The leash dug into my calloused palm, a leather lifeline connecting me to the only creature on this earth I trusted.
“Titan, heel.”
My voice was a low growl, rough like gravel in a mixer. It was the voice of a man who hadn’t used it for anything softer than a command in four years.
Titan didn’t move.
My German Shepherd, eighty-five pounds of disciplined muscle and lethal intelligence, stood frozen on the cracked sidewalk of the Gaslamp Quarter. His ears—usually swiveling like radar dishes, cataloging every threat in our perimeter—were locked forward. His body was a statue cast in tan and black iron.
“Titan,” I snapped, yanking the leash harder. “Now.”
Nothing.
In three years of service, through the worst episodes where I was shaking on the floor and he was the heavy weight keeping me tethered to gravity, Titan had never disobeyed. Not once. He was more machine than dog, programmed for precision, calibrated to my heart rate. If I spiked, he alerted. If I panicked, he guarded. If I walked, he walked.
But tonight, he was ignoring a direct order.
My heart hammered against my ribs—a staccato rhythm I knew too well. Threat assessment. My eyes, trained in the kill houses of Virginia and the dusty hellscapes of Yemen, scanned the environment. Shadows. Neon signs buzzing like trapped flies. The stench of stale urine and ocean salt. And people. The invisible people. The ones I had trained myself not to see.
There was a figure huddled in the recessed doorway of a boarded-up electronics store. Small. Filthy. A pile of rags that might have been pink once.
“Titan, let’s go,” I hissed, stepping forward to physically drag him if I had to. Survival meant momentum. You stop, you die. You stop, you feel. And I was done feeling.
But Titan did something that stopped the air in my lungs. He didn’t just resist; he pulled. He dragged me, his claws clicking frantically on the concrete, straight toward the bundle of rags.
“No! Titan, no!”
He ignored me. He closed the distance and sat down directly in front of the homeless kid, his nose inches from a matted head of hair that smelled of street grime and sickness.
The child looked up.
The world didn’t just tilt; it disintegrated.
Those eyes.
I stopped breathing. The neon sign above us flickered, casting a sickly blue light over the scene, but I saw them clearly. Gray-blue. The color of the Atlantic in winter. The color of a storm rolling in over the desert.
I knew those eyes. I saw them every time I closed my own. I saw them in the nightmares that woke me screaming, drenched in sweat, reaching for a phantom rifle.
“What’s…” My voice cracked, a sound so broken it shamed me. I cleared my throat, forcing the Commander back into the driver’s seat. “What’s your name?”
The girl stared at me. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven, but her face was a map of tragedies no child should ever know. Hollow cheeks. Skin pulled too tight over fragile bones. She looked like a ghost haunting her own body.
“Lily,” she whispered.
The sound of that name hit me like a sniper round to the chest plate. Lily.
No. Impossible.
My Lily was dead. My Lily died four years ago in a compound in Syria. I knew this. I knew it like I knew the weight of my sidearm. I had signed the papers. I had held my wife, Sarah, while she bled out, her life leaking onto my hands, begging me to find our baby. I had torn through burning rubble until my team dragged me away, screaming. I had buried an empty casket.
“Lily,” I repeated, the word tasting like ash. “That’s… that’s a pretty name.”
My hands started to shake. Not a tremor, but a violent seizure of the nerves. I shoved them into the pockets of my Type III working uniform, praying she wouldn’t see.
The girl didn’t answer. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. Her gaze had dropped to Titan. Her hand—small, filthy, with fingernails bitten to the quick—reached out slowly. It was the movement of someone who expected to be hit.
Titan whined. A sound so high and desperate it tore through me. He leaned into her touch, pressing his massive head against her scrawny chest.
“You like dogs?” I asked, crouching down. Keep distance. Don’t threaten. Basic engagement protocol.
She nodded slowly. Her fingers buried themselves in the thick fur behind Titan’s left ear. She scratched a specific spot, a deep, rhythmic motion.
“I had a puppy in my dreams,” she said, her voice raspy, unused. “He had a star.”
The air left the street. The sounds of the city—the distant sirens, the drunk laughter from a bar down the block—faded into a buzzing static.
“A star?” I choked out.
“Yeah.” She parted Titan’s fur, revealing the skin behind his ear. “Like this.”
There, hidden beneath the black and tan coat, was a patch of white fur. The size of a dime. Shaped like a jagged, irregular star.
I fell back, my ass hitting the cold concrete.
Nobody knew about that mark.
Titan was a rescue. A street dog found in Syria by the coalition forces, brought back, and put through the K9 program. I got him two years ago. I knew about the mark because I groomed him. But nobody else knew. It wasn’t in his file. It wasn’t visible unless you went looking for it.
Unless you had played with him.
Unless you were there.
“Where…” I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. “Where are your parents, Lily?”
She shrugged, a small, jerky motion. “Don’t got none. Been by myself long time.”
“How long?”
She held up four fingers. Dirty. Trembling.
Four years.
“Where did you live before?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “Before you were by yourself?”
“Don’t remember,” she mumbled, her eyes glazing over. She was dissociating. I recognized the thousand-yard stare. I saw it in the mirror every morning. “Just… loud noises. And fire. And the big bird in the sky.”
Big bird in the sky. A helicopter.
“What happened with the big bird?”
“Man crying,” she recited, her voice flat, robotic. “Lady not moving. Everything loud. Boom.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, and for a second, I was back there. The heat. The smell of cordite and roasting meat. The screaming. Sarah’s eyes going dim. The helicopter blades chopping the smoke-filled air.
Man crying. That was me. I was the man crying.
I opened my eyes and looked at the girl. Really looked at her. Beneath the dirt, beneath the years of starvation and neglect, I saw the curve of her nose. Sarah’s nose. I saw the set of her jaw. My mother’s jaw.
And those eyes. Sullivan eyes.
“I need to make a call,” I said, pulling my phone out. My fingers were numb. I could barely unlock the screen.
The girl flinched, pulling her hand back from Titan. “You calling the people who take kids away?”
Panic spiked in her voice. Real, raw terror.
“No,” I lied. Or maybe I wasn’t lying. “I’m calling the people who help.”
“They always take kids away,” she spat, scrambling backward, pressing her spine against the brick wall. “I’m nobody. I don’t need help.”
“You’re not nobody,” I said, my voice fierce. “You’re somebody. You’ve always been somebody.”
I dialed 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I need… I need police and medical to Fifth and Market,” I stammered. “I found… I found a missing child.”
“Is the child in danger, sir?”
“No. Yes. She’s homeless. She’s… I think she’s my daughter.”
Silence on the line. “Sir?”
“My daughter,” I said, the reality of it crashing into me like a tidal wave. “Lily Sullivan. She… she was declared KIA four years ago in Syria. But she’s here. She’s right here.”
“Sir, stay on the line. Dispatching units now.”
I hung up and looked at them. Titan had laid down, his head in her lap, eyes closed in pure bliss. He hadn’t looked that peaceful in the two years I’d had him. He knew. He knew before I did. He sensed the blood, the bond, the scent of the past we both shared.
The sirens wailed in the distance, getting louder.
Lily looked up, fear tightening her face. She started to hum. A low, shaky melody.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…
I broke.
I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle the sob that tried to escape. Sarah used to sing that. Every night. She’d rock Lily in the nursery, the one with the yellow walls, and sing that song until Lily’s eyelids fluttered shut.
“Where did you learn that?” I whispered.
“Don’t know,” she murmured, rocking back and forth. “Just inside my head. Makes the scared go away.”
“Yeah,” I wept, tears finally spilling over, hot and stinging on my cheeks. “It makes the scared go away.”
The police cruiser screeched to a halt at the curb, lights flashing red and blue, painting us in a chaotic strobe. Two officers stepped out, hands hovering near their belts.
“Commander Sullivan?” one asked, seeing my uniform.
“Here,” I said, not standing up. I couldn’t leave her level. “This is Lily.”
“You said… you said she’s your deceased daughter?” The officer, a guy named Martinez, looked skeptical. I didn’t blame him. I sounded insane. I felt insane.
“I know how it sounds,” I said, reaching for my wallet. I pulled out the photo. The one I kept behind my ID. The one with creased corners and faded colors. Sarah and Lily, three days before the world ended. “Look.”
Martinez looked at the photo. Then at the girl. Then back at the photo.
“There’s a resemblance,” he admitted, crouching down. “But sir, four years… trauma, malnutrition… it changes how a kid looks.”
“She knows the dog,” I insisted, desperation clawing at my throat. “She knows a mark on him that nobody knows. She remembers the helicopter. She sings her mother’s song.”
An ambulance arrived. Then a dark sedan—Child Protective Services.
A woman stepped out. Elena. She looked tired but kind. She approached Lily like you approach a wounded animal. Low. Slow. Soft.
“Hi, honey,” Elena said. “I’m Elena. Are you hungry?”
Lily didn’t answer. She buried her face in Titan’s neck.
“She needs to go to the hospital,” Elena said, standing up and addressing me. “She’s severely malnourished. We need to check for abuse.”
“I’m coming with her,” I said. It wasn’t a request.
“Sir, you can’t,” Martinez said gently. “Not until we verify ID. You’re a stranger to her legally.”
“I am her father!” I roared, standing up. Titan growled low in his throat—warning the officers, not me.
“Commander, stand down,” Martinez said, his hand dropping to his taser.
I froze. I was a Navy SEAL. I could disable both of them before they drew a weapon. But that wouldn’t help Lily. That would get me arrested and her taken away into a system that had already failed her.
I forced my hands to unclench. I forced my breath to steady.
“Fine,” I said, my voice trembling with restrained violence. “But the dog goes.”
“What?” Elena blinked. “Animals aren’t allowed in the ambulance.”
“He is a service animal,” I lied. Well, half-lied. He was. “And he is currently servicing that child. Look at her.”
Lily was clutching Titan’s fur so hard her knuckles were white. If they separated them, she would shatter. I knew it. Titan knew it.
“If you take that dog away, she will panic,” I said. “And you will have a combative, traumatized child on your hands. Or, you let the dog go, and she stays calm.”
Elena looked at Lily. Then at Titan, who was staring at her with eyes that promised violence if she tried to move him.
“Okay,” she sighed. “The dog goes.”
They loaded her onto the stretcher. Titan hopped up beside her, curling his massive body around her small frame, a living shield.
I stood on the sidewalk, the red taillights of the ambulance burning into my retinas as they faded into the night. I was alone. For the first time in years, I was truly, completely alone.
But I wasn’t empty.
For four years, I had been a walking corpse. A vessel for grief and rage. But as I watched those lights disappear, I felt something stir in the graveyard of my chest. Something painful. Something terrifying.
Hope.
My daughter was alive. She was broken, she was lost, and she didn’t know who I was. But she was breathing.
I pulled my phone out and dialed the only number that mattered right now. My CO.
“Sullivan?” he answered, sounding groggy.
“Sir,” I said, my voice steady for the first time that night. “I need emergency leave. Indefinite.”
“Jake, it’s 2100 hours. What’s happened?”
“I found her, sir.”
“Found who?”
“Lily.”
A long silence. “Jake… your daughter is dead.”
“No, sir,” I said, looking at the empty spot on the sidewalk where she had sat. “She’s been waiting for me. And I’m done walking past her.”
I hung up.
The war wasn’t in Syria anymore. The war was here. The enemy was a system that had thrown my child away like garbage. And God help anyone who stood between me and getting her back.
Part 2
The next seventy-two hours weren’t measured in minutes; they were measured in heartbeats, each one a painful thud against the wall of my chest.
I couldn’t go back to the base. I couldn’t sit in my apartment. I walked. I walked the same streets where I’d found her, Titan’s phantom weight missing from my left side. The ghost of a leash hung from my hand.
Every shadow looked like her. Every stray dog looked like him.
And every time I closed my eyes, I was back there.
Syria. Four years ago.
The flashback hit me in the middle of a grocery store aisle, paralyzing me next to the canned peas.
The heat was the first thing. A suffocating, dusty heat that tasted of copper and ancient stone. We were extracting. The mission had gone sideways—intel was bad, the compound was rigged. “Get to the chopper!” Miller had screamed, his voice distorting over the comms.
I had Sarah’s hand. She was running, clutching Lily to her chest. Lily was laughing. She thought it was a game. She loved the “Big Bird.”
“Jake!” Sarah’s scream wasn’t a game.
The mortar round didn’t whistle. It just arrived.
The world turned white. Then silence. A ringing silence that felt like being underwater.
I woke up ten feet away. The dust was thick, choking. I crawled. My legs didn’t want to work, but I dragged myself through the debris.
“Sarah?”
I found her. She was staring at the sky, her eyes wide, glassing over. There was shrapnel in her neck.
“Lily,” she gargled, blood bubbling past her lips. “Find… Lily.”
“I’ve got you,” I sobbed, pressing my hands against the wound, trying to keep the life inside her. “I’ve got you, baby.”
“No… Lily… she… ran.”
I looked up. The wall of the compound was gone. Just a gaping mouth of rubble leading out into the chaotic streets of Raqqa.
“Lily!” I screamed.
I left my dying wife. I had to. It was the choice that had haunted me every night for four years. I kissed Sarah’s forehead, grabbed my rifle, and ran into the smoke.
I searched. God, I searched. I turned over concrete slabs until my fingers bled. I checked every alley. I screamed her name until my voice was gone.
Then the second explosion hit. The building groaned and began to collapse.
“Commander! We have to go! Now!”
My team grabbed me. I fought them. I punched Miller in the jaw. I kicked. I screamed like an animal. “She’s in there! Let me go!”
They dragged me to the bird. As we lifted off, I watched the compound crumble into a pile of gray dust.
I died that day. Jake Sullivan, the husband, the father, the man—he stayed in that rubble. The thing that came back was just a weapon in a uniform.
“Cleanup on aisle four.”
The grocery store PA system snapped me back. I was on my knees, hyperventilating, gripping a shelf so hard the metal was bending. A woman with a cart was staring at me, clutching her purse.
“I’m fine,” I rasped, standing up. “I’m fine.”
I wasn’t fine. I left the cart and walked out.
The call came on the morning of the third day.
“Commander Sullivan?”
It was Elena Rodriguez from CPS. Her voice was tight, professional, but I could hear the tremor in it.
“Tell me,” I said. I was sitting on the floor of my empty apartment, staring at the phone.
“We have the results.” A pause. “99.97% match. It’s her, Jake. It’s Lily.”
I didn’t cheer. I didn’t cry. The relief was so heavy it felt like a physical blow. I slumped forward, my forehead hitting the carpet, and let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.
“She’s alive,” I whispered. “She’s actually alive.”
“She is,” Elena said gently. “But Commander… you need to know the rest. We’ve been piecing together her timeline. The police found records.”
“Records?”
“She wasn’t just lost, Jake. She was taken.”
The air in the room dropped ten degrees. “Explain.”
“During the chaos of the explosion, a local woman grabbed her. We think she was trying to save her. She took Lily across the border to a refugee camp in Turkey. But the woman died of dysentery six months later.”
“And then?”
“Lily was ‘adopted’ through a gray-market network. A couple in San Diego. The Morrisons.”
“San Diego?” I stood up, pacing now. “She’s been in San Diego?”
“For two years. They paid $15,000 for her, Jake. They thought they were buying a ‘rescue’ orphan. But when the authorities started cracking down on the trafficking ring last year, the Morrisons got scared. They didn’t want to be implicated.”
“So they turned her in?”
Elena’s silence was deafening.
“Elena. What did they do?”
“They drove her to the Gaslamp Quarter,” Elena said, her voice turning to ice. “They opened the car door, told her to get out, and drove away. They erased her. They dumped a six-year-old child on the street like a bag of unwanted trash because she was a liability.”
Red.
My vision actually went red. A pure, blinding rage that made my hands shake. I wanted to find the Morrisons. I wanted to introduce them to the skills the US Navy had spent millions of dollars teaching me. I wanted to burn their world down.
“Where are they?” I asked, my voice deadly calm.
“In custody,” Elena said quickly. “FBI picked them up this morning. Do not go near them, Jake. If you do anything—anything at all—you will lose Lily forever. Do you understand me? You are under a microscope right now.”
I forced air into my lungs. “I understand.”
“Good. Now, the hospital. You can see her today. 1400 hours.”
“I’m coming now.”
“Wait. There are rules, Commander. Strict ones.”
“Rules?”
“Lily has severe complex PTSD. She has dissociated from her identity. She calls herself ‘Nobody.’ She has no memory of you, Jake. To her, fathers are just men who leave or hurt you.”
“I’m her father,” I snapped. “I can remind her.”
“No,” Elena said firmly. “If you walk in there and tell her you’re her dad, you will terrify her. She thinks her family died in the fire. If you challenge that reality too fast, she will break. You have to be a stranger.”
“A stranger?”
“You are Titan’s handler. That’s it. You are the man who owns the dog she loves. You’re visiting the dog. If she engages with you, fine. But you do not initiate. You do not touch her. And you absolutely do not tell her who you are. Not yet.”
“How long?” I choked out. “How long do I have to lie to my own daughter?”
“Until she’s strong enough to survive the truth.”
Walking into the hospital room was harder than storming the compound in Syria.
Room 314.
I stood outside the door, smoothing my dress uniform. I had shaved, polished my boots, made myself look like the officer I was supposed to be. But inside, I was a wreck.
I looked through the small glass window.
It broke me.
Titan was lying on the linoleum floor, his body pressed against the side of the hospital bed. And curled up under the thin white blanket, visible only by a tuft of dirty-blonde hair, was my little girl.
She looked so small. The IV line in her arm looked like a chain.
“Ready?” Elena asked, appearing beside me.
“No,” I said honestly. “But let’s do it.”
I pushed the door open.
Titan’s head snapped up. His tail gave a single, heavy thump against the floor. He started to rise, to come to me, but then he looked at the lump in the bed and sat back down. He gave me a look that said, I’m on duty, Boss.
“Hey, buddy,” I said softly, stepping into the room.
The lump under the covers shifted. A pair of gray-blue eyes peeked out.
She stared at me. No recognition. No spark. Just the wary, calculated assessment of a survivor.
“Lily,” Elena said softly. “Remember I told you Titan’s owner was coming to check on him? This is Commander Sullivan.”
Lily pulled the blanket up to her nose. She didn’t speak.
I kept my distance. I knelt down by Titan, scratching his chest, letting him lick my hand. I focused on the dog, just like Elena said.
“He looks good,” I said to the room, keeping my voice low. “He looks… happy.”
“He hasn’t left her side,” a nurse whispered from the corner. “We tried to take him out to pee, and he nearly took the door off its hinges until she came with us.”
I looked at Lily. She was watching my hands on the dog.
“He likes you,” I said to her.
She lowered the blanket an inch. “He’s my friend.”
“I can see that. He doesn’t make friends easily.”
“Neither do I,” she said.
The sadness in her voice—so old, so weary—almost crushed me. I reached into my pocket.
“I brought him something. thought he might be bored.”
I held out the squeaky ball. It was old, orange, and chewed to hell. It was the one I’d bought for Titan the day I got him.
Lily’s eyes widened. She sat up slowly. The hospital gown hung loosely on her frail shoulders. She reached out a hand—hesitant, trembling.
“You can give it to him,” I said, placing the ball on the edge of the bed.
She grabbed it like it was a diamond. She squeezed it. Squeak.
Titan’s ears perked up. He tilted his head.
Lily’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Squeak. Squeak.
“He likes that sound,” she whispered.
“Yeah. It’s his favorite.”
She looked at me then. Direct eye contact. And for a second, I saw Sarah. I saw the defiance, the intelligence.
“Why you giving it to me?” she asked. “It’s yours.”
“It’s his,” I corrected. “And since he’s staying with you, I guess it’s yours for now, too.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”
“Excuse me?”
“Adults don’t give things for free,” she said, her voice hardening. “The Morrisons gave me a doll, then they made me work in the kitchen. Then they threw me away. So what do you want?”
I felt the rage at the Morrisons bubble up again, hot and sharp, but I shoved it down.
“I don’t want anything, Lily,” I said. “I just want Titan to be okay. And he seems okay with you.”
“He saves me from the bad dreams,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah?” I moved a half-inch closer. “He used to do that for me, too.”
“You have bad dreams?” She looked skeptical. “You’re big. And you have a uniform.”
“Uniforms don’t stop dreams, kiddo. I dream about… loud noises. And fire.”
Her breath hitched. She dropped the ball.
“Me too,” she whispered. “Big fire. And the man crying.”
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming It was me! I was the man crying for you!
“Titan helps,” I said instead. “He stays close. Reminds you you’re still here.”
“Yeah.” She reached down and buried her hand in Titan’s fur. “He stays.”
“So,” I stood up, my knees cracking. “I’m going to let him stay. With you. Is that okay?”
She looked panic-stricken. “You’re leaving?”
“Just for today. Visiting hours are over.”
“But… you’ll come back?”
It was the way she asked it. Small. Terrified. Expecting the answer to be no.
“I’ll come back,” I promised. “Tomorrow. Same time. Every day.”
“You promise?”
“Sullivan’s don’t break promises,” I said automatically.
She froze. “My name is Sullivan.”
I froze too. Idiot. Stupid, careless idiot.
“Is it?” I managed to say. “That’s a coincidence. My name is Sullivan too. Jake Sullivan.”
She studied my face. Searching for something. I prayed she would find it. I prayed she would see the shape of my chin, the color of my eyes, and know me.
But the moment passed. The wall went back up.
“Just a coincidence,” she muttered. “I’m nobody. Nobody has a family name.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Lily,” I said, my voice thick.
I walked out of the room. I held it together until the door clicked shut. Then I leaned against the corridor wall and slid down until I hit the floor.
Elena was there.
“You did good,” she said softly.
“I lied to her,” I said, staring at the ceiling tiles. “She asked if I was coming back, and I promised. But we both know you guys could stop me.”
“We could,” Elena admitted. “The Morrisons are fighting, Jake.”
“What?” I looked at her. “They’re in jail.”
“They have lawyers. High-priced ones. They’re claiming the adoption was legal in Syria. They’re claiming you abandoned her four years ago. They’re saying you’re unfit because of your PTSD history.”
“They threw her on the street!”
“And they’re saying she ran away. That they were loving parents and she was a troubled child. It’s going to be a war, Jake. A legal war. And right now, you are a single man with a history of mental instability living in bachelor military housing. You don’t look good on paper.”
I stood up. The grief was gone, replaced by the cold, hard focus of a mission.
“Then I change the paper,” I said.
“Jake…”
“Tell me what I need to do. Housing? I’ll get it. Parenting classes? Sign me up. Therapy? I’ll go twice a day. I don’t care what it takes, Elena. I survived Fallujah. I survived the extraction that killed my wife. I am not losing her to a couple of lawyers and a stack of paperwork.”
“It’s going to be hard,” she warned.
“Good,” I said, looking back through the window at my daughter, who was squeaking the orange ball for Titan. “I do hard.”
I walked out of the hospital into the blinding San Diego sun. I didn’t know how to be a father to a traumatized six-year-old. I didn’t know how to navigate family court. I didn’t know how to heal the hole in my own head.
But for the first time in four years, I had a target. And I never missed.
Part 3
The next three weeks were a different kind of boot camp.
I traded my rifle for a lease agreement on a two-bedroom apartment in a quiet neighborhood. I swapped tactical briefings for court-mandated parenting classes where I sat on a folding chair between a meth addict trying to get clean and a terrified teen mom. I replaced sleep with reading—books on trauma, on attachment disorders, on how to talk to kids who had seen too much.
And every single day at 1400 hours, I was at the hospital.
Lily was a puzzle with half the pieces missing. Some days, she would talk to me. She’d ask about Titan (“Does he like bacon?” “Yes.” “Does he chase cats?” “Only the fast ones.”) Other days, she would stare at the wall, rocking back and forth, humming that haunting melody.
“She’s testing you,” Dr. Patel, the child psychiatrist, told me in the hallway. “She’s waiting for you to leave. In her world, consistency is a lie. You have to prove it’s real.”
So I stayed. I sat in silence. I brought coloring books. I told Titan stories about his “missions” to make her smile.
“Tell me about the time he found the lost hikers,” she asked one Tuesday, her voice small.
“Well,” I said, leaning back in the plastic chair. “We were in the mountains. It was snowing. Cold enough to freeze your breath.”
“Like the nights on the street,” she murmured.
My chest tightened. “Yeah. Like that. And Titan… he put his nose to the wind. He smelled them three miles away. He dragged me through the snow until we found them huddled in a cave.”
“Did they get saved?”
“Yeah. We brought them home.”
She looked at me then. “You’re good at finding lost things.”
“I’m getting better at it,” I said, holding her gaze.
The bombshell dropped on a Thursday.
I was leaving the hospital, feeling good. Lily had actually laughed today—a rusty, startling sound—when Titan tried to catch a fly and missed.
My phone rang. It was my lawyer, a sharp-edged woman named Sarah (God, the irony) who I’d hired with my savings.
“Jake, we have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“The Morrisons’ lawyer filed a motion. They’re subpoenaing your service records. Your medical history. Everything.”
“Let them,” I said. “I have nothing to hide.”
“They’re going to use the Syria mission against you, Jake. The official report says you were ‘disoriented and combative’ during extraction. It says you had to be restrained. They’re going to paint you as a loose cannon who snapped under pressure.”
“I snapped because my daughter was buried in rubble!”
“I know. But to a family court judge? It looks like instability. And there’s more. They found out about the incident at the VA clinic last year.”
I stopped walking. The VA clinic. Where I’d flipped a table because a doctor told me my nightmares were “just stress.”
“That was a bad day,” I said quietly.
“They’re going to say you’re violent. That you’re a danger to a child.”
“I would never hurt her.”
“It doesn’t matter what you would do. It matters what they can prove you might do. Jake, if we go to court next week with this, we might lose. They might grant custody to the state foster system instead of you.”
I felt the familiar cold rage creeping up my spine. “So what do I do?”
“You need to show stability. Unshakable, boring stability. And… you might need to reconsider the timeline for telling her the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“If she knows you’re her father, and if she wants to be with you, the judge has to listen to her preference. She’s six. It carries weight.”
“Elena said it’s too soon. That it could traumatize her.”
“I’m giving you the legal reality, Jake. If she goes into that courtroom as ‘Titan’s friend,’ you’re a stranger fighting for custody. If she goes in as your daughter who wants her dad… that changes the game.”
I hung up. I stood in the parking lot, the California sun beating down on me, feeling trapped.
Protect her mind? Or fight for her future?
The decision was made for me.
That night, at 0300, my phone rang. Hospital.
“Commander, get here. Now.”
I broke every traffic law in San Diego. I sprinted through the hospital lobby, ignoring the security guard, and burst onto the pediatric floor.
I could hear the screaming from the elevator.
“NO! NO! DON’T TAKE ME! DADDY! DADDY!”
I froze.
Daddy.
I ran to Room 314. It was chaos. Nurses were trying to hold her down. Titan was barking—a deep, booming warning—standing between the nurses and the bed, snapping at anyone who got close.
“Back off!” I roared.
The room went silent. The nurses stepped back, looking relieved and terrified.
Lily was huddled in the corner of the bed, shaking so hard her teeth rattled. Her eyes were wide, seeing things that weren’t there.
“Fire!” she shrieked, pointing at the empty corner. “The fire is coming! Daddy, help!”
I didn’t think. I didn’t calculate. I just moved.
“I’m here!” I vaulted over the bed rail and landed between her and the invisible fire. “I’m here, Lily. I’ve got you.”
She looked at me. Really looked at me. And for the first time, the fog cleared.
“You?” she whispered. “You’re… him?”
“I’m him,” I said, my voice breaking. “I’m the man crying. I’m the daddy who lost you.”
She stopped shaking. She reached out and touched my face. Her small fingers traced the scar on my chin.
“You have the sad eyes,” she said. “Like in my dream.”
“Yeah, baby. I have the sad eyes.”
“You… you left me.”
The accusation hit me harder than a bullet.
“I didn’t mean to,” I choked out, tears finally falling freely. “I thought… I thought you were gone. I looked for you. I screamed for you. But the building fell down.”
“I waited,” she whispered. “The lady took me. But I waited for you to come.”
“I know. And I am so, so sorry I didn’t come sooner. But I’m here now. Titan found you. He brought me to you.”
She looked at Titan, who had stopped barking and was now licking her hand frantically.
“He knew,” she said.
“He knew,” I agreed. “Because he loves you. And I love you. I have loved you every single second of every single day you were gone.”
“You’re my daddy?”
“I am. I’m your dad, Lily.”
She stared at me for a long, agonizing minute. Then, her face crumbled. She launched herself into my arms.
It was a collision. A desperate, clawing need to be held. I wrapped my arms around her, burying my face in her hair, smelling the hospital soap and the underlying scent of my child.
“Don’t go!” she sobbed into my shirt. “Don’t go again!”
“Never,” I swore. “I am never leaving you again. I will burn the world down before I leave you.”
The next morning, the fallout hit.
Dr. Patel was furious. “You re-traumatized her! You inserted yourself into a flashback! Do you have any idea the damage you could have caused?”
“She remembered me,” I said calmly. I was sitting in the plastic chair, exhausted but feeling lighter than I had in four years.
“She was hallucinating!”
“No. She recognized me. She asked if I was her dad. I told the truth.”
“You violated protocol.”
“Protocol wasn’t working. She needed to know she wasn’t alone.”
Elena walked in, looking grim.
“The Morrisons’ lawyer knows,” she said.
“How?”
“Nurses talk. It’s already in her file. ‘Commander Sullivan induced emotional distress by claiming parental rights during a psychiatric episode.’”
“Induced?” I stood up. “I calmed her down!”
“That’s not how they’re spinning it,” Elena said. “They’re filing for an emergency injunction. They want to ban you from visitation until the hearing.”
” let them try,” I said.
“Jake, this is serious. If the judge thinks you’re unstable…”
“Then I’ll prove I’m not. When is the hearing?”
“Tuesday.”
“Good.” I walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot. “Because I’m done playing defense.”
I turned back to them. The soldier was back. But this time, the mission wasn’t extraction. It was occupation.
“I’m taking her home,” I said.
“You can’t,” Dr. Patel scoffed. “She’s a ward of the state.”
“Not for long,” I said. “I have a plan.”
“What plan?” Elena asked, looking nervous.
“The truth,” I said. “The whole ugly, messy truth. I’m going to put Lily on the stand.”
“She’s six!” Elena gasped. “You can’t put a six-year-old on the witness stand!”
“She’s a survivor,” I said. “She survived a war zone. She survived traffickers. She survived the streets. She’s stronger than all of us combined. And she has a voice. It’s time people heard it.”
I walked past them, back into the room where Lily was sleeping, Titan’s head resting on her stomach.
I sat down and took her hand.
“Wake up, little warrior,” I whispered. “We’ve got a battle to win.”
Part 4
Tuesday morning arrived with the subtlety of a mortar strike.
I stood in front of the mirror in my new apartment, adjusting my dress blues. The medals on my chest—Bronze Star, Purple Heart—usually felt heavy, like burdens I carried for the men who didn’t come back. Today, they felt like armor.
“You look scary,” a small voice said.
I turned. Lily was standing in the doorway. She was wearing a simple blue dress Elena had bought her, her hair brushed and pulled back. Titan sat beside her, his collar freshly brushed.
“Scary good or scary bad?” I asked, kneeling down.
She considered this. “Scary strong.”
I smiled, a real one. “That’s the idea. We need to be strong today.”
“Are the bad people going to be there?” she asked, twisting the hem of her dress.
“Their lawyers will be. But the bad people—the Morrisons—are in jail. They can’t hurt you.”
“But they can take me away?”
“Not if we fight,” I said. “Remember what we talked about?”
She nodded. “I tell the judge the truth.”
“Only if you want to. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to say.”
“I want to,” she said, her chin lifting in a gesture so like Sarah it made my heart ache. “I want to tell them.”
The courtroom was sterile. Cold wood, bad lighting, the smell of floor wax and anxiety.
The Morrisons’ lawyer, a man named Sterling who wore a suit that cost more than my car, was already there. He looked at me with a smirk that made me want to rearrange his dental work.
“Commander Sullivan,” he nodded. “Nice uniform. Shame it won’t help you.”
“We’ll see,” I said, taking my seat.
The judge, a stern woman named Honorable Edith Vance, entered. Everyone rose.
“This is a hearing to determine temporary custody of the minor child known as Lily Sullivan,” Judge Vance said, shuffling papers. “I have read the briefs. Mr. Sterling, you have filed a motion to block Commander Sullivan from contact?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Sterling stood up, smooth as oil. “Commander Sullivan has a documented history of severe PTSD. He has been cited for violent outbursts. And last week, he violated hospital protocol and induced a traumatic episode in the child by forcing a false memory of fatherhood upon her during a crisis.”
“False memory?” my lawyer, Sarah, shot up. “We have DNA evidence, Your Honor. He is her father.”
“Biological, yes,” Sterling countered. “But psychologically? He is a stranger. And a dangerous one.”
He pulled out a file. “I have a report from the VA. Last year, Commander Sullivan flipped a desk during a therapy session. He screamed that he ‘couldn’t save them.’ Is this the temperament of a stable guardian for a traumatized child?”
I felt the eyes of the room on me. I didn’t flinch. I sat stone still.
“Commander Sullivan,” Judge Vance looked at me over her glasses. “Is this true?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said clearly.
“And why should I trust you with a fragile child?”
“Because that rage came from grief, Your Honor. From losing her. Finding her… it didn’t fix me. But it gave me a reason to control it.”
Sterling laughed. “Control? He threatened hospital staff just three days ago!”
“I protected my daughter!” I snapped.
“See?” Sterling pointed. “He’s snapping right now.”
Judge Vance frowned. “Commander, sit down.”
I sat. My hands were shaking under the table. We were losing. I could feel it. The system liked safe. The system liked predictable. A SEAL with nightmares wasn’t safe.
“Your Honor,” Sarah said quietly. “We would like to call a witness.”
“Who?”
“Lily Sullivan.”
The courtroom went silent. Sterling looked stunned. “She’s six! She’s incompetent to testify!”
“She is the subject of this hearing,” Sarah said. “And she has expressed a desire to speak.”
Judge Vance looked at me, then at the door where Elena was waiting with Lily.
“Bring her in,” Vance said. “But I will clear the court. Just counsel and the parties.”
Lily walked in holding Titan’s leash.
The dog was technically not allowed, but nobody dared stop him. He walked with a regal, protective gait, his body shielding Lily from the room.
Lily looked small in the big witness chair. Her feet didn’t touch the floor.
“Hello, Lily,” Judge Vance said gently. “Do you know what it means to tell the truth?”
“Yes,” Lily said. “It means not lying. Even when you’re scared.”
“Are you scared now?”
“Yes.”
“That’s okay. You can just talk to me. Lily, do you know the man sitting there?” She pointed at me.
Lily looked at me. Her eyes found mine.
“That’s my dad,” she said.
Sterling jumped up. “Objection! Coaching!”
“Overruled,” Vance snapped. “Continue, Lily.”
“He’s my dad,” Lily repeated, louder this time. “He has sad eyes because he lost me. But he found me.”
“Lily,” Vance asked. “Mr. Sterling says your dad is… angry. That he scares people. Does he scare you?”
Lily thought for a moment. “He scares the monsters.”
The room went quiet.
“What monsters?” Vance asked softly.
“The nightmares,” Lily said. “The fire. The bad people who took me. When I scream, he comes. He doesn’t get mad. He just holds me. He tells the fire to go away.”
She reached down and patted Titan’s head.
“And he gave me Titan,” she added. “Titan is his best friend. He needs Titan to be okay. But he gave him to me. Because I needed him more.”
She looked directly at the judge.
“The Morrisons… they said I was bad. They threw me away. My dad… he broke his apartment because I broke his things, but he didn’t throw me away. He stayed.”
I felt a tear slide down my cheek. I didn’t wipe it.
“He stayed,” Lily whispered. “Nobody stays. But he did.”
Judge Vance took off her glasses. She looked at Sterling, who was staring at his table, defeated. She looked at me.
“The court finds,” Vance said, her voice thick, “that while Commander Sullivan has… challenges… the bond between father and child is evident. And frankly, remarkable.”
She banged her gavel.
“Temporary custody granted to Commander Jake Sullivan. Effective immediately.”
We walked out of the courthouse into the blinding sun.
I picked Lily up. She wrapped her legs around my waist and buried her face in my neck. Titan barked, a happy, joyous sound.
“We did it,” I whispered into her hair.
“We won the war?” she asked.
“Yeah, baby. We won the war.”
But as we walked to the car, I saw a man watching us from across the street. He was wearing a suit, talking on a phone. He wasn’t one of Sterling’s people. He looked… harder.
He met my eyes, then turned and walked away.
My instincts flared. Threat.
I put Lily in the car, buckled her in, and checked the perimeter. Nothing. Just San Diego traffic.
“Dad?” Lily asked. “Can we get ice cream?”
I forced a smile. “You bet. Double scoops.”
I got in the driver’s seat. But my hand lingered on the glove compartment, where I kept my concealed carry.
We had won the battle. But looking at that retreating figure, I had a sinking feeling the war wasn’t over.
Because the Morrisons weren’t just a suburban couple who made a mistake. They were part of a network. A network that had lost a valuable asset. And networks like that… they didn’t like losing.
“Titan,” I said, looking in the rearview mirror. “Eyes open.”
The dog stared out the back window, a low rumble in his throat.
He knew.
We were going home. But we weren’t safe.
Part 5
The first month of “normal” was harder than combat.
Combat had rules of engagement. It had clear objectives. Raising a traumatized six-year-old while battling my own demons? There was no manual for that.
Lily had night terrors. So did I.
Some nights, we’d both wake up screaming at 0300. I’d rush to her room, heart hammering, weapon imaginary in my hand, to find her thrashing in the sheets. Titan would be pacing between us, licking her face, then mine, trying to stitch our fractured minds back together.
“It’s okay,” I’d whisper, rocking her on the floor, my back against her doorframe. “We’re here. We’re safe.”
“The fire,” she’d sob. “The fire is eating the sky.”
“No fire. Just streetlights. Look.”
We’d sit there until dawn. Two broken soldiers in a bunker made of drywall and stuffed animals.
But there were good moments, too.
The first time she laughed at a cartoon. The first time she ate a full meal without hiding half of it in her pockets “for later.” The first time she called me “Dad” without hesitating.
We were building something. A fragile, jagged kind of family.
Then the letter came.
It wasn’t a court summons. It was a plain white envelope, no return address, taped to my apartment door.
Inside was a single photo.
It was a picture of Lily. Taken yesterday. At the playground. Through a telescopic lens.
On the back, written in black marker: She’s worth more than you think.
My blood turned to ice.
I pulled Lily inside, locked the deadbolt, and engaged the aftermarket security bar I’d installed.
“Dad?” Lily asked, sensing the shift in my energy. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “Just… forgot to lock up.”
“Titan’s growling,” she whispered.
I looked down. Titan was standing at the door, hackles raised, a low, continuous rumble vibrating in his chest.
I called the police. Martinez came out. He filed a report. “Probably just intimidation, Commander. The trafficking ring is dismantled. The Morrisons are in jail.”
“Networks don’t just disappear,” I said, pacing the living room. “Someone took that photo. Someone was watching my daughter.”
“We’ll increase patrols,” Martinez promised.
It wasn’t enough.
I called my old CO. “I need a favor. Off the books.”
Two days later, my apartment looked like a fortress. Cameras. Motion sensors. Reinforced locks.
But the threat wasn’t coming for the apartment. It was coming for the credibility I had fought so hard to build.
The smear campaign started on a Tuesday.
A local news outlet ran a story: “Hero or Hazard? The Dark Past of the Navy SEAL Fighting for Custody.”
It detailed everything. My VA outbursts. The classified details of the Syria mission (leaked, somehow). It painted me as a ticking time bomb, a man who had already gotten his wife killed and was now endangering his daughter.
“They’re trying to break you,” Elena said, reading the article on her tablet in my kitchen. “If you react—if you lash out—they win. CPS will have to intervene.”
“Who is doing this?” I demanded.
“The Morrisons’ defense fund,” she said. “It’s being bankrolled by an anonymous donor. Someone with deep pockets.”
“Why?”
“Because if you win… if you prove that a father can reclaim a child from their network… it sets a precedent. It exposes their failures. You’re an embarrassment to powerful people, Jake.”
I looked at Lily, who was drawing at the kitchen table. She was drawing a picture of us. Me, her, and Titan. We were surrounded by a big red circle.
“What’s the circle?” I asked.
“Shield,” she said. “Nothing gets in.”
“Right,” I said, my jaw tightening. “Nothing.”
The breaking point came a week later.
I picked Lily up from school. She was quiet. Too quiet.
“What happened?” I asked, buckling her in.
She didn’t answer. She just handed me a piece of paper.
It was a drawing. Someone had slipped it into her backpack.
It was a crude sketch of a dog. A dead dog. With an X over its eyes.
And the words: Give her back, or the dog dies first.
I stopped the car. I couldn’t breathe.
They were threatening Titan. They knew he was the glue. They knew if they killed the dog, they killed Lily’s sanity. And mine.
“Dad?” Lily whispered. “Is Titan gonna die?”
I looked at her. I looked at the terror in her eyes—the return of the hunted look I had worked so hard to erase.
Something inside me snapped. Not the PTSD snap. Not the blind rage.
This was different. This was cold. This was the calculation of a predator who had just decided to stop hunting and start killing.
“No,” I said quietly. “Titan is not going to die. And neither are we.”
I drove home. I packed a bag.
“Where are we going?” Lily asked.
“Field trip,” I said. “We’re going to see Uncle Mike.”
Mike wasn’t my biological brother. He was my sniper in Yemen. He lived off the grid in a cabin in the Sierras. He had more guns than a small country and a paranoid streak that made me look sane.
I wasn’t running. I was relocating to a fortified position.
But as I loaded the truck, my phone rang.
“Commander Sullivan.”
The voice was distorted. Digital.
“Who is this?”
“We can make this easy. Drop the custody claim. Sign her over to the state. We have a family lined up. A good family.”
“Go to hell.”
“Wrong answer. Check your email.”
I pulled the phone away. A notification. I opened it.
It was a live video feed.
Of my apartment. The inside.
I looked up at my building. I was in the parking lot. Lily was in the truck. Titan was with her.
“We’re inside, Jake,” the voice said. “We’ve been inside.”
I looked at the window of my unit. The blinds twitched.
“If you drive away,” the voice said, “we release the rest of the file. The part about how you left your wife to bleed out. The audio recording from your comms. The whole world will hear you crying like a coward.”
I froze.
The comms recording. It existed. I knew it did. Me screaming. Me begging. It was the most shameful moment of my life.
“You want your daughter to hear that?” the voice taunted. “You want her to know her daddy ran away?”
I looked at Lily in the truck. She was hugging Titan, trusting me to save her.
If they released that audio… it would destroy me. It would prove I was unfit.
But if I gave in… I lost her.
“Release it,” I said.
Silence on the line.
“What?”
“Release it,” I said, my voice steady. “Play it on the six o’clock news. Let the world hear me cry. I don’t care.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I’m not. You think shame works on a man who has already lost everything? I walked through hell to find her. You think a recording scares me?”
I hung up.
I walked to the truck.
“Change of plan,” I said to Lily.
“We’re not going to Uncle Mike’s?”
“No. We’re going inside.”
“But… the bad people?”
“I’m going to introduce them to Titan.”
I unlocked the apartment door.
“Titan,” I whispered. “Seek.”
The dog didn’t need to be told twice. He smelled them.
He launched into the apartment like a fur-covered missile.
I heard shouting. A crash. The sound of a man screaming in a way that meant bone was meeting jaw pressure.
I walked in behind him, my handgun drawn.
Two men. One was on the floor, Titan’s jaws clamped around his forearm. The other was trying to scramble out the window.
“Freeze!” I ordered.
The window guy froze. He looked at me, then at the gun.
“You’re insane,” he gasped. “You can’t just—”
“I’m a father,” I said. “And you threatened my dog.”
I zip-tied them. I called Martinez.
When the police arrived, they found two intruders with a bag of surveillance gear and a thumb drive containing the blackmail material.
“These are private contractors,” Martinez said, looking at their IDs. “Security firm. Hired by… shell companies.”
“Trace it,” I said. “Find the money.”
The fallout was nuclear.
The story broke. Not the smear campaign, but the real story. “Trafficking Ring Hires Mercenaries to Intimidate SEAL Father.”
The public opinion flipped overnight. I wasn’t the unstable vet anymore. I was the dad who fought off hitmen to protect his kid.
The blackmail audio was released by the police as evidence. People heard it.
They didn’t hear a coward. They heard a man in agony. They heard a husband losing his wife.
I sat with Lily on the couch as the news played.
“Is that you?” she asked, hearing the recording of me screaming for Sarah.
“Yeah,” I said, unable to look at her. “That’s me being… weak.”
She climbed into my lap.
“You sound sad,” she said. “Not weak. You sound like you loved her a lot.”
I buried my face in her shoulder. “I did.”
“I think,” she whispered, “that loving someone that much makes you strong.”
The “anonymous donor” turned out to be a high-ranking official with ties to the trafficking ring. He was arrested three days later.
The Morrisons’ appeal was denied.
The threat evaporated.
We were safe. Actually, finally safe.
Six months later.
I stood on the deck of our new house. A real house this time, with a yard.
Lily was throwing the ball for Titan. He was moving a little slower these days—his muzzle was grayer—but he was happy.
“Dad!” she yelled. “Watch this!”
She threw the ball. Titan caught it mid-air.
I smiled.
My phone buzzed. A text from Elena.
Adoption papers are finalized. You’re official.
I looked at the screen. Then I looked at my daughter.
I wasn’t Commander Sullivan anymore. I wasn’t just a soldier.
I was Jake. I was Dad.
I walked down the steps into the grass.
“Hey!” I called out. “Who wants ice cream?”
Lily cheered. Titan barked.
And as the sun set over the yard, casting long shadows that looked like protective giants, I realized something.
I hadn’t just saved her.
She had saved me.
The nightmares were still there, sometimes. But they were quieter now. They couldn’t scream over the sound of a little girl laughing and a dog barking.
We were broken, yeah. But we were a mosaic now. Sharp edges and all, we fit together.
And that was enough.
Part 6
The beach was quiet, the San Diego fog rolling in thick and cool, muffling the world.
It had been a year. One year since the courthouse. One year since the intruders. One year since we became a “we.”
Lily was seven now. She was taller, her legs gangly like a colt’s, her hair a sun-bleached blonde that matched the sand. She didn’t wear the pink dress anymore. Today, she was wearing board shorts and a t-shirt that said K-9 Unit: Junior Handler.
“Come on, Titan!” she yelled, running toward the surf.
Titan trotted after her. He was slowing down. The vet said his hips were getting bad—a lifetime of service catching up to him. But his eyes were bright. He watched her like she was the only thing in the universe that mattered. Because to him, she was.
I sat on a piece of driftwood, watching them.
My phone buzzed. It was a message from Uncle Mike.
Got the boat ready. Fishing trip next weekend?
I typed back: Only if you have life jackets for a kid and a dog.
Deal.
I smiled. Normal problems. Normal plans.
A year ago, I was sleeping with a loaded weapon under my pillow. Now, my biggest worry was whether Lily would finish her math homework before the weekend.
The nightmares still came. I wouldn’t lie and say they were gone. Sometimes I still woke up sweating, the smell of cordite in my nose. But now, when I woke up, I didn’t reach for a gun. I walked down the hall. I cracked open Lily’s door. I listened to the steady rhythm of her breathing, the soft thump-thump of Titan’s tail hitting the floor when he sensed me.
And I went back to sleep.
“Dad!”
Lily was running back up the beach, breathless. She held something in her hand.
“Look!”
She opened her palm. A piece of sea glass. Blue. The exact color of her eyes. And mine.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“It was sharp once,” she said, turning it over. “But the ocean made it smooth. Now it’s a jewel.”
I looked at her. Seven years old, and she dropped wisdom like that.
“Yeah,” I said, my throat tight. “The ocean does that. Takes the sharp edges off.”
“Like us,” she said simply.
I pulled her into a side hug. “Yeah, kiddo. Like us.”
She leaned against me. “Do you think Mom sees us?”
It was the first time she’d asked in months.
“I think she does,” I said. “I think she’s the one who sent Titan to stop that night. I think she’s been watching the whole time.”
Lily nodded. “I think so too. She’s the star.”
She pointed up. The fog was breaking, and the first evening star was visible.
“The North Star,” I said. “It guides you home.”
“Titan is my North Star,” she said.
Titan, hearing his name, hobbled over and rested his wet head on my knee. I scratched the white star-shaped mark behind his ear. The mark that had saved our lives.
“He’s a good boy,” I whispered.
“The best,” Lily agreed.
We sat there until the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of purple and fire-orange. But the fire didn’t scare us anymore. It was just light.
“Ready to go home?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Lily said. “Can we make tacos?”
“Tacos it is.”
We walked back to the truck. Me, my daughter, and our dog.
Three broken pieces of sea glass, smoothed by the waves, shining in the dark.
We were home.
The End.
