He did not like that I returned home for short visits and noticed everything he wanted treated as normal.
Then I came back with medals.
Then I came back with silence.
Then I came back with a rank he refused to believe because believing it would mean admitting there were rooms in the world where his badge did not make him the most powerful person present.
“What are you doing in my house?” he snapped.
“My mother invited me,” I said.
My mother flinched at that, not because it was false, but because it was true in a room where truth had always made things worse.
Tyler smiled from beside the fridge.
“Look at her,” he said. “Still playing soldier.”
There are people who laugh because something is funny.
Then there are people who laugh because cruelty feels safer when it has an audience.
Tyler had learned that from Michael.
