Cole stared at the floor.
“Daniel was a good man.”
“I gathered that.”
“He was better than good.”
Cole’s voice became quieter.
“He was the man who kept the rest of us moving when everything went wrong.”
Raymond pulled a chair closer.
“What happened out there?”
Cole’s first instinct was to say nothing.
He had told Claire almost nothing about his service. When she asked about the knee, he gave her the simplest possible answer. When she asked about the military, he spoke about training, paperwork, and returning home.
He had never told her about the men he lost.
He had never explained that sometimes the hardest part of surviving was learning to live with the fact that someone else hadn’t.
Now he looked at Raymond and made a decision.
“Our patrol was hit during a movement outside the city. The situation deteriorated quickly. We lost communication for a while, and Daniel was badly injured.”
