The Marine in me started securing things immediately. New locks on every door. Motion sensor lights along the driveway and near the barn. A simple camera system: one at the gate, one at the front door, one watching the back field. Not because I was scared. Because habit is hard to unlearn, and in the Corps you secure your perimeter and you know who is coming before they arrive.
The next few weeks were simple in a way my life had not been for years. I drove to town for groceries and hardware, hauled junk out of the barn, patched fence posts that had gone soft with rot, and learned the sound the
wind made when it moved through the trees at night, a low steady murmur that was nothing like silence but that felt, after a lifetime of noise and obligation and the particular volume of a family that expressed love as demand, like the closest thing to peace I had encountered. I went to bed sore but satisfied. No late night texts from my
