“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He stared at me.
“You weren’t scared.”
It wasn’t a question.
I put a glass of water on the counter.
“Everyone gets scared.”
“But you weren’t.”
I didn’t answer.
Noah leaned forward.
“Mom.”
I looked at him.
“Why did that guy call you Colonel?”
My hand stopped halfway to the glass.
There it was.
The question I’d been avoiding.
I sat down across from him.
“Because I used to be in the Army.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He nodded.
“You’ve told me you served.”
“Serving and what I did are different things.”
“What did you do?”
I looked at my son.
For fifteen years, I’d tried to give him an ordinary childhood.
School.
Baseball.
Camping.
Birthday cakes.
Normal problems.
Normal fears.
I didn’t want him growing up thinking his mother was some larger-than-life figure.
