Ryan went pale. “That’s what I thought,” he whispered. “You’re the reason I made it home.”
No one touched their food after that.
Ava spoke first, angry because she was embarrassed. “Ryan, what is this? Why are you calling my sister ma’am?”
He stayed standing. He looked at me first, like he was asking permission. I gave a small nod.
“In 2016,” he said, turning back to the table, “my platoon was attached to operations outside Kandahar. We hit an objective that went bad fast. We took casualties, lost comms briefly, and our team lead went down. A joint task force liaison took over radio traffic and coordinated support until we extracted.”
Mom’s face drained of color. Dad just listened.
“That patch is from Task Force Sentinel,” Ryan continued. “If she wore it, she wasn’t pretending. She was in it.”
Ava crossed her arms. “So what? Lots of people deploy.”
“Yes,” he said calmly. “Not everyone keeps a team from getting trapped while staying steady under fire.”
The refrigerator hummed too loudly in the silence.