They sat on the porch together, and the morning moved around them, the way mornings do, incrementally, unhurriedly, with complete indifference to anything that had come before and complete openness to anything that might come next. A neighbor walked a dog, a car passed. Two houses down, someone was already mowing their lawn. The sound of it familiar and almost musical in its ordinariness.
Two weeks later, Ethan got a letter. Not a text, not an email, an actual letter handwritten in an envelope with a Denver return address that he didn’t recognize until he saw the name in the upper left corner. Ryan Whitmore. He opened it standing at the kitchen counter. The handwriting was slightly uneven. Not bad. Just unpracticed, the handwriting of someone who didn’t write letters often, which was most people under thirty. The letter was two pages front and back of a single folded sheet.
Ryan had enrolled at a community college in Denver, not for a degree in anything in particular. He’d signed up for a psychology course and a philosophy course and something called introduction to emergency medicine that he’d found by accident while browsing the catalog and had registered for on impulse because it sounded like something with actual stakes. He didn’t know where it was going. He wasn’t sure it was going anywhere, but it was something to organize around and the stakes felt real. And he thought about what Ethan had said about finding something where failing meant something and decided to try.
He’d also started volunteering, a veteran support organization in Denver. Not because he had any personal connection to military service, but because someone at the community college had put up a flyer and he’d thought about Ethan and thought about the afternoon in the kitchen and thought something bigger than myself. He showed up. They put him to work. He was not good at it yet. He was by his own description, frequently in the way and often uncertain about what was needed and sometimes said the wrong thing. But he kept showing up.
He wrote, “I don’t know if any of this makes up for anything. I don’t think it’s supposed to. I think it’s supposed to be its own thing, but I wanted you to know because you asked me what I was going to do and I gave you a vague answer, and this is the less vague answer.” He wrote, “Tell Lily I hope school is going well. I know I don’t really have standing to ask that, but I hope it anyway.” He wrote at the end in slightly larger letters than the rest, as if he’d pressed down harder on the pen. “You told me strength means having the power to hurt someone and choosing not to. I’ve been thinking about that every day. I think I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.”
Ethan read the letter twice. Then he folded it carefully and set it on the kitchen counter. He stood there for a moment. He thought about a lot of things. He thought about the scratch on his truck. He thought about Ryan standing in the street with his fighting gloves and his audience and his father watching from the curb. He thought about the two seconds before Ryan threw the first punch when the door had stood open briefly and Ryan had looked at it and then closed it. He thought about what it took to reopen a door like that. How much harder it was the second time, how much it cost. He thought about the veterans organization.
He picked up his phone. He called Jameson. “Hey,” Jameson said. “All clear on the legal situation?” “All clear,” Ethan said. “Dismissed two weeks ago.” “Good. Good.” A pause. “You called just to tell me that.” “No,” Ethan said. “I have a young man in Denver, twenty years old. No military background. Volunteers with a veterans organization there. I don’t know which one. He’s figuring out what he wants to be.” He paused. “If there’s anyone in your network in Denver who works with vets programs and might be willing to keep an eye out for someone worth investing some time in, not charity, investment. He’s going to be worth something, I think, if he gets pointed right.” Jameson was quiet for a moment. “This the kid who started the whole thing.” “Yes,” Ethan said. A long pause. “You’re something else, Walker,” Jameson said, but it wasn’t a criticism. “Can you make a call?” Ethan said. “I can make a call,” Jameson said. “No promises on outcomes.” “No promises needed,” Ethan said. “Just a call.” “Done,” Jameson said. “Give my best to Lily.” “Always,” Ethan said. He hung up.