But the instant her faded blue eyes found Ethan standing behind me in the doorway, her whole face changed — it opened, it lit, it filled with a light I had not seen in that house since before November.

“My boys,” she whispered.

Just that.

Both of us, in two words, home at the same time.

“My boys.”

Ethan crossed the room in three strides and let his heavy duffel bag drop to the floor, and then this broad-shouldered sergeant, this man who had spent years being hard in hard places, went straight down onto his knees beside her chair and folded his big hands around her small trembling ones, and bent his head, and pressed his forehead against her knees, and just stayed there, like a man at an altar.

“Thank you, Grandma,” he said, his voice muffled and thick against the blanket.