"I'm not ashamed of what I did," he said. "I'm just... done with it. I don't want Emily growing up as the daughter of some guy in a viral video. I want her growing up as the daughter of a guy who fixes gutters and makes bad pancakes."
Walter chuckled.
"Son, you can be both. That's the secret nobody tells you. You don't have to bury the soldier to raise the girl."
Daniel didn't answer. But he listened.
And from that night on, Walter Hayes came over almost every evening. Sometimes with root beer. Sometimes with tomatoes. Sometimes with nothing but stories.
Emily adored him. She called him "Grandpa Walt" within a week, and Walter pretended to be annoyed about it, but anyone could see his eyes shine every time she said it.
The news van left after three days.
But the attention didn't.
People Daniel had never spoken to started waving at him. Mrs. Pemberton, who had once complained to the homeowners' association that his pickup was "an eyesore," brought him a pie. A man in a golf cart stopped to ask if he'd consider teaching self-defense classes at the country club for "a very generous fee."
Daniel politely said no to all of it.
And yet, the strange thing was, his money problems were getting worse, not better.
Two of his regular clients canceled jobs. One said she felt "uncomfortable" having "a trained killer" on her roof. Another simply stopped answering his calls.
Then the transmission on his pickup started slipping.
Daniel sat at the kitchen table one night after Emily was asleep, with a stack of bills spread out in front of him. Mortgage. Electric. Water. Emily's school field trip. The quote from the mechanic: twenty-eight hundred dollars.
He did the math three times. It came out the same every time.
He was short. Badly short.
He rubbed his eyes and stared at the photograph on the refrigerator. Sarah, sunburned and laughing on a beach in San Diego, holding a baby Emily in a floppy hat.
"I'll figure it out," he whispered. "I always do."
What Daniel didn't know was that someone had seen the bills.
Earlier that week, Blake had come over for training and found the kitchen door open. The stack of envelopes was sitting right there on the counter. A red stamp on the top one said FINAL NOTICE.
Blake didn't say anything to Daniel.