I had barely stepped out of the taxi when the humidity of the Pacific was replaced by the sharp, biting chill of a Washington autumn. My seabag was still slung over my shoulder, a heavy, familiar weight that felt like an extension of my own spine. My boots were still coated in the fine, pale dust of Okinawa, a souvenir from a six-month rotation that had felt like a decade. I hadn’t even managed to take three purposeful steps toward my own front door before the air was sucked out of the neighborhood.
There they were. Standing on my porch like two vultures waiting for a carcass to stop twitching. My father, his arms crossed with a rigid, defensive posture, and my older brother, Chad, leaning against the railing with a smirk that suggested he had just won a lottery he didn’t deserve.
“You’re homeless now,” my father said.
