“Sell the house,” my father said, lifting a baseball bat in my grandmother’s living room while my mother begged me to think about my sister’s debts, and when the first hit dropped me to my knees and the front door burst open seconds later, the only thing that stopped everyone cold was hearing one of the officers look at me and say my rank out loud.

I spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of sleep, thinking about the nine years I spent on gray ships and in cold barracks. My grandmother’s letters had been my only anchor, always telling me that duty makes a person strong but shouldn’t make them hard.

The hospital chaplain stopped by the next morning to ask if I needed to pray, but I told him I just needed a moment of silence. The doctor eventually cleared me for discharge with a list of instructions for rest and a follow-up appointment for the following week.

I looked at my phone and saw a string of missed calls from my mother and sister, but the only message I opened was from Mr. Henderson. “We saw the lights, Commander, and we are all rooting for your recovery,” the text read, bringing a small smile to my face.

I didn’t leave my hometown in anger all those years ago; it had started as a slow silence that eventually turned into a canyon between us. My father wanted me to turn wrenches in a dark shop, but I had a hunger for the horizon that he couldn’t understand.