"Isaiah."
He walked away.
"Daddy?"
That voice stopped him.
Maya had not said it to him.
She had said it to Thomas.
Isaiah kept walking.
He drove for nearly two hours without knowing where he was going.
The streets had changed.
Stores had changed.
Buildings had changed.
Even the highway seemed wider.
He eventually pulled into the parking lot of a roadside motel.
The woman at the front desk glanced at the military ID in his wallet and smiled.
"Welcome home."
Isaiah stared at her.
"Thank you."
The words sounded absurd.
Home.
He entered room 214, locked the door, and sat on the edge of the bed.
For a long time, he did nothing.
Then his phone buzzed.
Lena.
He let it ring.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Finally a text appeared.
Please tell me where you are.
Isaiah turned the phone over.
Another message.
Maya is asking questions.
He closed his eyes.
A third.
Thomas left.
Isaiah stared at that one.
He almost replied.
Instead, he placed the phone on the nightstand.
Then he opened his duffel bag.
At the bottom was a plastic pouch.
Inside it were the only personal belongings returned to him after his rescue.
A wedding ring.
A photograph.
A folded drawing.
Isaiah took out the photograph.
Lena sat on the porch steps.
Maya was in her lap.
Isaiah stood behind them wearing civilian clothes.
The picture had been taken two weeks before deployment.
Maya had insisted everyone wear sunglasses.
Her tiny purple sunglasses were crooked.
Isaiah touched the picture.
Then he took out the drawing.
A house.
Three stick figures.
A huge yellow sun.
Above the figures, five-year-old Maya had written:
DADDY COME HOME SOON.
Isaiah bent forward.
For the first time since rescue, he sobbed.
He had not cried when American forces found him.
He had not cried during the flight out.
He had not cried during surgery.
He had not cried when an intelligence officer explained that for almost three years, the United States Army had listed him as presumed dead.
He cried now.
Because he had come home.
And his daughter had already buried him.
Four years earlier, Isaiah Brooks had been part of a twelve-man advisory team attached to a multinational operation in a region the newspapers barely mentioned.
The mission was supposed to last seven months.
Lena hated deployments.
But she understood them.
Or tried to.
They had been married nine years by then.