Valerie Came Home From Deployment to Find Her Twelve-Year-Old Daughter in Intensive Care
She squeezed it twice.
I squeezed back once, then twice.
“You don’t have to say it,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
“But I like saying it now.”
She opened the book to the first page and held it between us.
The radiator knocked.
She turned the page.