaw and then his neck and then the spot at his collarbone where he liked to be kissed, paying close attention to the rise and fall of Hawkeye’s chest, and the way his hands were roaming, and how they were pressing closer and closer together. The warm, lightheaded feeling of arousal was just starting to cloud his brain and pool in his stomach, when Hawkeye pulled away, momentarily, and fixed him with a severe look.

“I mean it, though,” he said. “It’s your house too. Dad would hate it if you felt like a stranger here. I would too, for the record. Okay?”

“Okay,” BJ repeated, wanting to kiss him some more, overwhelmingly, desperately. 

Hawkeye smiled. “Okay Joe Schmoe, carry on,” he said.

BJ unpacked the boxes, eventually, and banished the dust, and looked through all of Hawkeye’s family photo albums, feeling a little like Erin trying to understand the 4077th. He bought a new mattress, and helped Hawkeye carry it upstairs. He cleaned out their bedroom closet and cleared the leaves from the gutters and mowed the lawn and little by little was able to breathe the small town, New England air freely. 

Hawkeye repainted the mailbox at the end of the drive: Pierce & Hunnicutt. And so it was.

In the car, on the way back home from the airport, Hawk and Erin talked non‐stop: about Erin’s classes, about what she was reading, about all the people she’d met, about her dorm room and roommates and campus events they’d all attended together. Erin leaned forward in the backseat, so her head was up front, between them. 

Hawkeye had all sorts of questions for her, but he kept losing his train of thought to point at landmarks out the window and tell her all the things the three of them were going to do while she was visiting. Erin hadn’t seen the house, not even in pictures, and when BJ pulled into the driveway she gasped.

“Dad, it’s lovely,” she said, sounding very much like her mother. 

“Not too shabby, huh?” Hawkeye said, nudging BJ’s shoulder. “Beej painted and put the tire swing back up and redid the whole porch. I did the garden round back. I bet you had no idea we were so handy,” Hawkeye said. 

“It’s not rocket science,” BJ said.

“It’s not surgery,” Hawkeye countered. 

They went in and Erin met Vi, who meowed a welcome and promptly chose Erin as her new favorite, twining around her ankles and purring deeply. BJ put Erin’s luggage in her room, formerly Hawkeye’s, that had been decluttered for her. Hawk had even bought her a little desk and lamp so she’d have a place to do her schoolwork on visits. BJ made lunch while Hawk showed her the garden. They ate sandwiches and drank mugs of coffee on the porch and Erin showed off some of her things from school: photos of her friends, copies of her weekly column in the university paper, the half‐finished blanket she’d been crocheting in between classes. 

After dinner, dessert, and half a game of Monopoly, BJ locked the doors, shut off the lights, and went upstairs. He said goodnight to Erin, who was brushing her teeth in the hall bathroom, and then climbed in bed beside Hawkeye, who was reading a tattered mystery novel by lamplight, and just smiled, reading glasses sliding down his nose, as BJ slung an arm around him and pressed his face into Hawkeye’s side.

“She seems good. She seems happy,” BJ muttered, words muffled in Hawkeye’s shirt.

“Were you worried?” Hawkeye said.

“It’s a big adjustment, you know. And…well, high school was a big adjustment for her too,” BJ said.

“It seems like she’s adjusted fabulously. Though, I’m sure she’s getting up to all sorts of trouble she isn’t telling us about,” Hawkeye said, eyes still on his book.

BJ groaned. “Oh don’t tell me that. I don’t want to hear that,” he said.

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. “Please, Beej. I’m great at telling you things you don’t want to hear,” he said.

“God, Erin I think you might be the most functional person I know,” Jess said, from the shag rug she was laying on, at the foot of Erin’s bed. She lifted her head to smile at Erin, who was mid‐packing, rolling up her shirts into tight tubes so she could wedge as many as possible into her little suitcase. 

Jess’ dark hair was tangled. Erin had told her it would be, if she insisted on sprawling out like that. Erin was the last of the roommates to leave for break, and since they were alone Jess had taken the opportunity to do all the things that irritated Patsy and Rhonda (and had consequently prompted a roommate meeting regarding guests). Erin’s roommates didn’t like that Jess left her shoes in the doorway for people to trip over, or that she laughed so loudly you could hear her in the hall, or that she’d rather lay on the floor than sit on Erin’s bed or in her bean bag chair. They weren’t keen on the fact that she dragged Erin out most weekends, even though Jess knew where the best parties were, and Patsy and Rhonda were always invited along. And they didn’t like that Jess and Erin went to open mics and political lectures and protests that got rowdy from time to time.

Patsy called her the delinquent, or sometimes Erin’s delinquent , when she was feeling spiteful. Erin could usually improve relations by inviting them for coffee at the dining hall or offering to share her French notes before an exam. Erin didn’t mind. She liked having Jess around. Jess made freshman year at Berkeley interesting.

“That’s not one I get a lot,” Erin said. Jess’ things were already packed, by the door. They were sharing a cab to the airport in a couple of hours. Erin was going to Maine and Jess was going back home to Middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin. 

Jess wanted to grab sandwiches at their favorite place near campus before leaving, and so they were hanging back while the dorm emptied. The building had an eerie, deserted quiet that made Erin squirm. All semester the third floor had been a flurry of activity. Girls always kept their doors open, so music could spill into the hall and blouses could be traded and invitations to card games or study dates or dining hall dinners could be easily extended. When the weather got nice there was a collective agreement to open all the windows, and every time Erin walked down the hall, sweaty and tired from the brisk walk across campus, the breeze caught in her hair, and someone was usually calling her name, asking if she wanted to dump her stuff in her room and go back out to grab sodas or ice cream. 

“What do you mean? You alphabetize your records. You make your bed every morning. I don’t think you’ve been a minute late to anything in your life. Shit, Erin, look at that bag. That’s the most efficiently packed bag I’ve ever seen,” Jess said.

Erin folded her arms over her chest. Patsy and Rhonda didn’t like that Jess cursed either.

“We haven’t known each other very long,” Erin said. “Maybe I’ve got some dark, dysfunctional secret you don’t know about.”

Jess propped herself up on her elbows and winked at Erin, a big exaggerated gesture that reminded her a little of Hawkeye.

“Oh, Hunnicutt, I’m sure you do. And I’ve got three and a half years to figure it out,” Jess said.

Erin snorted, and ducked her head, face reddening involuntarily. She zipped up her suitcase.

Erin’s delinquent . She wasn’t so sure. She thought Patsy might have it backwards.

“Do you want to be on lettuce duty again? We’ve got a salad spinner now,” Hawkeye said, when Erin padded in the kitchen from the living room. 

Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a glass of red wine, while Hawkeye peeled potatoes. 

“If I say yes, do I get a glass of that?” Erin asked, pointing to Mom’s wine glass. 

“No you do not,” Mom said.

“Your dad got you some ginger ale. You can have one of those, and my eternal gratitude,” Hawkeye said. 

“Deal,” Erin said. She took a seat across from Mom and put her elbows on the table. Hawkeye handed her a wet head of lettuce, knife, and cutting board. 

“Who’s winning out there?” Mom said, head tilting in the direction of the living room.

“Helen, I think. But Dad’s pretending he is,” Erin said.

“And Henry?” Mom said, eyebrows rising. 

“How much cash did he bring, Mom?” Erin said. 

Hawkeye laughed and Mom put her head in her hands in mock devastation. She leaned back in her chair and slid her wine glass in Erin’s direction. 

“One sip,” she said, holding up a manicured finger. 

She’d taken her hair down and put a sweater (a loaner from Hawk) on over her dress. It had been a long afternoon of introductions and mingling and eating the array of finger foods Hawkeye had devised for the housewarming. They’d had a full house of Dad and Hawkeye’s friends, neighbors, and co‐workers. Erin was able to coax out a substantial number of stories about Hawkeye as a little kid, stirring up small town mischief and about Dad’s practical jokes at work and his general Californian sensibilities that the New Englanders ribbed him for to no end. 

It seemed that everyone in attendance had heard something about Erin, because their faces lit up when she introduced herself, and they asked a slew of the same questions. Erin thought it might be practical to print out an FAQ sheet, based on how often she had to repeat the same answers:

Yes, she liked Berkeley. She was majoring in English education with plans to teach middle or high school. Yes, she planned to study abroad in France with a few friends the upcoming year. Yes, it was all very exciting. Yes, she still ran track, though she wasn’t quite as good as she was in high school. Yes, she did have that column in the school paper. Students wrote in questions and she wrote back funny, clever, sometimes a little convoluted, Erin (her editor’s words) answers. Yes, she thought the house was lovely and the food was excellent and was excited for her first fall in Maine. 

Erin had done so much smiling and nodding that she felt a little like a bobble head. Everyone had been quite nice, but she was quite glad they were all gone. She took a sip of Mom’s wine. Mom smiled at her, tiredly. She was probably more thrilled that the crowd had fizzled out. She’d been in a trickier position, come introductions, because ex-wife didn’t roll off the tongue the way daughter did, and faces still puckered with confusion every time she explained that everyone was on good terms. 

Erin was surprised Hawkeye had the energy to cook, after an afternoon of passing around plates of fruit and cheese, smoked‐fish dip with crackers, and mini meatballs he’d put together that morning. Actually, she’d been surprised at how diligently Hawkeye could play the entertainer, before she remembered that he’d always been making her things. He made all sorts of things for people he cared about.

Now, Dad, Henry, Helen, and Margaret were in the living room playing poker. Dad had tidied the place and thrown out all the cocktail napkins and paper cups abandoned on the coffee table and mantle and front porch. He’d poured more drinks and done the first round of dishes while Hawkeye bet big and lost the first several hands, before throwing his cards down and dragging Mom along to keep him company for dinner prep. 

Erin chopped up the lettuce, and in time Hawkeye brought her more salad things to chop (tomatoes, a cucumber, green onions, a radish) while he and Mom discussed the finer points of maintaining a garden.

“Dad was always out there weeding. I don’t know how he had the patience for it. I can’t be alone with my thoughts that long. I start talking to the squash and all of a sudden I’m pulling up something I shouldn’t,” Hawkeye said. He was spreading some sort of thick glaze over filets of salmon. 

“You could always start a weed garden,” Mom said.

“People eat dandelions,” Erin said. “Jess’ family makes dandelion jelly. I mean…they make lots of jams and jellies. It’s got some fancy French name.”

“ Cramaillotte ,” Jess said, leaning across the long, wood table at the library, her elbows sliding across Erin’s notebook and jostling the page so the French Erin was copying smudged into a mess. 

“Is that what you called it?” Erin said.

“No, we called it dandelion jelly. Or wait, my grandma called it Jessica, get out of the kitchen you’re going to knock over my jam jars ,” Jess said.

They’d only been studying together for an hour, but Jess’ foot was already tapping under the table. Erin had been trying to match up their bursts of activity. She was always up at dawn, running big loops around campus to get out her runner’s energy before campus got hot and crowded. She met Jess for coffee outside her dorm, before she went back to shower, and ranted at her, brain buzzing with ideas for the day and whatever her subconscious had cooked up in her dreams the previous night. Jess wasn’t a morning person, but she was attentive and appreciative of Erin’s company as she sipped black coffee and woke up. 

By midday Erin had worked out all of her hyperactivity and was ready for her lectures, and then lunch, and the library. By then Jess had wound herself up so that sitting still was a chore. More often than not they ended up on a picnic blanket in the quad, so Jess could stretch out or do cartwheels or climb one of the trees they weren’t exactly allowed to climb. Then in the evening, when Jess tired out and Erin was getting a second wave of motivation, they’d scan the paper for good movies, or go see a play, or bug Patsy and Rhonda to go dancing somewhere off campus.

“I’ll let you take the lead this time, Hunnicutt,” Jess would say, drowsily, trailing Erin on the sidewalk, slipping her hand into the pocket of Erin’s jean jacket. 

Mom smiled. “When are we all going to meet this Jess? She’s all Erin writes about in her letters,” she said, turning to Hawkeye. 

Erin flushed. “I don’t know,” she said.

“She’s afraid I’m going to embarrass her,” Mom said.

“Oh?” Hawkeye said. He put the tray of salmon into the oven and wiped his hands on a dishtowel. 

“I’m not,” Erin said, flushing deeper. “I’m just not sure she’d want to…well, you guys can be kind of a lot.”

It was a little lie. Jess had asked about Erin’s family, and for a long time Erin had skirted around the details. She wasn’t upset or ashamed, it was just that it was complicated, and she didn’t like having people pry.

“Do you hear that, Hawk? We’re a lot,” Mom said.

“I’ve heard that one so many times I think I’ve lost count,” Hawkeye said, leaning his elbows on the counter.

Erin looked over at him, grinding her teeth guiltily as he smiled at her. The kitchen wasn’t much different from the kitchen in the Seattle apartment. The fridge had her high school graduation photos stuck on with novelty magnets, among take out menus and coupons and a little calendar that had Dad’s handwriting all over it. The window had a little red suncatcher in the shape of a lobster. There was a bookshelf with Hawkeye’s cookbooks and recipe box and a tin of cat treats for Viola. In one corner of the counter, beneath a row of cabinets and a hook where the oven mitts hung, were Hawkeye’s father’s ancient blender, and the stand mixer Dad had gotten him for their anniversary. The floor had been retiled, Hawkeye had said, and freshly mopped. The phone was mounted beside an end table with a phonebook, notepad, and list of notable phone numbers pinned to the wall. 

There was more counter space, and it was missing some of Margaret’s aesthetic sensibilities, but seeing Hawkeye standing there by the sink still reminded Erin of the first time they’d met. She’d recognized a commonality between them at once, though back then she was wary and cautious and distrusting. She still was, about other people, if she was honest with herself. But about Hawkeye, she’d been right. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Erin said.

“You mention Jess in your letters almost as much as your father used to mention Hawkeye,” Mom said. She stood and scooped up her wine glass, kissing the top of Erin’s head on her way back to the living room. “I’m going to check in on the game, and then I can set the table if you like, Hawk?”

“Sure,” Hawkeye said, looking between them, uneasily. 

“She’s kidding,” Erin said, when Hawkeye’s brow furrowed deeper. “I don’t…it’s an exaggeration.”

“It’s okay, kid. You don’t have to tell me anything,” Hawkeye said. 

He went over to the fridge and pulled out two ginger ales. He crossed the room and took the seat across from Erin. He leaned back and the chair creaked. He crossed his legs and let one slippered foot dangle in space in front of her. 

“But you can tell me anything,” he said. 

Erin rolled her eyes. There was an odd, squirming feeling in her chest. 

“Oh c’mon, Hunnicutt. You know everything about me and I know hardly anything about you,” Jess said, opening the bathroom window.

Erin perched on the edge of the bathtub and looked around, peeking behind the shower curtain and listening to the chatter and music in the hall. They were at a party hosted by some of Jess’ co‐op friends. Erin was wearing bell bottoms, a short sleeved turtleneck that itched, and more makeup than she’d worn in her life. She was nervous. She’d left her shoes in the heap at the door and was now afraid she’d never find them. Jess had pulled her in here, by the wrist, and was now rolling a joint. 

“What do you want to know?” Erin said.

 She hoped no one was waiting for the bathroom, but she also didn’t want to smoke in a big group of strangers. Jess’ friends were nice, but they were also smart and cool and knew more about drugs and music and fashion and politics and religion than she did, or at least they were better at saying things that sounded smart and funny than she was. Not that party conversation was supposed to be a competition, though sometimes that’s how Erin felt. It was sort of like everyone else was in an aquarium and Erin was a goldfish in a little bowl. But she wouldn’t tell Jess any of that. She’d just follow her around and smile politely until the alcohol or the pot kicked in and she didn’t feel so self‐conscious anymore.

“I think Elliot likes you,” Jess said.

She lit the joint and inhaled deeply, blowing smoke out the window. Erin watched her: long fingers, nails painted blood red for the occasion, in a color that matched her lipstick. She had on a short, floral, shift dress that Erin had never seen before. It was green, with tights to match, and she’d tied her hair up so Erin could see the long, pale, length of her neck that was ordinarily obscured with a curtain of hair. It was a little startling to see Jess so dressed up, Erin thought. Most of the time she was wearing frumpy work pants and sneakers and t‐shirts. Some of the girls called her a tomboy. When she was younger, Jess said people said she didn’t have the figure for nicer clothes. Her mother was always on and off diet pills. That shit always scared me, though…dangerous. Erin thought Jess looked nice any way she was, but again, she wouldn’t go out and say so. 

“So?” Erin said, eyes on the red blur of Jess’ mouth. She took the joint from her and inhaled.

Jess laughed. “ So , do you like him? He’s been trying to flirt all evening, the poor sucker. I can’t tell if you’re trying to give him the brush off or if you’re just doing your usual awkward, ghostly, waif thing,” she said.

Erin blushed. “I don’t…what are you talking about?” she said.

Jess moved so she was in the space between Erin’s knees. Erin put a steadying hand on the edge of the bathtub and passed the joint back to her. She looked up at Jess and Jess looked down at her, and Erin’s head felt a little fuzzy and floaty.

“I mean that you get all quiet and doe eyed around him,” Jess said.

Erin frowned. She hadn’t realized she was doing that. She was more focused on following the conversation, and keeping sight of Jess whenever she moved to mingle with other people, and not sloshing her drink on the carpet. If she was honest, she hadn’t realized Elliot was paying her any special attention at all. 

“It’s flattering, I guess,” Erin muttered.

“But you’re not interested?” Jess said.

“I didn’t say that,” Erin said. 

Jess sighed, exaggeratedly, and put her free hand on Erin’s knee. It was warm, and Erin shivered. “This is what I mean, Hunnicutt. You can’t give me a straight answer?” she said.

Erin smiled. A wave of good will crackled through her like electricity. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I get it from my dad.”

Jess’ eyes narrowed. “Your dad dad or your stepdad?” she said.

“My biological dad,” Erin said, and then, because her heart was already pounding and someone in the next room had forgotten to flip the Beatles record so the music had become white noise and the sound of the needle bouncing over vinyl, she went on. “Actually I’ve got three dads, if we’re counting. My dad’s married to another man.”

The color drained from Jess’ face. “You don’t have to make things up just because you’re annoyed with me. I’ll leave it alone,” she said.

“I’m not making things up. They aren’t married legally, obviously, but my dad and Hawkeye live together in Maine. They’re who I’m visiting for Thanksgiving,” Erin said. 

“Oh,” Jess said. She took a step back and crossed one arm over her chest.

“You wanted to know something about me,” Erin said, jaw tightening. 

“I know,” Jess said, blinking, shaking her head. “I know. I’m sorry. I was just surprised. You hardly mention your family, Erin. I knew your folks were divorced, but…”

“Is it a problem?” Erin said, voice thin. “That they’re…that I’m…” She couldn’t quite find the words. The pot was making her tongue feel too big for her mouth. 

“Christ, Hunnicutt, of course not,” Jess said. 

Erin’s shoulders relaxed. Jess looked her up and down, slowly, analytically. Erin thought about the day they’d met, side by side at student orientation. Jess had stuck her hand right out and shook Erin’s with a firm grip. She’d told her her whole life story in minutes. It had never struck Erin as odd that she couldn’t reciprocate. She’d always been private. It had always taken her a bit to warm up to people. 

Jess came closer again and tucked a stray strand of hair behind Erin’s ear. Erin shivered again. Jess took a long drag from the joint and exhaled. She handed it back.

“Thanks for telling me,” she said.

“Uh…no problem,” Erin said.

Hawkeye sipped from his can of ginger ale and studied her. Erin felt cracked open in the same way she had at that party. When they’d walked home Jess had told her how much she’d like to meet Erin’s family, like she was collecting puzzle pieces to try to figure out what made Erin tick. It was frightening, and endearing. 

“How did you know that Dad was the one?” Erin muttered. She’d run out of vegetables to chop so she just fiddled with the hem of her skirt.

Hawkeye laughed. “I don’t know, Erin. There was a lot of trial and error. I’m not really sure I believe in all that, anyway,” he said.

“Believe in what?” she said.

Hawkeye chewed on his lip. He leaned his elbow on the table and put his chin in his palm, looking incredibly focused. 

“In the one . Sometimes I think it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place, I guess, when it comes to me and your father. I used to think there were a lot of absolutes in life. I never thought I’d deliver a baby again until you and I did,” he said.

Erin scoffed. “I didn’t help,” she said. 

“Agree to disagree,” Hawkeye said.

“So,” Erin said.

She tried to reconstruct the feeling of waving goodbye as Jess boarded her flight, of their hands brushing when she handed her her suitcase, of all the other innocuous, everyday instances of them falling into step, or sitting shoulder to shoulder, or laying in the grass talking until the batteries in Erin’s portable radio died. 

Erin could hear the card game heating up. Margaret and Dad were arguing, jokingly, and Mom was laughing. Helen was saying something about not letting Henry be swindled out of all his money and Henry was attempting to defend his honor.

“So?” Hawkeye repeated, looking amused. Erin had a feeling he was going to tease her the way Mom did. She felt prickly.

“How do you know you got it right, then, if the one doesn’t exist?” she said, seriously, balling her fists up so her fingernails dug into the skin of her palms.

Hawkeye’s expression softened. “Erin…” he said.

“I’m really asking,” she said, meeting his eyes.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I think you never know if you get it right. I think the important thing is that every day I choose him and he chooses me, and the rest is just white noise, or uh…clouds,” he said.

Erin nodded. “Clouds,” she repeated. 

After dinner, in the dark, Dad loaned Erin a pair of house slippers, wrapped a quilt around her shoulders, and asked her to come sit out on the front porch with him. Her teeth chattered on the front steps, but then he put his arm around her and she leaned her head on his shoulder and the sounds of the evening washed over them like water: the ducks in the pond, the wind through the trees, distant trains, the buzz of the porch light. 

“Hawkeye’s making pancakes tomorrow morning. It’s a new tradition, every time you’re in town we’ll have pancakes,” Dad said. 

She shifted to look up at him, looking out over the property. She could recognize that distant, misty‐eyed expression of his, when he got nostalgic but didn’t know how to say it aloud.

“Is this how you thought it would be?” Erin said.

“Is what?” Dad said. 

“All of it,” Erin said. 

Dad sucked in a breath and Erin mimicked him. The cool air stung her lungs, but it was a good sting. 

“It’s better,” he said.

He kissed the top of her head. Erin closed her eyes, and put away the rest of her questions for another day. There would be time, and there would be answers.