I fumbled for my discharge papers, but my hands were shaking too hard. The young officer glanced at the paperwork Sophia thrust at him and shook his head at me.
— Ma’am, you’re going to have to leave the premises.
I didn’t cry when they took my medals. I didn’t cry in the hospital tent. But I cried then, standing on the sidewalk as the gate clanged shut, the house I’d promised my grandfather I’d keep safe locked behind strangers. Through the window, my father’s silhouette never moved.
I slept in my car that night, staring at the dark outline of what should have been mine. By morning, a for-sale sign was stabbed into the lawn. My phone buzzed with a text from my mother: “You should return to base. There’s nothing here for you.”
But then a new message pinged from a number I hadn’t seen in years, an old Army contact: “I found something in the deed records. You need to see this before they finish scrubbing it.”
