Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~6 min read
Chapter 28: A year married
AMY
They had been married for a year.
She noticed it the way she noticed the things that mattered — not the date, though she knew the date, but the texture of the year itself. The layer of it that was different from the year before and the year before that.
Jake was at the VA on Thursdays now.
Not as a patient — or not only as a patient; he still did the biweekly sessions with Dr. Okafor and the Tuesday group. But in November, two months after the wedding, Dr. Okafor had mentioned that the VA had a peer support specialist program, and that they were looking for veterans who had been through the reintegration process to work with incoming veterans.
Jake had said: *Tell me more.*
Dr. Okafor had told him more.
In December, Jake had started the training.
He was certified by February and had his first peer support session in March, and by October — their first anniversary — he was doing six sessions a week, two group and four individual, and had been written up in the VA’s internal newsletter as *an unusually effective peer specialist* by someone in the program office who had clearly never met a peer specialist before, because unusually effective was the minimum bar for the people in the program.
She had framed the newsletter.
He had said: *You didn’t have to do that.*
She said: *I know.*
He had looked at it on the wall for a long time.
She had watched him look at it.
She thought: *this is what a year looks like.*
It looked like Tuesday mornings in the kitchen with his sketchbook and her school papers and the county weekly with Marcus’s updated weather column, which ran every other week now because Mrs. Hoffman the editor had read the first one and called the school and asked to run it as a regular feature, and Marcus had spent twenty-four hours considering the offer before accepting.
It looked like bad stretches — March had one, a two-week stretch of frequent nightmares and the protocol running hard, and she had done what she always did: been present without managing, Dr. Okafor on speed dial, the Wednesday group every week.
It looked like good stretches. It looked like the tomato harvest in August when Jake had called her out to the south wall and said: *the heirlooms are coming,* and they’d picked thirty-two tomatoes and brought them in and she’d made sauce and he’d eaten it standing at the counter because he couldn’t wait.
It looked like Kowalski visiting for a weekend in July and sitting on the porch with Jake until midnight, and her going to bed at eleven and leaving them to it, because that was the kind of thing that needed to happen without her.
It looked like Marcus sending her the chart from his second year of rainfall data, annotated against the first year’s data, with a note that said: *the variance is within acceptable parameters.* She had shown Jake and he had said: *that kid.*
She said: *I know.*
He had driven her to school on the first day of the new school year. Not because she needed a ride — she drove herself, always had — but because he’d asked to see the classroom before the students arrived, and she’d said yes, and they’d walked through the school at 7am with the empty hallways and the clean desks and the whiteboard that said *Welcome, Scientists!* because she always started with scientists.
He had stood in her classroom for a long time.
He said: *This is where you’ve been.* He looked at the desks and the artwork on the walls and Gerald the snail’s vivarium in the corner. *All these years.*
She said: *Yes.*
He said: *It looks like you.*
She said: *It should.* She looked around. *It’s mine.*
He had looked at the vivarium.
He said: *Is that Gerald.*
She said: *He thrives.*
He had looked at Gerald for a long time with the specific focused attention he gave to things he found genuinely interesting.
He said: *He’s a very sturdy snail.*
She said: *He is. He’s been here since November 2022. That’s quite a tenure.*
He said: *This school is going to need a meteorologist on staff.*
She said: *Marcus would agree.*
He had kissed her in the empty classroom and she had kissed him back and said: *I have students in two hours.*
He had said: *I’m aware.* He had kissed her again.
She had gone to get coffee.
At the anniversary dinner — just the two of them, the farm kitchen, the specific food she made when she was making food for a reason — he said: *Tell me what you want.*
She said: *For dinner or in general.*
He said: *In general.*
She thought about it.
She said: *I want Marcus to be the county meteorologist by 2040.* She paused. *I want Gerald to keep thriving.* She paused. *I want to go to the lake in December when it’s cold.* She paused. *I want to know what you draw next.* She looked at him. *I want all of the normal things we have.* She paused. *And I want—* She stopped.
He said: *Tell me.*
She said: *I’ve been thinking about kids.* She said it directly, which was the only way she said things. *I’ve been thinking about it for a few months.* She paused. *I wanted to wait until you — until the foundation was solid.* She paused. *It’s solid.*
He looked at her.
She said: *We don’t have to decide anything now. I’m just saying I’m thinking about it.* She paused. *If you’re—*
He said: *Amy.*
She said: *Tell me.*
He said: *I’ve been thinking about it too.* He looked at the kitchen table, the coffee cups, the anniversary dinner. *I think about being a father.* He paused. *I think about whether I’ll be — whether the PTSD will—*
She said: *Talk to Dr. Okafor.*
He said: *I have.* He paused. *He said I’m as prepared for it as a person can be.* He paused. *He said the peer support work is part of it — that the work I’m doing at the VA is building the capacity.* He looked at her. *He thinks I’m ready.* He paused. *I think I’m ready.* He paused. *I’m still terrified.*
She said: *Terrified means it matters.*
He said: *Yes.*
She said: *Then that’s your answer.*
He said: *I think so.*
She looked at him across the anniversary dinner table.
She thought: *yes.*
She thought: *this is the year. This is the man.*
She thought: *I have been building toward this since I was eight years old carrying a butterfly project to the science fair.*
She thought: *he carried it the whole way.*
She thought: *of course he did.*
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