He set the ledger down, careful, like it was fragile, and he turned to me and took my hand, and pressed something small and metal and warm into my palm and closed my fingers over it.

I opened my hand.

It was a dog tag — his own, his second tag, the metal darkened and worn smooth from months against his skin in the field.

My name for him, stamped in steel.

I looked up at him, not understanding.

“When I enlisted,” Ethan said, and his voice was low and dead serious now, all the easiness gone out of it, “I thought that was what protecting this family looked like.

Going out.