"I ruined us."
"You did." Jamal took a sip. "And then you spent years not pretending you didn't. That part matters. Not enough to rewrite the first chapter. Enough to let there be other chapters."
Daryl nodded. They sat with that. Inside, Angela laughed at something Elise said. The sound came through the screen door warm and ordinary, the sound of a house that had survived its worst late afternoon and learned how to hold evening again.
Jamal stood, stretched, felt the old tactical memory in his shoulders even in a T-shirt. "I'm going in. Mom said cobbler."
"Jamal."
"Yeah."
Daryl looked up at him from the lower step. "Thank you for coming home. Not just that first day. All the days after. You could have made this house a place she lost. You didn't."
Jamal considered the doorway — hardwood beyond, gray sectional, photographs, kitchen hallway, the ghost of a white towel long since folded and put away. He thought of the soldier he had been at twenty-eight, duffel by the door, smile ready, surprise prepared. He thought of the silence that had followed Daryl's voice. He thought of Rhea's coffee and Angela's letters and one plate at a cookout and a handshake at a door and years of weather reports and anniversary portraits and fireflies.
"I came home," Jamal said, "because home turned out to be harder than deployment and more worth the work. Don't make me write that on a cake."