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He walked into the kitchen, and after a brief moment of focused breathing without him watching me, I followed. “How have I

never heard this story?”

“It’s not my favorite thing to talk about, as you can probably imagine.” He stood at the sink and filled a glass with water.

“And your mother... well, let’s just say she probably preferred to pretend this one never happened.”

Bemused, I pulled out a stool and sat at the island. “Tell me.”

“There’s not much to tell, actually.” I scoffed, and he chuckled. “No, really. I’m not being evasive. I only know so much

about what happened. It was about the time of the evacuation, and my job was just flying patterns back and forth, mostly for

intimidation purposes. Just relatively routine flyovers. And then I lost my engine.”

“Were you shot at?”

He shrugged. “Might have been, but I sure didn’t hear anything. Could have been a bird or an air pocket or faulty mechanics.

I really don’t know. All I knew was I had no choice but to land in the swamp before I crashed in the swamp and then just hope

and pray I hadn’t been spotted.”

“Were you? Spotted, I mean?”

“Nope.” He took a sip of his water and smiled. “Told you there wasn’t much to tell. I got picked up about thirty minutes later,

got treated for a broken collarbone and a few cuts and bruises, and that was it.”

I released the breath I had been holding as if I hadn’t known that, one way or another, he’d made it out okay. “Well, allow

me to thank you for not telling me that story before I enlisted. I’d still be on an IV from all the vomiting.”

Even just hearing him tell the story more than fifty years later and picturing the plane losing control... feeling the helplessness he must have felt... caused my stomach to churn and my throat to go dry. I reached across the island and grabbed his glass, helping myself to a sip of his water.

Dad waited until I had finished drinking before he continued. “The nightmares and the images that I’ll never get out of my

head, the sound of enemy fire and the silence where there should have been the roar of an engine...” His eyes closed tightly.

“The silence. I don’t know how to explain it, Addie, but the silence is so much worse than even the most dreaded of sounds.”

He shook his head as his eyes fluttered back open. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but I just can’t make sense of it.

Maybe you can help me.”

“Make sense of what?”

“How can I possibly miss it? How can I look back on the horror of that experience, the pain it caused, the trauma—for me and

your mother and really just anyone who cared about me—how can I look back on that and wish, even with some small part of me,

that I could do it all again? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Dang it, Dad.

“Well, that was manipulative,” I whispered, counting on his bat-like hearing this time.

“I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m just trying to help you see what I see.”

“That is not what’s happening here.” I spun on the stool and stepped off to the side, then scooted the stool back under the

island as calmly as I could.

“I don’t understand why you’d agree to be in the same room with him, Addie, much less have dinner. Spend time. I’m just asking

you to help me understand—”

“You don’t have to understand!” I shouted. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you!” He opened his mouth, and I knew he was

preparing to issue the same protest from earlier.

No way. “ Yes , you were hurt too. I get that. I do. And I’m sorry that you were hurt.

I’m sorry that my pain caused you so much pain.

I really am. But, Dad, I’m pretty sure Wes isn’t the same person he was then, and I know for a fact that I’m not.

But even if we were, even if nothing had changed at all.

.. it’s really not any of your business.

I love you, but you have to stop treating me like a child. ”

The conversation had begun with a joke about breaking curfew (a joke that I now understood hadn’t been much of a joke at all,

from his perspective), and I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that it was about to wrap up with a good old-fashioned “as

long as you live under my roof.”

And maybe that’s the problem.

“I’m going to start looking for my own place. Tomorrow.”

“Now, Addie—”

“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t. It’s fine. It’s for the best.” I hurried out of the kitchen and slipped my shoes back on, grabbed

my coat off the hook, and had it zipped up about the time he appeared back in the living room.

He sighed. “Where are you going?”

Every day he looked older to me, and tonight I knew I’d caused the clock to spin forward far too quickly.

I choked down the “none of your business” that I knew I’d regret and instead said, “I just need a little space. I’ll see you

tomorrow.”

And I have to admit that as I pulled out of the driveway not even a minute later, I was suddenly very concerned that my dad

might have been onto something. I mean, I didn’t want a drink. I honestly wasn’t too worried about that. Not right then. No

more than I always forced myself to be, just because the worst thing I could do was think I had nothing to worry about.

But I very much found myself wanting to run to Wes.

I’d meant what I said. I really didn’t believe it was my responsibility to help my dad understand. But it was probably advisable

that I at least began trying to figure out what the heck was happening.