“Because you’re a good lay,” Amy said. “And so am I.”

“Not my reference.”

“I know your reference, soldier.” She turned from his gaze to pull on her panties, an awkward modesty that transformed eighteen years of marriage, of intimacy, into wasted days. “We don’t love each other anymore.”

This girl, who’s not Amy, sets the glass aside, then slips back into the bed, rolling onto her belly, breasts pressing against Bell’s chest. He feels where her body has turned cool from the night air beyond the blankets, feels her stealing his own body heat to replace hers. She props herself up on an elbow, rests a cheek in her palm. With her other hand, she begins to tour his body. An index finger traces the puckered line along Bell’s left shoulder.

“How’d you get this?”

Bell turns his head to look at the scar, turns his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I got shot.”

“You were in Iraq?”

“Sometimes.”

“Afghanistan?”

“Sometimes.”

“Army?”

“Sometimes.”

She laughs, concluding that nothing he says can be trusted. Drags a finger across Bell’s chest, then down, stopping at the right lower abdominal. “This one?”

“Shrapnel.”

Her hand moves lower, takes a slight detour, and she offers a naughty grin before continuing to his right thigh.

“Knife?”

“Something sharp, yeah.”

“Roll over.”

Bell obliges. She examines his arms, takes his right hand in hers. He feels the slight brush of her fingertip between his thumb and forefinger, distant, as if from far away.

“This a callus?”

“That is a callus.”

“How do you get a callus like that? There?”

It’s a gun callus, earned by putting thousands of rounds through a pistol seven days a week, from morning to night to morning again. It’s earned on the range and in the Shooting House, live-fire exercises on endless repeat until shooting is like breathing, until missing is Not An Option, and it’s kept by taking that honed skill and applying it to the enemy. It is a killer’s callus, a warrior’s mark, an operator’s badge of honor.