Samuel nodded.
“Eleanor.”
I felt another small jolt.
Most people who knew my parents later in life called her Ellie.
Only family used Eleanor.
Samuel remembered.
“He couldn’t wait to get home,” Samuel said. “You’d just been born.”
I studied the photograph.
“What happened?”
“With what?”
“Why did he leave?”
Samuel folded his hands.
“That story belongs partly to him, and I don’t know all of it.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
Samuel looked toward Walt.
Walt gave him the smallest nod.
So Samuel began.
My father had been good at the job.
Maybe too good.
He had planned to stay.
Then, during his final year, my grandmother became ill.
My mother had just started a new job.
They had a baby.
Me.
The family was stretched thin.
“He had choices,” Samuel said. “None of them were wrong. None of them were easy.”
“He left the Army for us?”
“For his family.”
I looked at the photograph.
“He never said that.”
“Maybe he didn’t want you carrying it.”
“Carrying what?”
“The idea that he surrendered something because of you.”
That landed harder than I expected.
Samuel continued.
“He loved the Army. He also loved being your father.”
