“What are you going to do now?” Silas asked, and for the first time, the question didn’t feel like a demand for a tidy answer.
I told him I didn’t know because everywhere I looked in the house, I saw Terrence and Mia, and I could still hear my mother’s voice. Silas told me that I had skills most civilians would kill for and that I shouldn’t let grief make my world smaller. He told me to build something of my own, something that nobody else could ever claim as theirs.
He stayed until nearly midnight, and before he left, he told me to call him any time of the day or night if I needed backup. After his truck pulled away, I stood in the quiet kitchen and looked at the stack of military paperwork and death certificates. I felt the smallest spark of a new strategy, and I knew the battle had finally changed.
Part 5
Rebuilding wasn’t a cinematic montage, it was mostly spreadsheets, panic, and being too tired to cry at the end of the day. Three months later, I resigned from the Army, a decision that felt like I was betraying the only institution that had held me up. General Vance asked if this was what I wanted or just what I could survive, and I told him it was what I needed to build.