He asked Caleb what was in the bottles. Caleb told him. He asked him when he had last been to the group at the VA. Caleb said July. Daniel took out his phone and called the Veterans Crisis Line with Caleb sitting right there, and handed him the phone. When Caleb shook his head, Daniel held it out until he took it. Then Daniel went down the stairs and stood by his truck with his back turned so the man could have some privacy. He was there twenty-five minutes, until Caleb came down the metal stairs and gave him the phone back and told him there was an appointment at McGuire tomorrow at nine. Daniel said he would drive him, then said no, he wouldn't. He said Caleb would drive himself, and he would call Daniel's phone from the parking lot of the hospital at eight-fifty-five so Daniel would know he had gone in. Caleb said he would.
Then Daniel told him the rest of it, standing in the gravel lot by the tire shop, and it came out simple and flat, like orders. He told him to stay away from his house. He told him not to call Claire or text her or drive down Larkspur Court. He told him not to come to the bus stop or the school or the soccer field. He told him that if he ever found him within a mile of his son he would forget that he had once carried him out of a ditch. Caleb nodded at every sentence and didn't argue with any of it.
Last, Daniel told him that what he had done was not something Daniel would ever forgive. He said it plainly. He wanted to be clear, because he was afraid that the phone call and the appointment and the twenty-five minutes by the truck might look like forgiveness, and they weren't. They were something else. He didn't have a name for it. Maybe it was just that he would not let another one of his soldiers die on his watch, even this one, even now.
Caleb said he understood. He said thank you, Sergeant. He said it the way you do at the end of a briefing, standing straight, and something in it nearly broke Daniel's composure where nothing else had.