of Iraq was barely a week old, and Private First Class Joseph Dwyer’s squadron had beaten back a 24-hour barrage of attacks from Saddam’s army. The fighting had just ended on March 25, 2003, when a hysterical cry filled the relative quiet. An Iraqi man ran toward the Americans car­rying a half-naked boy bleeding from an ugly gash in his leg. Dwyer, a 26-year-old medic on his first tour of his first war, saw the terror on the kid’s face. He knew there could be Iraqi soldiers ready to open fire. Still, he dashed out to meet the man, a large website cradled the boy to his barrel chest, and gently carried him to safety.

A moment like so many others. But an Army Times photographer cap­tured this one: Dwyer rushing back, exuding concern and purpose and, yes, heroism. Some 12 hours later, the picture was on Nightline, on the front pages of newspapers around the country, everywhere from Dwyer’s hometown on New York’s Long Island to the base where he trained in El Paso, Texas, to Robbins, North Carolina, where his new wife awaited his return. It became the first iconic image of the conflict. Behold the U.S. soldier carrying an injured boy. Dwyer became a symbol of the noble, necessary war waged by “liberators.” The next day, when he learned of his fame, in the field once again, he laughed at the absurdity. “I was just one of a group of guys,” he told the Military Times. “I wasn’t standing out more than anyone else.”

Private Dwyer never intended to be a front-page story when he en­listed, a few days after September 11, 2001. He was just another patriotic American. He’d almost lost a brother in the attacks on the Towers. And he’d vowed to his family that “nothing like this is ever going to happen to my country again.” In Iraq, Dwyer did more than his part. When the U.S. invasion started, he was attached to the Third Squadron of the Seventh Cavalry, at the “tip of the tip of the spear” crossing into Iraq. The Cav was deep in the shit most every day. As the 500-vehicle convoy made its way from Kuwait to Baghdad, Dwyer and his fellow soldiers left a trail of Iraqi corpses along the dusty road. Ninety-two days after arriving in country, he started for home. He didn’t feel like a hero. He felt like a murderer, alone and afraid, left to cope in the only way he could, with the aid of this war’s drug of choice. Again he would become a reluctant symbol.

Jon was still stunned. Howwas he supposed to play the happy ex when he didn’t even want a divorce? No Announcements to Display One night Gray Carr took the boys for pizza and stayed out late. Jon waited up and tore into her when she returned. “They’re my boys too!” he screamed. There was no place to cool off. “You couldn’t even go out for a beer,” he says, “without someone bring­ing it up.” He could only go to his bed, right off the living room, while Gray Carr climbed the stairs to her bedroom, directly above Jon’s. The next morning they agreed to put up a bet­ter front for the boys. And then they settled into a yearlong routine.

Gray Carr wakes every day at around five, hits the treadmill, rouses the boys, now 7 and 5, and makes them breakfast. She’s not supposed to make Jon coffee, but she does anyway. (“I don’t give a shit,” she says.) Jon emerges from his room at seven and kisses the boys on his way to the office—four steps away. Gray Carr returns from school drop­off and signals to Jon at his desk, pointing down if she’s going to the basement, waving her hands near her head if she’s off to the shower. He spends the day on the phone managing a group of medical sales reps, and she works, also from home, for a Texas-based biotech company, often lying upside down on a curved yoga bench to read marketing materials. At 2:30 she goes to pick up the boys. Then the two worlds merge.

On a muggy April Monday, Jack runs into the house at around three looking for his dad. Ben follows. Jon scoops Ben up and walks into the kitchen. Gray Carr is there. They do not say hello. “What’s with the cargo pants?” he jokes, noticing that the boys have lifted their pant legs in the heat. “Show Dad what you have there,” Gray Carr says, and Jack presents a sheet with lyrics. “Sing it!” she tells her ex. He grins but says only, “I need to clean out my car.” He vanishes into the garage, then leaves for a doctor’s appoint­ment. The boys spend the rest of the after­noon floating around the house like ghosts. Jon returns to take Ben toT-ball. The night, like every night, ends with story time, a book read by Gray Carr or Jon. She is usually in bed by nine; he watches TV or grabs a brew with some buddies in town.

How does one go more than a year without sex? Gray Carr says she’s too wrapped up in other things—work, kids, writing a book—to think about dating. “My home is my boy­friend,” she says. Jon’s just biding his time. “I got nowhere to bring chicks,” he says. “I would’ve started earlier if I lived outside the house. But there are guys getting their heads blown off in Iraq. A year of me chilling is not that bad.” But he does admit that it’s trickier than that. “This is a very small town. I’m gonna go younger,” he says. “All you need is 20 girls calling up and saying, ‘Did you see that floozy?’” Asked about her ex dating, Gray Carr says, “I’m great with it,” then adds with a half-smile, “She’d better not be some bimbo!”

In early April, Jon and Gray Carr take a grand total of 71 minutes to reach a verbal settlement. When the negotiation, which costs less than $600, is complete, Jon says, “Might as well start dating now.”

Except for one thing: He still shares a roof with his ex. The house was appraised two years ago at $810,000, but Jon doesn’t think it can fetch much more than $725,000. The landscap­ing and basement renovations cost $100,000.

And then there’s the other debt: $15,000 on the three cars, $11,000 on his bike, $17,000 on credit cards. He can’t just throw up his hands and sell the house for three quarters of a mil. So the Piejas’ six-bedroom abode has become a bunch of little homes. The basement, for ex­ample, is cool and dark, a stark contrast to the fishbowl upstairs. Gray Carr works in a room in the corner. Jack and Ben play Wii in the main area. Jon exercises in another room. It’s almost like a backstage, where everyone privately preps for the sometimes pleasant, sometimes painful interactions above. “All four of us escape down here,” Gray Carr says. “It feels like a whole other house.”

The patio is Jon’s haven. Between confer­ence calls, he’s out there gazing toward the third hole. That’s where he once put up a chalkboard inviting hackers to join him for a beer. That’s Jon—the facilitator. Gray Carr runs the show—always has—but Jon makes this arrangement work, sucking it up and swallowing his pride. Last year, on June 17, he gave her a card that said, “Happy Ex Anniversary.” It was a joke. Sort of. “I didn’t feel we gave it an A effort,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve given up on anything. Ever.”

In May, when Gray Carr found a farmhouse two miles down the road and signed a lease, it was hard not to concede. It was a quiet end to a quiet separation. Gray Carr agreed to pay Jon a monthly sum to pare down their credit-card debt while he searches for a buyer for the house.

“I was thinking of turning the basement into a Scotch-and-bourbon thing,” he had said weeks earlier—with a faint smile. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to moving out. Eventually, a young couple will walk into the foyer and marvel at the openness of the place. They will imagine their little ones growing up here, just a short walk from golf and sledding. They will make an offer. And they can only hope their dream house on a hill will see a second marriage as good as its first divorce. ■

perfect green grass in the front and a golf course in the back. It’s 5,600 square feet, six bedrooms, and four and a half baths, nestled on two and a half acres of verdant countryside amid miles of rolling Virginia scenery filled with thoroughbred horses and cute roads named Over the Dam and Shipmadilly. Posted September 17 Jon Pieja sank a good chunk of his 401 (k) into this house, and it is lovely to behold, throwing a strip of shade over him on a Sunday af­ternoon as he sits on his patio, sips iced tea, and watches the golf carts go by. Gray Carr Pieja slides open the screen door and says her yoga class is starting in the basement. She’s 43 going on 29, capable of making skinny women half her age seem out of shape. Jon, who’s 39, nods and waits for the next golfer to stop by for a beer. He’ll go fishing with their sons later, after he takes a spin on his Harley. This is the life the couple imagined on the day in 2004 when they moved in. RocketTheme Except for one thing: Jon and Gray Carr Pieja filed for divorce over a year ago.

Virginia law calls for a 12-month separation prior to an of­ficial breakup, but the collapse of the nation’s housing mar­ket has altered the rules. In St. Petersburg, Florida; Chicago; and Denver, couples find themselves unable to go their sepa­rate ways without taking a loss on the value of their homes. “Separation has an immediate economic impact,” says Gray Carr’s lawyer, Paul Morrison. “Few can afford it. So why not put it off, especially with the real-estate market the way it is now?” When the Piejas split up, Morrison handed each a one-page list of dos and don’ts, forbidding them to cook for each other, do each other’s laundry, eat meals together (except on major holidays), or sit together in church. “My mother said it would be The War of the Roses,” Gray Carr says. “She said she would find me hanging from the chandelier.”

The couple met in 1997, in St. Louis, where both had been sent for new-hire training by the medical-supply company Steris. Gray Carr was going through a horrible breakup, and Jon lifted her spirits with an easy smile and a quick joke. “He was young and vivacious,” she says. “We hit it off.” Jon’s version: They met at a bar and hooked up in an elevator that night.

They were a neat match. Gray Carr was raised on a North Carolina tobacco farm and attacked life like a pit bull. Jon came from Jersey and sauntered happily through life like a golden retriever. Mimes for their Georgetown wedding? Sure. A hon­eymoon in Botswana? Why not? They moved to his home state and then to Cleveland, he for a marketing job, she for one in sales. They had two boys, Jack and Benjamin, and Gray Carr quit to raise them. Then “for better” slid toward “for worse.”

Jon took a job at a security-technology company in Washington, D.C. But he didn’t much like it. And he couldn’t find an affordable house near his office. Benjamin, the younger son, developed a severe respiratory disease that had him wak­ing up at all hours gasping for air. Gray Carr hurtled into post­partum depression. One of their two dogs died. And the moving company hired to haul the famiJy’s belongings from Cleveland went belly-up. The Piejas’ stuff was lost in a storage facility for months. They stayed in a Marriott in Fairfax, Virginia, with a toddler (age 2V2) and a baby (two months) and no crib. “Our whole life,” Gray Carr says, “was gone.”

But the house in Virginia brought hope. Gray Carr found it online, while searching an area where she used to go fox hunting.

It was in the town of Warrenton, in Fauquier County, where the median family income ap­proached six figures and most adults left the county for work. Jon would be one of them, making the 90-minute drive to D.C. every morning so his kids could go sledding on the fairways. They bought the home for $685,000, and Gray Carr turned it into a showplace, dot­ting the bureaus with pictures and hanging lush draperies. Soon Jon found a new job that allowed him to work from home.

The best thing about the place was its open­ness. The granite-slabbed kitchen faced the living room. The stairs led up to a balcony overlooking the foyer. The space felt like one enormous room, which appealed to Gray Carr’s “control freak” tendencies—”I like to keep my thumb on the children,” she says— and Jon’s welcoming, grab-a-drink-and-put-on-some-tunes vibe. “I’m a Buffett fan,” he says. “I don’t get stressed out.” There was no need for tucked-away hallways or quiet rooms, no need for privacy.

But Gray Carr’s depression wouldn’t go away, and Jon’s easy-breezy style morphed— in his wife’s eyes—from a blessing to a flaw. “Jon is happy where he is,” Gray Carr says. “I’m not.” The master bed grew cold. Gray Carr turned to yoga for healing, but Jon saw her new passion as an escape from him. On her birthday in 2007, after several failed at­tempts at communication, Gray Carr told her husband that she was unhappy. “He just stared at me like I had eight heads,” she says. That’s where their stories part for good. Gray Carr viewed her confession as a final warn­ing. Jon saw it as a prompt to start working on their relationship. In January 2008, they went to a counselor in D.C, and there Gray Carr told her husband that she wanted a di­vorce. Jon burst into tears.

The two rode home in silence. Jon fixed himself a Jack and Coke. Gray Carr packed her things and trudged upstairs to a guest room. She sat up wondering what would happen next. Jon sat up wondering what had just happened.

For days and weeks afterward, they roamed the house in virtual silence, chirping happily with the boys but saying little to each other. Gray Carr, never one for self-pity, went at the situation head-on. “I wanted to come out of this in a positive light,” she says. “I prayed four or five times a day, ‘Let this divorce be happy.’” She “froze” everything in the house in place so the kids wouldn’t sense trouble. The wedding pictures remained right where they were. A dry-erase calendar went up in

1             | COUNTER CULTURE COFFEE

Before coffee is transformed into beans, it’s tropi¬cal fruit, and one reason Counter Culture excels is that it treats new-crop coffee like just-harvested produce. The crew behind the Durham, North Carolina, company does its cooking when the so-called coffee cherries are at their seasonal peak—right after they’re picked, dried, and milled. Combine that with direct-trade sourc-ing from the best farms, and just try to go back to the mass-produced stuff. (919-361-5282, counterculturecofifee .com)

2             I STUMPTOWN COFFEE ROASTERS

The indie-roaster superstar Duane Sorenson, the man behind Portland’s Stumptown, Panel LCD Monitor has built a reputation as a cocky, public¬ity-friendly rebel. But he backs up his bluster, dropping more than $100 on occasion for an ex-ceptional pound of beans, auditioning cafe owners who want to serve his goods, and even setting up a charity to provide bikes to Rwandan farmers to make sure they get those precious cherries to the mill in double-quick time. (503-230-7797, stumptoivncoffee .com)

3 I ZOKA COFFEE ROASTER 8 TEA COMPANY

Seattle was the cradle of this country’s biggest coffee revolution— the birthplace of Starbucks. But the Goliath didn’t intimidate small-and-proud Zoka, which has relied on quick turnaround to carve out its niche. Owner Jeff Babcock buys top-notch, sustainably

grown coffee beans and gets them into customers’ hands hours after they’re roasted. (866-965-2669, zokacoffee.com)

4 I INTELLIGENTSIA COFFEE

Head buyer Geoff Watts was one of the earliest prac¬titioners of direct trade: He helps farmers grow better beans by holding tastings with them in Peru and Kenya to communicate exactly what he wants from the finished product— and compensating growers when they outdo themselves. In the process, he’s burned through two passports. (888-945-9786, intelli-gentsiacoffee.com)

5 I TERROIR

George Howell was stamping his bags with roasted-on dates in 1975, when America was still hopped up on Folg-ers, and he’s had his hand in almost every major devel-opment in the Java realm since—most notably cofound-ing the Cup of Excellence, a sort of coffee Olympics that connects stel¬lar farms with the fanatics willing to pay premium prices. Now Howell runs Massachusetts-based Terroir, which continues to push the envelope by serving only single-farm varieties—so no Breakfast Blend here. (866-444-5282, terroircoffee.com)

If You Must Go Out

YOU SHOULDN’T PICK A PLACE TO SAVOR A COFFEE (OR A CAPPUCCINO] JUST BECAUSE IT HAS FREE WI-FI. THE BEST NEW SPOTS HAVE HOUSE-BAKED PASTRIES AND MUSIC YOU’D CHOOSE TO LISTEN TO—PLUS THEY AREN’T CHOCK-FULL OF TABLE-HOGGING WANNABE SCREENWRITERS.

Second Stop Cafe If you aren’t immediately won over by the sights and sounds-Leonard Cohen rasps from the speakers, a La Marzocco hums as it turns out Stumptown espresso, and salvaged objects like retro radios peek out from the nooks-the smells will get you: The pastries at this Williamsburg hot spot are made on the premises by a Le Bernardin alum. (524 Lorimer St., Brooklyn, 718-486-6850; secondstopcafe.com)

SOVA Espresso & Wine Though it’s fair to assume that a coffee shop-cum-wine bar serving decanted French press won’t excel at hospitality, this H Street Corridor cafe has zero attitude, Intelligentsia coffees, and well-worn furni-ture that invites you to come on in. (1359 H St. NE, Washington, D.C., 202-397-3080; sovadc.com)

Crema Cafe

At most universities, coffee culture means opining about Sartre over Frappuccinos. But with Harvard professors, serious-looking undergrads, and tattooed twentysome-things nibbling on inventive sandwiches and sipping well-executed Terroir coffee, Crema seems like it’s straight out of the coffeehouse heyday of the eighties. (27 Brattle St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 617-876-2700; cremacambridge.com)

Zona Rosa Caffe

In the land where trips to the local Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf guarantee C-lister sight¬ings, the Latin art and live jazz at Zona is transporting. But going the alternative route doesn’t mean giving up the foam and sugar: Those in the know order their cappuccinos spiked with cinnamony Mexican chocolate. (15 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena, California, 626-793-2334; zonarosacaffe.com)

Albina Press

Devotees like to say the Press-in North Portland, where every pole seems to come with a fixed-gear bike attached-does Stumptown coffee better than the roaster’s own cafes do, but they might just be par¬tial to the space in back that regulars treat like their living room. (4637 N. Albina Ave., Portland, Oregon, 503-282-5214)

IN PRAISE OF DINER COFFEE

The fact that it doesn’t elicit rhapsodic talk about floral notes and syrupy body is exactly what makes diner coffee so satisfying: It isn’t intended to inspire anything other than the lifting of heavy eyelids. Bottomless cups of slightly scalded drip—either saved from bitterness by sugar and milk or taken, as was Agent Dale Cooper’s in Twin Peaks, “black as midnight on a moonless night”— have helped you face too many long days (and shake off too many long nights] to be forsaken entirely. So while the artfully executed stuff is recommended for most occasions, keep this in mind: You don’t reach for vintage Bordeaux when you just need to get