He was awake before I finished the sentence. He always had been a light sleeper. For a few seconds, he said nothing. Then he rolled onto his side and looked at me.
“You really want me to say it?”
“No,” I said honestly. “But say it anyway.”
The moonlight coming through the curtains outlined his face in pale blue. At sixty-three, Mark had more silver in his hair than brown, and the lines around his eyes were deeper than when I’d first met him. But there was something steady in him that had only strengthened with time.
He chose his words carefully.
“Danny said he was stationed at Bagram during a certain period. Then later he described an assignment that would have put him somewhere else entirely.”
“Maybe he just misspoke.”
“Maybe.”
He paused.
“He also mentioned serving with a unit designation that doesn’t fit the ribbon set he was wearing.”
I stared at him.
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“I know,” he said softly. “Most people wouldn’t.”
The gentleness in his voice irritated me more than if he’d been sharp.
“You’re talking about my brother like he’s a file on your desk.”
“I’m trying not to.”
I pushed the blanket down and sat up.
“This is exactly why people think government men never retire. You all keep doing the job at the dinner table.”
Mark didn’t react. He had heard my temper before and knew better than to step in front of it. After a moment, he said:
“Emily, I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“Then don’t.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
That made me turn and look at him.
“From what?”
He sat up too, resting his forearms on his knees.
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s just a man exaggerating old stories because he wants his family to be proud. That happens. More than you’d think.”
His honesty took some of the heat out of me.
“And if it’s more than that, then better to learn it quietly,” he said, “before life learns it loudly.”
That line stayed with me.
The next morning, I got up early and made coffee in my parents’ kitchen while the house was still dim and cold. My mother liked the old drip machine, not the pod kind. Said coffee ought to smell like coffee, not plastic. I stood at the counter in my robe, listening to the gurgle of the pot and looking out at the backyard where frost still silvered the grass.
Daniel came in wearing jeans and a thermal shirt. No medals, no uniform, just my brother again.
“Morning, Emmy,” he said.
Nobody had called me Emmy except Daniel and my late grandmother.
“Morning.”
He poured himself coffee black and leaned against the sink. For a moment, we were just two kids again, avoiding school by lingering in the kitchen. He smiled.
“Mom’s still in heaven over last night.”
“I noticed.”
“There was something in the way he said it that sounded almost weary. I watched him stir nothing into his coffee.
“Did you?”
