No plaques. No hometown newsletter profile. No ability to tell my family, actually, the reason I miss Thanksgiving is that I’m in a windowless room helping decide whether two men across a border live or disappear before dawn. No way to explain why you sound tired on the phone without saying that the airfield tarmac in the dark smelled like burned hydraulic fluid and fear. No chance of telling your father that the “generic office job” he mocks has, in certain years, touched more national policy than his entire county council career combined.
You learn to live without witness.
Most of the time, I was good at it.
I accepted the bland assumptions. The pitying looks from old neighbors when I came home in quiet clothes and unremarkable shoes. The way people in town asked, “Still doing paperwork in D.C.?” and I said yes because paperwork was a harmless shape for them to hold. The way Robert introduced me at church fundraisers as “our eldest—works with contracts or shipping or something.” The something never bothered me as much as the our. Possession without understanding. Claim without curiosity.