People from your old life don’t just walk back in without dragging old versions of you with them.
“I’m not the same person,” I said.
“Neither am I,” she answered.
That was honest enough that I let the conversation continue.
She came by the next afternoon in a silver sedan. She got out with a slight limp of her own, the kind that told me pain had rewritten her life too.
No uniform. No rank. Just jeans, a jacket, and a woman who knew what it meant to be rebuilt by force.
She looked at the house first.
“That’s yours?”
“Yes.”
A faint smile touched her mouth. “Guess you did all right.”
“Depends how you define all right.”
That almost made her laugh.
Then she looked at me, not at the chair, not at the damage—just at me.
“You look different,” she said.
“So do you.”
I let her sit on the porch.
“I saw your name tied to all kinds of paperwork,” she said. “Medical records. Property documents. For someone who used to vanish into the background, you got loud.”
“I didn’t vanish,” I said. “I got sent home.”
“Same thing. Different wording.”
She was not wrong.
“I heard about your family,” she said.
“They’re alive.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
No, it wasn’t.