The rideshare dropped him at the mouth of the cul-de-sac because he had asked for that. Sergeant First Class Daniel Wade Harlan wanted to walk the last hundred yards. For eleven months he had walked them in his head: on the gravel at the forward operating site, on night convoys, under a plywood ceiling while the generator thudded. Now he walked them for real, and his body seemed unsure whether to believe it.
The duffel rode his left shoulder, heavy with everything he had carried out and almost nothing he wanted to keep. His uniform smelled of three airports and a cargo hold. It was late afternoon in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the last week of September. The light came in low and gold through the sweetgums, and the spiky seed balls they dropped rolled under his boots on the sidewalk. Somewhere a sprinkler ticked. Somebody's dryer vent breathed fabric softener into the air. A basketball lay in the gutter at the Pruitts' house where it had probably sat all summer. It was so ordinary he had to slow down.
Fourteen Larkspur Court was a gray-blue colonial with white trim and a deep front porch. Seven years ago he and Claire had stood on that porch with a real estate agent and decided, without saying it, that this was the place. The two rocking chairs were still there. So was the hanging fern Claire swore every spring she would keep alive. The bottom step, the one he had meant to fix before he left, was new. He saw it from the street, pale unstained lumber, and felt a small, warm, stupid gratitude toward whoever had done it.
The battalion's main body wasn't due for ten days. He had come back with the advance party and called Claire from the Richmond airport an hour and twenty minutes ago. Her voice had caught on the phone. He had taken it for joy, and part of it may have been.