That was how he knew she loved him at least a little bit; she’d brought the kid into it. Lanae wasn’t like some single mothers, always throwing their kid up in people’s faces. She was fiercely protective of Esther, kept her apart from everything, even him, and they’d been in each other’s life so long that he didn’t believe for a second that she was really through with him this time. Still, he missed her when everyone else was getting loved visibly and he was standing there with no one to say good-bye to. Even her love was strategic, goddamn her, and he felt more violently toward the men he imagined touching her in his absence than toward the imaginary enemy they’d been war-gaming against. On the plane he had stared out of the window at more water than he’d ever seen at once, and thought of the look on her face when he said good-bye.

She had come to his going-away party like it was nothing, showed up in skintight jeans and that cheap but sweet-smelling baby powder perfume and spent a good twenty minutes exchanging pleasantries with his mother before she even said hello to him. She’d brought a cake that she’d picked up from the bakery at the second restaurant she worked at, told one of the church ladies she was thinking of starting her own cake business. Really? Georgie thought, before she winked at him and put a silver fingernail to her lips. Lanae could cook a little, but the only time he remembered her trying to bake she’d burnt a cake she’d made from boxed mix and then tried to cover it up with pink frosting. Esther wouldn’t touch the thing, and he’d run out and gotten a Minnie Mouse ice cream cake from the grocery store. He’d found himself silently listing these nonsecrets, the things about Lanae he was certain of: she couldn’t bake, there was a thin but awful scar running down the back of her right calf, her eyes were amber in the right light.

They’d grown up down the street from each other. He could not remember a time before they were friends, but she’d had enough time to get married and divorced and produce a little girl before he thought to kiss her for the first time, only a few months before he got his orders. In fairness, she was not exactly beautiful; it had taken some time for him to see past that. Her face was pleasant but plain, her features so simple that if she were a cartoon she’d seem deliberately underdrawn. She was not big, exactly, but pillowy, like if you pressed your hand into her it would keep sinking and sinking because there was nothing solid to her. It bothered him to think of Kenny putting his hand on her that way, Kenny who’d once assigned numbers to all the waitresses at Ruby Tuesday based on the quality of their asses, Kenny who’d probably never be gentle enough to notice what her body did while it was his.

She was all weather and light gossip through the parking lot. “The cherry blossoms are beautiful this year,” she was saying as they rode down the Dulles Toll Road, and if it had been Lanae saying something like that he would have said Cherry blossoms? Are you fucking kidding me? but because it was his mother things kept up like that all the way around 495 and back to Alexandria. It was still too early in the morning for real rush-hour traffic, and they made it in twenty minutes. The house was as he’d remembered it: old, the bright robin’s egg blue of the paint cheerful in a painfully false way, like a woman wearing red lipstick and layers of foundation caked over wrinkles. Inside, the surfaces were all coated with a thin layer of dust, and it made him feel guilty his mother had to do all of this housework herself, even though when he was home he’d almost never cleaned anything.

He’d barely put his bags down when she was off to work, still not able to take the whole day off. She left with promises of dinner later. In her absence it struck him that it had been a long time since he’d heard silence. In the desert there was always noise. When it was not the radio, or people talking, or shouting, or shouting at him, it was the dull purr of machinery providing a constant background soundtrack, or the rhythmic pulse of sniper fire. Now it was a weekday in the suburbs and the lack of human presence made him anxious. He turned the TV on and off four times, flipping through talk shows and soap operas and thinking this was something like what had happened to him: someone had changed the channel on his life. The abruptness of the transition overrode the need for social protocol, so without calling first he got into the old Buick and drove to Lanae’s, the feel of the leather steering wheel strange beneath his hands. The brakes screeched every time he stepped on them, and he realized he should have asked his mother how the car was running before taking it anywhere, but the problem seemed appropriate: he had started this motion, and the best thing to do was not to stop it.

Kenny’s car outside of Lanae’s duplex did not surprise him, nor did it deter him. He parked in one of the visitor spaces and walked up to ring the bell.

“Son of a bitch! What’s good?” Kenny asked when he answered the door, as if Georgie had been gone for a year on a beer run.

“I’m back,” he said, unnecessarily. “How you been, man?”

Kenny looked like he’d been Kenny. He’d always been a big guy, but he was getting soft around the middle. His hair was freshly cut in a fade, and he was already in uniform, wearing a shiny gold name tag that said KENNETH, and beneath that, MANAGER, which had not been true when Georgie left. Georgie could smell the apartment through the door, Lanae’s perfume and floral air freshener not masking that something had been cooked with grease that morning.

“Not, bad,” he said. “I’ve been holding it down over here while you been holding it down over there. Glad you came back in one piece.”

Kenny gave him a one-armed hug, and for a minute Georgie felt like an asshole for wanting to say, Holding it down? You’ve been serving people KFC.

“Look, man, I was on my way to work, but we’ll catch up later, all right?” Kenny said, moving out of the doorway to reveal Lanae standing there, still in the T-shirt she’d slept in. Her hair was pulled back in a head scarf, and it made her eyes look huge. Kenny was out the door with a nod and a shoulder clasp, not so much as a backward glance at Lanae standing there. The casual way he left them alone together bothered Georgie. He wasn’t sure if Kenny didn’t consider him a threat or simply didn’t care what Lanae did; either way he was annoyed.

“Hey,” said Lanae, her voice soft, and he realized he hadn’t thought this visit through any further than that.

“Hi,” he said, and looked at the clock on the wall, which was an hour behind schedule. He thought to mention this, then thought against it.

“Georgie!” Esther yelled through the silence, running out of the kitchen, her face sticky with pancake syrup. He was relieved she remembered his name. Her hair was done in pigtails with little pink barrettes on them; they matched her socks and skirt. Lanae could win a prize for coordinating things.

“Look at you, little ma,” he said, scooping her up and kissing her cheek. “Look how big you got.”

“Look how bad she got, you mean,” Lanae said. “Tell Georgie how you got kicked out of day care.”

“I got kicked out of day care,” Esther said matter-of-factly. Georgie tried not to laugh. Lanae rolled her eyes.

“She hides too much,” she said. “Every time they take the kids somewhere, this one hides, and they gotta hold everyone up looking for her. Last time they found her, she scratched the teacher who tried to get her back on the bus. She can’t pull this kind of stuff when she starts kindergarten.”

Lanae sighed, and reached up to put her fingers in her hair, but all it did was push the scarf back. Take it off, he wanted to say. Take it off, and put clothes on. He wanted it to feel like real life again, like their life again, and with him dressed and wearing cologne for the first time in months, and her standing there in a scarf and T-shirt, all shiny Vaselined thighs and gold toenails, they looked mismatched.

“Look, have some breakfast if you want it,” she said. “I’ll be out in a second. I need to take a shower, and then I gotta work on finding this one a babysitter before my shift starts.”

“When does it start?”

“Two.”

“I can watch her. I’m free.”

Lanae gave him an appraising look. “What are you doing these days?”

“Today, nothing.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“I talked to your mom a little while ago,” Lanae said, which was her way of telling him she knew. Of course she knew. How could Lanae not know, gossipy mother or no gossipy mother?

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll take good care of her.”

“If Dee doesn’t get back to me, you might have to,” said Lanae. She walked off and Georgie made himself at home in her kitchen, grabbing a plate from the dish rack and taking the last of the eggs and bacon from the pans on the stove. Esther sat beside him and colored as he poured syrup over his breakfast.

“So, what do you keep hiding from?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Esther shrugged. “I just like the trip places better. Day care smells funny and the kids are dumb.”

“What did I tell you about stupid people?” Georgie asked.

“I forget.” Esther squinted. “You were gone a long time.”

“Well, I’m back now, and you’re not going to let stupid people bother you anymore,” Georgie said, even though neither of these promises was his to make.

“Are you sure it doesn’t remind you...” his mother started once, after gently suggesting he look for a real job, but she let the thought trail off unfinished.

“I wasn’t babysitting over there, Ma.”

“I know,” she said, but she didn’t, or she wouldn’t have thought to put Esther and those other kids in the same sentence.

The truth was Esther was the opposite of a reminder. In his old life, his job had been to knock on strangers’ doors in the middle of the night, hold them at gunpoint, and convince them to trust him. That was the easiest part of it. They went at night because during daytime the snipers had a clear shot at them and anyone who opened the door, but even in the dark, a bullet or an IED could take you out like that. Sometimes when they got to a house there were already bodies. Other times there was nothing: a thin film of dust over whatever was left, things too heavy for the family to carry and too worthless for anyone to steal.

The sisters were sitting in the dark, huddled on the floor with their parents, when Georgie’s unit pushed through the door. Pretty girls, big black eyes and sleepy baby-doll faces. The little one cried when they first came through the door, and the older one, maybe nine, clamped her hand tightly over the younger girl’s mouth, like they’d been ordered not to make any noise. The father was softspoken—angry but reasonable. Usually, Georgie stood back and kept an eye out for trouble, let the lieutenant do the talking, but this time he went over to the girls himself, reached out his hand and shook their tiny ones, moist with heat and fear. He handed them each a piece of the candy they were supposed to give to children in cooperative families, and stepped back awkwardly. The older one smiled back at him, her missing two front teeth somehow reminding him of home.

They were not, in the grand scheme of things, anyone special. There were kids dying all over the place. Still, when they went back the next day, to see if the father would answer some more questions about his neighbors, and the girls were lying there, throats slit, bullets to the head, blood everywhere but parents nowhere to be found, he stepped outside of the house to vomit.

Georgie hadn’t known, at first, that the sisters would stick with him like that.

“What’s fucked up,” Georgie said to Jones two days after, “is that I wished for a minute it was our guys who did it, some psycho who lost it. The way that kid looked at me, like she really thought I came to save her. I don’t want to think about them coming for her family because we made them talk. I don’t want to be the reason they did her like that.”

“What’s the difference between you and some other asshole?” Jones said. “Either nobody’s responsible for nothing, or every last motherfucker on this planet is going to hell someday.”

“Still,” he said. “Lieutenant sends you to talk to someone, don’t say that shit. White people don’t believe in ghosts.”

But he told the doctors everything, and then some. He didn’t care anymore what his file said, as long as it got him the fuck out of that place. And the truth is, right before the army let him go, sent him packing with a prescription and a once-a-month check-in with the shrink at the VA hospital, it had gotten really bad. One night he was sure the older girl had come to him in a dream and told him Peterson had come back and killed her, skinny Peterson who didn’t even like to kill the beetles that slipped into their blankets every night, but nonetheless he’d held Peterson at gunpoint until Ramirez came in and snapped him out of it. Another time, he got convinced Jones really was going to kill him one day, and ran up to him outside of mess hall, grabbing for his pistol; three or four guys had to pull him off. Once, in the daytime, he thought he saw one of the dead girls, bold as brass, standing outside on the street they were patrolling. He went to shake her by the shoulders, ask her what she’d been playing at, pretending to be dead all this time, but he’d only just grabbed her when Ramirez pulled him off of her, shaking his head, and when he looked back at the girl’s tear-streaked face before she ran for it like there was no tomorrow, he realized she was someone else entirely. Ramirez put an arm around him and started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He looked down the road at the place that girl had just been.

“The fuck you think she’s running to so fast, anyway? Someone ought to tell her there’s nowhere to go.”

“This is my daddy,” Esther told the manicurist at Glitter Girl, where Georgie had just let Esther get her nails painted fuchsia. She smiled at him conspiratorially. He had reminded her, gently, that Mommy might not understand about their make-believe family, and they should keep it to themselves for now.

“Day off, huh?” said the manicurist. She looked like a college kid, a cute redhead with dangly pom-pom earrings. Judging by the pocketbook she’d draped over the chair beside her, she was working there for kicks: if the logo on the bag was real, it was worth three of Georgie’s old army paychecks.

“I’m on leave,” he said. “Army. I was in Iraq for a year. Just trying to spend as much time with her as I can before I head back.” He sat up straighter, afraid somehow she’d see through the lie and refuse to believe he’d been a soldier at all. When they’d walked in, she’d looked at him with polite skepticism, as if in one glance she could tell that Esther’s coordinated clothes came from Target, that he was out of real work and his gold watch was a knockoff that sometimes turned his wrist green, like perhaps the pity in her smile would show them they were in the wrong store, without the humiliation of price tags.

“Wow,” she murmured now, almost deferentially. She looked up and swept an arc of red hair away from her face so she could look at him directly. “A year in Iraq. I can’t imagine. Of course you’ll spend all the time you can with her. They grow up so fast.” She shook her head with a sincerity he found oddly charming in a woman who worked in a store that sold halter tops for girls with no breasts.

“Tell you what, sweetheart,” she said to Esther. “Since your daddy’s such a brave man, and you’re such a good girl for letting him go off and protect us, I’m going to do a little something extra for you. Do you want some nail gems?”

Esther nodded, and Georgie turned his head away so the manicurist wouldn’t see him smirk. Nail gems. Cherry blossoms. The things people offered him by way of consolation.

“You’re going away,” she said.

“I’m not,” he said.

“You told the lady you were.”

“It was pretend,” he said, closing his eyes. “This is a make-believe place, it’s OK to pretend here. Just like I’m your pretend Daddy.”

He realized he had bought her silence on one lie by offering her another, but he couldn’t see any way out of it. So they wouldn’t tell Lanae. So the salesgirl would flirt with him a little and do a little something extra for Esther next time. He had made sacrifices. Esther deserved nice things. Her mother worked two jobs and her real father was somewhere in Texas with his second wife. So what if it was the wrong things they were being rewarded for?

At the counter, he pulled out his wallet and paid for Esther’s manicure with the only card that wasn’t maxed out. Esther ignored the transaction entirely, wandering to the other end of the counter and reappearing with a purple flier. It had a holographic background and under the fluorescent mall light seemed, appropriately, to glitter.

Come see Mindy with Glitter Girl! exclaimed the flier. Mindy was a tiny brunette, nine, maybe, who popped a gum bubble and held one hand on her hip, the other extended to show off her nails, purple with gold stars in the middle.

“Everybody wants to see Mindy,” said the manicurist. She winked at them, then ducked down to file his receipt.

“Maybe we could go,” he said, reaching for the flier Esther was holding, but the smile that started for her dimples faded just as quickly.

“I don’t really wanna,” she said. “It’s prolly dumb anyway.”

He followed her eyes to the ticket price and understood that she’d taken in the number of zeros. He was stung for a minute that even a barely five-year-old was that acutely aware of his limitations, then charmed by her willingness to protect him from them. It shouldn’t be like that, he thought; a kid shouldn’t understand that there’s anything her parents can’t do. Then again, he was not her father. He was a babysitter. He had less than a quarter of the price of a ticket in his personal bank account—what was left of his disability check after he helped his mother out with the rent and utilities. He spent most of what Lanae paid him to watch Esther on Esther herself, because it made Lanae feel good to pay him, and him feel good not to take her money. He folded the Mindy flier into his pocket, and gently pulled off the twenty-dollar glittered tiara Esther had perched on her head to leave it on the counter. “Mommy will come back and get it later,” he lied, over and above her objections. Even the way he disappointed her came as a relief.

“Can you believe this shit?” he asked. “Five hundred dollars a pop for a kids’ show? When we were kids, we were happy if we got five dollars for the movies and a dollar for some candy to sneak in.”

“Hey.” Lanae grinned. “I wanted two dollars, for candy and a soda. You were cheap.” She held the flier at arm’s length, then turned it sideways, like Mindy would make more sense that way.

“Esther wants to go to this?”

“The lady at Glitter Girl said all the girls do. She said in most cities the tickets already sold out.”

“That whole store is creepy, anyway. And even if it was free, Esther don’t need to be at a show where some nine-year-old in a belly shirt is singing at people to Come pop my bubble. Fucking perverts,” Lanae said.

“Who’s a pervert?” asked Kenny. Georgie hadn’t heard him come in, but Lanae didn’t look surprised to see him standing in the doorway. He was carrying a steaming, grease-spotted bag that was meant to be dinner, which was usually Georgie’s cue to leave. As Kenny walked toward them, Georgie slid away from Lanae on the couch, not because they’d been especially close to begin with, but because he wanted to maintain the illusion that they might have been. But Lanae stood up anyway, to kiss Kenny on the cheek as she handed him the flier.

“These people,” said Lanae, “are perverts.”

Kenny shook his head at the flier. Georgie silently reminded himself of the sophomore Kenny had dated their senior year of high school, a girl not much bigger than Mindy, and how Kenny used to joke about how easy it was to pick her up and throw her around the room during sex.

“Esther ain’t going to this shit,” Kenny said. “This is nonsense.”

“She can’t,” said Georgie. “You can’t afford it.”

Kenny stepped toward him, then back again just as quickly.

“Fuck you, man,” said Kenny. “Fuck you and the two dollars an hour we pay you.”

He pounded a fist at the wall beside him, and then walked toward the hallway. A second later Georgie heard the bedroom door slam.

“Georgie,” said Lanae, already walking after Kenny, “you don’t have to be an asshole. He’s not the way you remember him. He’s trying. You need to try harder. And this Mindy shit? Esther will forget about it. Kids don’t know. Next week she’ll be just as worked up about wanting fifty cents for bubble gum.”

He went back to the mall alone on the Saturday after he’d pissed Kenny off. He told himself he was there to talk to the manicure girl, pick up a little present for Esther, and meanwhile maybe get something going on in his life besides wet dreams about Lanae, who’d been curt with him ever since the thing he said to Kenny. But when he got to the store, the redhead was leaning across the counter, giving a closed-mouth kiss on the lips to a kid in a UVA sweatshirt. He looked like an advertisement for fraternities. Georgie started to walk out, convinced he’d been wrong about the whole plan, but when the boyfriend turned around and walked away from the counter, the redhead saw him and waved.

“Hey!” she called. “Where’s your little girl?”

“I came to pick up something to surprise her,” he said. “She’s been asking for a princess dress to go with the crown her mom got her.”

He was pleased with the lie, until the redhead, whose name tag read ANNIE, led him over to the dress section and he realized he’d worn suits to weddings that cost less.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “I’m not sure of her size. Maybe I oughta come back with her mother. Meantime, maybe she would like a wand.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Annie. “All the kids are into magic these days.”

Annie grabbed the wand that matched the crown and led him back to the register. The Mindy fliers had been replaced by a counter-length overhead banner. Mindy’s head sat suspended on a background of pink bubbles.

“What’s this Mindy kid do, anyway?” he asked.

“She sings.”

“She sing well?”

“It’s just cute, mostly. She has her own TV show, and her older sister sings, too, but sexier. You get tickets for your daughter?”

“Nah,” he said. “Bit pricey for a five-year-old. Maybe next year.”

“They ought to pay you people more. It’s a shame. It’s important, what you do.”

She said this like someone who had read it somewhere. It would have seemed stupid to disagree and pathetic to nod, so he stood there, waiting for his change.

“Hey,” said Annie. “We’re having this contest to win tickets to the show. Limo ride, dinner, backstage passes, the whole shebang. All you have to do is make a video of your daughter saying why she wants to go. I bet if your daughter talks about how good she was while you were gone, she’d have a shot. It’s right here, the contest info,” she said, picking up a flier and circling the website. “Doesn’t have to be anything fancy—you could do it on a camera phone.”

“Thanks,” he said, reaching to take the bag from her.

“Really,” she said. “I mean it. Who’s got a better story than you? Deadline’s Tuesday. It’d be nice if they gave it to someone who deserved it.”

“Let’s tell how you saved people,” she said. “We have more time left.”

He hesitated, but before he could say no, she asked him to tell her who he’d saved, and looking at her—the hopeful glimmer in her eyes, her pigtails tied with elastics with red beads on the end, matching her jumpsuit and the ruffles on her socks—he realized her intentions had been more sincere than his. How could they not be? Esther didn’t doubt for a second that he had a heroic story to tell. He closed his eyes.

“Two girls,” he said, finally. “A girl about Mindy’s age. She was missing her two front teeth. And her little sister, who she loved a lot. Some bad men wanted to hurt them, and I scared off the bad men and helped them get away.”

“Where’d they go then?”

“Back to their families,” he said. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“Start the movie over,” Esther said. “I’m going to say that too.”

Listen, he told the Channel 4 reporter, I’d love to do a story, but Esther’s mother has this crazy ex-boyfriend who’s been threatening her for years, and if Esther’s last name or picture is in the paper, we could be in a lot of trouble. Look, he told the Channel 7 reporter, the kid’s been through hell this year, with me gone and her mom barely holding it together. It was hard enough for her to say it once. Please contact Glitter Girl for official publicity.

It was the Post reporter that did them in, the Post reporter and the free makeover Esther was supposed to get on her official prize pickup day. He figured it was back-page news, and anyway, Esther was so excited about it. They would paint her nails and take some pictures and give them the tickets, and that would be the end of it. When they walked into the store a week later, there was a giant pink welcome banner that proclaimed CONGRATULATIONS ESTHER! and clouds of pale pink and white balloons. All of the employees and invited local media clapped their hands. Annie was there, beaming at them when they walked in, like she’d just won a prize for her science fair project. The CEO of Glitter Girl, a severe-looking woman with incongruous big blond hair, hugged Esther and shook his hand. Mindy’s music played on repeat over the loudspeakers.

There was cake and sparkling cider. The CEO gave a heartfelt toast. Annie gave him a hug and slipped her phone number into his pocket. One of the other employees led Esther off. She came back in a sequined pink dress, a long brown wig, fluttery fake eyelashes, pink lipstick, and shiny purple nails. People took pictures. He was alarmed at first, but she turned to him and smiled like he’d never seen a kid smile before, and he thought it couldn’t be so bad, to give someone exactly what she wanted. Finally, the CEO of Glitter Girl handed them the tickets. She said Esther had already received some fan mail and handed him a pile of letters. He looked at the return addresses: California, Florida, New York, Canada.

“Is there anything you’d like to say to all your fans, Esther?” shouted one of the reporters.

“I want to say,” said Esther, “I am so happy to win this, but mostly I am so happy to have my daddy.”

She turned and winked at him. She smiled a movie-star grin. There was lipstick on her teeth. For the first time, he realized how badly he’d fucked up.

She called Georgie on her break to ask him about it, but he said it must have been a mix-up, he didn’t know anything about it.

“You’d damn well better not be lying to me, Georgie,” she said, which meant she already knew he was.

That night he called the number Annie had given to him, wondered if she could meet him somewhere, pictured her long legs wrapped around his.

“Look,” she said softly, “I’m sorry. I was being impulsive the other day. You’re married, and I’m engaged, and I’m really proud of you, but it’s just better if everything stays aboveboard. Let’s not hurt anyone we don’t have to.”

Georgie hung up. He went downstairs and watched television with his mother, until she turned it off and looked at him.

“You know I watch the news during my break at the hospital,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” said Georgie. “They’re not still shortchanging you on your break time, are they?”

“Don’t change the subject. Other day I coulda swore I saw Esther on TV. Channel 9. All dressed up like some hoochie princess, and talking about her daddy, who was in the army.”

“Small world,” said Georgie. “A lot of coincidences.”

“Are you the one who encouraged the child to lie, or does the mother have another boyfriend?” yelled one reporter.

Georgie couldn’t hear what Kenny said back, but for the first time in his life, Georgie thought Kenny looked brave.

“Did you do this for the money?” yelled another. “Was this the child’s idea?”

All day, it was like that. Long after Kenny had left, the reporters hung out on the front steps, broadcasting to each other. Lanae had already given back the tickets; beyond that, she had given no comment. He could imagine the face she made when she refused to comment, the steely eyes, the way everything about her could freeze.

“How,” the reporters wanted to know, “did this happen?”

Their smugness made him angry. There were so many things they could never understand about how, so many explanations they’ve never bothered to demand. How could it not have happened?

At night, when no one had opened the door for hours, the reporters trickled off one by one, their questions still unanswered. Lanae must have taken the day off from work: her car was still in its parking space, the lights in the house still on. Finally, he made his way to the house and rang the doorbell. She was at the peephole in an instant. She left the chain on and opened the door as wide as it could go without releasing it.

“Georgie,” she said. She shook her head, then leaned her forehead against the edge of the door so that just her eyeball was looking at his. “Georgie, go away.”

“Lanae,” he said. “You know I didn’t mean it to go like this.”

“Georgie, my five-year-old’s been crying all day. My phone number, here and at my job, is on the Internet. People from Iowa to goddamn Denmark have been calling my house all day, calling my baby a liar and a little bitch. She’s confused. You’re confused. I think you need to go for a while.”

“Where?” he asked.

He waited there on the front step until she’d turned her head from his, stepped back into the house, and squeezed the door shut. He kept standing there, long after the porch light went off, not so much making an argument as waiting for an answer.