Chapter 2

The salute held for a count that felt longer than it was. The soldier standing at the base of the driveway kept his hand at his brow, spine straight, eyes fixed on Dana Whitfield the way you fix your eyes on something you've been trained to treat as important. He was young — mid-twenties, close-cropped hair, a uniform that sat on him like he'd been wearing it longer than the creases suggested. Behind him, the vehicle idled dark and featureless, its headlights off, its presence in the gravel circle like a sentence that had been waiting for the right moment to be spoken.

Dana didn't return the salute.

She didn't need to. She was out of uniform, in a navy jacket over a grey sweatshirt, standing on the top step of her own porch with a scuffed canvas duffel at her feet. The salute was the message, and the message had been received. She nodded once, a small incline of the chin, and the soldier dropped his hand and moved to stand at ease beside the vehicle, a position that said he was waiting.

Nobody at the island moved for a long moment.

Then the woman in the linen dress set her glass down so hard the stem cracked. The sound was small and sharp, and it broke the freeze. The man in the polo shirt turned to Carla with a question forming on his face. Another relative — a younger cousin, someone's daughter — took half a step back from the window as if the view had become something you could catch.

Uncle Pete didn't turn. He stayed at the end of the island, hands folded, watching Carla.

Carla's arm was still up. The finger was still extended. But it had dropped a few degrees, and the certainty in it had drained the way water drains from a tub when the plug is pulled. She opened her mouth to speak, and what came out didn't sound like her at all.

"Who is that?"

Dana didn't answer through the glass. She bent down, picked up the duffel bag by its cord, and walked toward the parked vehicle at a pace that said none of this was surprising to her. The soldier moved before she reached him, opening the rear door of the vehicle, waiting with the professionalism of someone who had done this many times and knew better than to hover.