Valerie Came Home From Deployment to Find Her Twelve-Year-Old Daughter in Intensive Care

I poured two glasses of orange juice.

Abigail sat in the chair closest to the radiator and pulled her sleeves down over her hands.

“It’s warm,” she said.

“The radiator knocks,” I said.

“You get used to it.”

She looked around the kitchen.

There was a pot in the cabinet, four plates, two mugs.

It wasn’t much, but it was ours.