Part Two: Rebecca

To understand what happened on that terrace you have to understand what Pamela Gable had actually walked into, and what she had spent two years standing next to.

Rebecca Ann Caldwell was a middle school art teacher who had married a second lieutenant at twenty-four knowing exactly what that meant, and who had told me on our fourth date that she had a rule about not dating soldiers and that she was breaking it, and that I should not make her regret it.

She was funny in a way I am not.

She was untidy in a way that used to genuinely upset me and which I would now pay money to have back in my house.

She could not be on time to anything and she did not care, and after eleven years I had stopped caring either, which I consider the single greatest personal growth of my adult life.