"We did," Tess replies, and the bitterness is heavy like lead on her voice. "I mean, we fought as much as ever, but it wasn't as bad as it was back home, it was about different things. But we got to live together, we got to do normal things..."

As normal as it got for them, anyway: shaking in the front hall of the apartment after being thrown into panic by firecrackers, sleeping with guns at their bedsides, arguing about contamination and infection if he so much as breathed near her right shoulder, communicating like real adults rather than uncivilized victims. That was the kind of normal that felt right, that felt okay to survive under –– just enough pressure to keep them from floundering completely.

"He's a bastard, though, leaving me with the kids like I'm his wife instead of his partner."