I follow my father, nestling my heel into the outline of his before I press the rest of my foot into the sand. My footprint is less than half the size of his. Wet sand oozes up between my toes, saltwater bubbling through the grains. Pools of water gather in his deep toe-divots. My toes barely pock the sand.

I hold onto my mother’s hand and raise my other arm for balance. I am too short to walk gracefully in my father’s long strides, so I stretch and wobble and lean into my mother’s support. 

My parents lead me through the dead and dying horseshoe crabs littering Slaughter Beach. Their brown shells dot the beach like river rocks. 

My father is far ahead of us. He holds a long, knobby stick that he pokes into the sand as he walks. While I watch him, my mother tells me that the crabs are stuck. They live deep underwater and come ashore to lay their eggs, but they can’t make it back when the tide is low.  My father is checking for any that have survived the high sun’s heat. 

I look up from my feet. My father pokes his stick into the same spot again and again. 

My mother’s hold on my hand tightens and she stops. I pause, one foot in different footprints, caught between the choice of moving forward or backward. 

She shouts at my father over the wind and waves with just the right mix of amusement and seriousness. She tells him to stop. He should leave it be.

He continues to poke. 

A small crab bursts from its burrow after the fourth poke. It snaps its claws, scuttling toward my father.

He jumps back, and the stick flies out of his hand. He turns tail down the beach, kicking up sand and ocean water behind him. Later, I will develop an obsession with fossils and will learn that horseshoe crabs are living relics. The crab population will plummet beyond recovery. I will understand the sacrifice they made in dragging themselves onto inhospitable land for their children. For now, I laugh and point at my father, my nose scrunched up, my eyes half-moons.

*

My mother kneels in the empty, white porcelain bathtub and draws me into her chest. Her right arm supports my back while her left hand cradles my head. I fuss and squirm while she strokes my hair and rocks side to side. I am upset that she has interrupted my morning cartoons.

Her curly, hip-length hair blocks the light while she holds my head in the crook of her neck. I smell the sweat on her skin mix with the lingering scent of laundry detergent on her sweater. Her spine curves toward the ceiling. On the other side of the shower curtain, a radio spits static and words I can’t understand.

A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 A.M.; all passengers killed on impact. My father works on the Dover Air Force Base’s flightline, 170 miles away from the destruction. 

A second plane has crashed into the World Trade Center’s South Tower at 9:03 A.M.; all passengers killed on impact. My father keeps working. Murmurs of what happened travel through the ranks like tidal waves on the beach.

The third plane crashes into the Pentagon at 9:37 A.M.; all passengers killed on impact.

My father leaves the flightline to watch the news.

The fourth plane crashes into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:02 A.M.; 33 passengers killed on impact. Twenty-six minutes later, both towers of the World Trade Center collapse. Every Airman on base scrambles to put up defenses. My father loses track of details in the adrenaline.

*

Fireflies wink in and out of existence in Dover’s night sky. They light up our front-yard oak tree, dancing between the leaves. From the kitchen window, the bugs seem distant and unreachable, but I know the truth. I sit through dinner with uncontained excitement, shoveling food into my mouth and staring at my father while he eats. His time in basic training made him a quick eater. My mother and I are, too. We clear our plates within ten minutes of sitting down.

My father cleans the table, puts away leftovers, and washes dishes. I wait by the door and struggle with my pink Velcro sneakers. When he’s done, he helps me wiggle my feet into my shoes. He opens the front door. I run down the concrete steps and into the yard, where I twirl in the dew-damp grass. The colors of my rainbow tutu blur together, and I tilt my head back.

Above me, the fireflies buzz in the heavy air, bobbing up and down like buoys in the ocean. I grasp at them, but my fingers close around empty air. The fireflies are closer to me than the tallest branches of the oak tree or the distant stars, but I am still too small to reach them, even on tiptoes.

My father joins me in his two-dollar foam flip-flops and the red flannel pajamas my grandmother made. He scoops me up, his strong hands under my arms. My feet kick in the air until he plops me on his shoulders. He holds me steady, but my hands scramble against his close-shaved head. When I feel secure on my father’s shoulders, trusting in his hands, I reach for the fireflies. 

At that moment, I am bigger than my father. He raises me above him. I swipe at the air, emboldened by his encouragement, until I snatch a firefly from its lazy flight. I clasp my hands together and gasp. The firefly bumps into my palms and crawls across my skin.

My father lifts me from his shoulders, sets me on the ground, and keeps a hand on my arm until he is sure I am steady on my feet. He kneels and peeks through the tiny gap in my fingers at the buzzing light.

You got a good one, he says. 

My mother, watching from the porch, brings us a Mason jar. She walks barefoot in the grass. My father helps me guide the firefly into the jar. Later, when my mother tells me to go inside and wash up, the fireflies we gathered form a constellation.

After my mother tucks me in, my father stands on the porch and looks at the stars. He rests his forearms on the railing and crosses one foot behind the other. His hands hang over the edge. He holds a Marlboro light in one hand and the neck of a cold Rolling Rock beer bottle in the other. Condensation gathers on the glass and wets his calloused hand. Next to him, the fireflies flicker and bump into the glass. The sky is clear.

My father takes a final puff from his cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray on the railing. He finishes his beer, reaches for the Mason jar, and unscrews the lid. He watches the fireflies drift away.

*

Helicopters fly the remains of the Pentagon victims into Dover Port Mortuary. The only other port mortuary on the continent, Travis Air Force Base in California, closed earlier in the year. Two days after the attacks, President Bush declares the War on Terror. One month later, on October 7th, the invasion of Afghanistan begins. Two years later, in March of 2003, the invasion of Iraq begins. The bodies and remains of soldiers, civilians, and terrorists arrive at the mortuary in droves. Dover becomes the nation’s dumping ground for tragedies. 

Up to 37,500 horseshoe crabs die each year. Destruction of wetlands makes Delaware’s Bethany Beach Firefly the most endangered species of firefly in the country. 184 casualties from the Pentagon and 7,078 (and counting) casualties from the War on Terror arrive at Dover Port Mortuary, now named the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs.

Immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the mortuary scrambles to accommodate the unprecedented amount of death. The once-small facility grows to over 150 personnel, many of whom spilled out of the main building and into four rented mobile home trailers.

As a member of the equipment maintenance squadron, my father transports equipment and tools in and out of the mortuary. He sees enough to understand the unease rippling through Dover.

*

We have a Rottweiler named Kacy. She is protective to a fault, a combination of Rottweiler genetics and love for my mother. She is big and scares people. When she meets someone new, she sits in their peripheral vision, stares at them, and growls if they look at her. She is prone to snapping at strangers who force their affection on her.

I play dress-up with Kacy. I put glittery plastic hair clips on her ears and squeeze her into a tutu. I make her roll on her back so I can play doctor and listen to her heartbeat. When I decide I want to be a photographer, she models for my disposable camera. My mother buys me a bright pink photo album that I fill with blurry photos of her, and I spell her name “Casey” on the cover. She follows me through the house all day, each flat-footed step of my own punctuated by the click of her nails on the hardwood floor.

The vet finds cancer in Kacy’s foot, so they amputate one of her toes. She comes home with a cast, a limp, and anesthesia-droopy eyes. She’s too tired to play and can’t keep up with me. I ask my mother what’s wrong with her, if she’s okay, if she’s going to die like the crabs.

My mother says that she isn’t going to die, but I don’t believe her. I’m convinced she’s terminally ill. I don’t know what cancer means, but I don’t like the way my mother says it. I say I need to help Kacy, so she hands me a marker and tells me to draw on her cast.

She says it will cheer her up. Any time you see someone with a cast, you can ask to draw on it, and when they look at your art, they’ll feel better.

I spend hours drawing hearts and smiley faces and flowers on Kacy’s cast with every color Sharpie my mother finds in the junk drawer. She lays still while I hunch over her cast, her half-closed eyes trained on me. 

*

We eat dinner and I stuff food in my face and kick my feet and stare out the window. I wait by the door, struggling into my shoes. My father walks past me to the couch with a beer in hand. I ask him if we can go outside, so he stands, puts on his flipflops, and opens the door. I run down the steps and twirl in the grass but stop mid-spin when he does not follow me to the fireflies.

I ask him to pick me up.

He says no. He can’t. He’s sorry.

I ask why.

He shakes his head. Just not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

He sits on the plastic porch chair and lights a cigarette. You can play, though. I’ll stay with you.

I stand in place, staring at him. I have never known my father to be unable to do anything for me. I turn and look across the yard at the quiet neighborhood road. The streetlamps cast yellow pools of light on the asphalt that bend and distort around the curb. I would normally search the yard for rocks or turn over garden stones to catch roly-polies or play pretend fairies with my Barbies, but the thick humidity lays heavy on my shoulders and the heat brings a sheen of sweat to my forehead. The firefly buzz drones in my ears. I can’t distinguish one from the other, or from the oak leaves or the night sky or the streetlamps. Yellow bleeds into green bleeds into blue. I am crying.

*

My father herniates a spinal disk in his lower back while working on the flightline. He works on profile for the last year of his service—the military term for having a documented injury that prevents a soldier from performing their duties. 

After this, I do not know what to expect when he comes home. He might pick me up and hug me or he might walk past me to the fridge and to his beer. He might snap at Kacy for begging or pat her on the head or push her off when she jumps to greet him. On his days off, we might go to the beach or the playground.

One spring evening, we spend the night inside, gathered around the coffee table. Rain beats against the windows, and I jump every time I hear a clap of thunder. It is dark in our house. We lost power. My parents light candles and Kacy curls next to my crisscrossed legs, her breathing steady and her body warm.

In the dim light, we draw pictures. There’s a stack of printer paper in the middle of the table. Markers, stickers, and glittery gel pens lay strewn across the tabletop and on the floor around us. We all snack from bowls of potato chips, pretzels, and Skittles. 

My father draws a stick figure with long, curly hair. Then he draws another stick figure behind a green, squiggly bush. He gives it a smiley face and binoculars. He holds it up to my mother and tells her this is how they met. She gasps and throws a handful of potato chips at him.

Then, it’s my turn. My father and I lean over the same paper. I tell him what to draw, and he draws it. A tree, a bush, a bluebird. Put some fireflies in the sky. 

*

My father holds my hand and walks with me toward the ocean. He has left his stick behind. Our jeans are rolled up to the knees and our feet are bare. My mother follows us with a digital camera. I try to place my footprints beside his, left next to left and right next to right. 

We stop when the tide approaches us. My father holds both my hands. He counts down from three. The wave rushes toward us and he swings me above it. I shriek when the cold water touches my toes. 

The tide recedes and my father lets me down. Then he kneels beside me, one hand on my shoulder. He is eye level with me. The clouds blend into gray water, and the tidal foam blends into sand. He points toward the horizon and says something I won’t remember. I follow my father’s direction, facing the thin line where sky meets sea. My mother’s digital camera clicks, and I wonder where my fireflies have gone. We appear to stand on an open, empty land.