I left three tickets at the door.

The night of the ceremony I stood in my dress blues, the medals I’d hidden for a decade gleaming heavy and cold against my chest. The speaker detailed the ambush, the rescue, the IED.

I looked out into the crowd and saw my mother crying quietly, a look of devastating shame on her face. Beside her, Leo and Mia sat tall, their eyes shining.

And Greg. He wore a cheap suit — probably the only one he hadn’t sold. He looked thinner, exhausted, his hands calloused from the warehouse.

After dinner I stood in the dim hallway outside the banquet room, looking out at the dark Virginia woods. I heard footsteps behind me.

“Lieutenant Colonel.”