“All right,” I said, clapping my large hands together once softly to break the rhythm.
“That’s absolutely enough for tonight.”
I stretched my back, feeling the joints pop in succession.
“I’m officially an old man, and my bad knee is currently screaming at me in a language I don’t want to translate.”
Chloe dropped her hands to her sides and let out a heavy, exhausted breath of air.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said, wiping the sweat from her brow.
“We’ll do a little bit of this every single week,” I promised her, turning and walking slowly toward the wooden porch steps.
“Just the basic fundamentals.”
I put my foot on the first wooden stair and looked back over my shoulder at my daughter.
“Just enough to buy you three seconds of time.”
I offered her a knowing look.
“In a truly bad situation, three seconds is all you will ever need to get away safely.”
Chloe followed me up the creaky wooden steps to the back door.
As I reached out to grab the handle of the screen door, she stopped me.
“Dad?” she called out softly.
I turned around on the top step, looking down at her.
Without a word of warning, Chloe stepped forward and wrapped her arms tightly around my waist.
She buried her sweaty face deeply into the center of my chest, holding on with a fierce, desperate strength.
It was a tight, incredibly fierce hug that caught me completely off guard.
I stiffened up for a fraction of a second, my military instincts flaring before recognizing the embrace.
Physical affection had been incredibly hard for me to process ever since coming home from the war.
It had been even harder to accept since the devastating day Sarah passed away.
But as her small arms squeezed me tight, all of that rigid armor completely melted away.
I wrapped my thick, calloused arms around my daughter’s shoulders.
I rested my chin softly on the top of her head, closing my eyes against the harsh porch light.
“You’re a really good dad,” Chloe mumbled affectionately against my flannel shirt.
I held her there in the cool night air for a very long time.
The terrifying ghosts of the men I had lost in the desert didn’t magically vanish.
The dark echoes of the extreme violence I had committed in the name of my country were still there.
The crushing, suffocating weight of the grief I carried for Sarah hadn’t miraculously disappeared.
None of it went away.
But standing there in the quiet night, holding the most precious thing in my world, the heavy weight finally felt just a little bit lighter.
“I’m trying, bug,” I whispered softly into the peaceful night.
“I’m really trying.”
We pulled apart slowly, offering each other a quiet smile of mutual understanding.
We turned and walked back into the warmth of the house together.
I let the wooden screen door click shut firmly behind us.
We left the darkness outside, exactly where it belonged.
THE END
