Through the open garage door I watched Cato, halfway to his Audi, stop with his hand on the driver’s door.

I watched him turn toward the sound.

And then they came around the corner and up my street — dark vehicles, matte and unmarked, moving in a tight practiced line — and turned in at my mailbox, and rolled up the frosted driveway, and my father’s newspaper came down against his chest, and my mother came to the front door, and Delphina came out behind her, and nobody said a word.

The lead vehicle stopped.

A door opened.

And a soldier stepped out into the cold morning and walked straight up the drive toward the garage, toward me, past Cato as though Cato were not standing there at all, and stopped, and squared his shoulders, and brought his hand up in a salute that cracked across that frozen yard like a rifle shot.