Maya considered this.

“That’s a pretty good answer,” she said. “You want to get lunch? I’ve got a train at four.”

Chapter 16 — The Flag

The flag lives in a triangular oak case with a brass plate, and it sat on a shelf in four different homes over eleven years, and it is for a man who is not dead.

I went to Arlington in December, on a gray Tuesday with about nine other people in the whole section.

There is a headstone with my father’s name on it. There is nothing underneath it. I’ve asked; there’s a procedure for an empty grave and a different procedure for a wrongly interred one, and there is no procedure at all for the one I have.

I took the flag out of the case. I folded it back into a triangle myself — badly, twice, before I got it — and I set it on the grass at the base of the stone, and I stood there for a while, and then I walked back to my car.