I came home from deployment three days early. My daughter wasn’t in her room. My wife said she was at Grandma’s. I drove there.
My daughter was in the backyard, standing in a hole and crying. “Grandma said bad girls sleep in graves.”
The air was freezing. I lifted her out, and she clung to my neck like she’d forgotten how to let go. Then she whispered, so softly I almost missed it, “Daddy… don’t look in the other hole.”
The house was dark when Eric McKenzie eased into the driveway a little after three in the morning.
Three days early. The deployment had been cut short after a diplomatic resolution nobody saw coming, and he’d caught the first transport out of Kabul like his body could outrun the months he’d left behind. Sixteen hours in the air, another stretch of processing back on base, and then the long drive home to rural Pennsylvania with nothing but coffee, adrenaline, and one stubborn thought keeping him awake.
Emma’s face.
Six months. That was how long he’d been gone this time. Emma was seven now. He’d missed her birthday by two weeks. The guilt had kept tapping at him through every patrol, every mission, every moment he told himself he was doing the right thing.
But this was his last deployment. He’d already submitted the papers. After twelve years in the Rangers, Eric was coming home for good.
He killed the engine and sat there for a moment, savoring the stillness. No distant thuds. No sirens. No radio chatter. Just crickets and the whisper of wind through pines. The house looked exactly as he’d left it: the blue shutters Brenda had insisted on, the flower boxes that were probably dead now in late autumn, the tire swing hanging from the oak tree in the front yard.
Eric grabbed his duffel and moved quietly to the front door. He wanted to surprise them. Brenda would be asleep, but maybe Emma was up—maybe she’d had a nightmare. She used to crawl into bed with him when she was scared. The thought made something loosen in his chest.
The door was unlocked.
That was the first thing that felt wrong.
He’d told Brenda a hundred times to lock it, especially when he was deployed. Eric pushed it open slowly, training sliding into place without permission. The house was too quiet. Not the gentle quiet of sleep—something heavier, like the air was holding its breath.
He moved through the living room. Dishes in the sink. Mail scattered on the counter. Brenda’s purse on the table. He climbed the stairs with each step careful and deliberate, the way he’d moved through buildings overseas when something didn’t match what it should.
Their bedroom door was open. Brenda was there, sprawled across the bed in the clothes she’d worn that day, one arm hanging off the edge. An empty wine bottle sat on the nightstand like it belonged there.
Eric’s jaw tightened.
He went to Emma’s room, pushing open the door decorated with princess stickers she’d picked out before he left.
Empty.
The bed was made. Mr. Hoppers—the stuffed rabbit Emma had slept with since she was two—was gone. Her shoes weren’t by the door.
Eric was back in the bedroom in three strides. He shook Brenda’s shoulder harder than he meant to. She came awake with a startled sound, eyes unfocused and confused.
“Eric—what? You’re not supposed to be—”
“Where’s Emma?”
Brenda blinked like she was trying to catch up to the moment. Eric didn’t let her.
“What time is it?” she mumbled.
“Where is our daughter?”
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