The house smelled of lemon cleaner and old furniture. Everything was exactly where it had been when I left: the wooden bowl on the entry table, the framed photograph of my parents on their anniversary, the brass lamp with the crooked shade.
But the family pictures were gone.
Not all of them. Just the ones with me in them.
The empty spaces on the wall were lighter than the paint around them.
I stopped beneath one of those pale rectangles.
My father noticed.
“Your mother took them down,” he said.
“She said people asked questions.”
My mother shut the door behind us. Outside, voices blended with the low hum of the television crew.
“What questions?” I asked.
She folded her arms. “Where you were. What happened. Why you stopped writing.”
“I didn’t stop writing.”
Her expression changed.
Only slightly.
But I saw it.
“You never received my letters,” I said.
“You sent a few.”
“I sent dozens.”
My father looked at her.
Diane’s eyes moved toward the hallway.
“I don’t know what you think you sent,” she said.
“Six letters came back to me unopened.”
“Then perhaps you addressed them incorrectly.”
I almost laughed, though nothing was funny.
The military post office had checked every address. The envelopes had been stamped with my parents’ street, city, and state. Each one had returned to me marked REFUSED.
“I used the same address you’ve lived at for thirty years.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My father’s face had gone gray.
“Diane,” he said again.
She spun toward him. “Don’t start.”
“Did you return her letters?”
The silence answered before she did.
My father closed his eyes.
The question was not new to him.
That realization hurt more than the answer would have.
“You knew?” I asked.
He opened his eyes.
“I knew some mail had been returned.”
“Some?”
“I didn’t know—”
“You knew enough.”
“I asked her about it.”
“And what did she say?”
My mother’s voice sharpened. “I said you had made your decision.”
“What decision?”
“To disappear.”
“I joined the Army.”
“You left without telling us.”
“I told you.”
“You called from a recruiting office and announced you were throwing your
