“Don’t Disappear Tonight”
Becca carried the flag with me toward the car.
At the curb, she asked:
“Where are you staying?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“You came to Arlington without a hotel?”
“I came straight here.”
She looked at my wet coat and worn boots again.
That morning, she had treated them as proof I had failed.
Now she seemed to understand they proved only that I had arrived in a hurry.
“Come to the house.”
I hesitated.
Five years couldn’t be repaired by sharing an address for one night.
“I’m not ready to pretend we’re fine.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Then what are you asking?”
Her voice softened.
“I’m asking you not to disappear tonight.”
That was different.
I agreed.
At Grandpa’s house, his things remained everywhere in the ordinary way belongings do after someone dies.
His reading glasses beside a chair.
A half-used pad of paper near the phone.
An old coffee mug still in the cabinet because nobody had decided whether washing it felt respectful or unbearable.
Becca changed out of her funeral clothes and came into the kitchen wearing an old sweatshirt.
Without the earrings, assistant, guards, and crowd, she looked tired.
So did I.
She made coffee.
We talked badly at first.
Long pauses.
Defensive answers.
Moments when one of us nearly reopened the argument from the cemetery.
But we kept going.
I told her what I could about the five years without violating what still remained protected.
Mostly, that meant talking about absence rather than assignments.
I told her I had seen family photographs after the fact.
I told her I had learned about Grandpa’s declining health through the limited channel available to me.
I told her I had requested leave more than once.
She told me how furious Grandpa became whenever people tried to help him stand.
She told me he still complained about overcooked steak.
Then she said something that made me look up.
“Near the end, whenever I cursed your name, Grandpa would say, ‘You don’t know everything.’”
I stared at my coffee.
“He said that?”
“Constantly.”
She almost smiled.
“It made me even angrier.”
That sounded exactly like Grandpa.
