At the truck, Owen stopped and turned around and waved at his mother in the doorway. He waved with his whole arm, the way children do when they haven't yet learned to be embarrassed by love. She waved back. Then he climbed into the back seat and buckled himself in, which he could do on his own now, and Daniel stood for one more moment by the open driver's door and looked back at the house.
It wasn't his anymore. It was still home, though, to the person who mattered most. He thought that might be enough. He thought maybe that was what the words on the back of the photograph had meant all along, though it had taken him two years and a war and the worst thing that ever happened to him to read them right. It wasn't a house, or a porch, or a woman laughing on a beach. It was the small person in the green hoodie in the back seat, humming to himself, the dog tag under his shirt, off duty at last.
Daniel got in, started the truck, and drove his son home.