Today's Reading
CHAPTER ONE
I
March 2023
Tanner Hughes stepped onto the porch of the cottage that had once belonged to his grandparents and locked the door behind him. In one hand, he held a duffel bag, in the other a garment bag protecting the suit he'd worn to his grandmother's funeral five weeks earlier.
He looked up, noting a single cloud glowing brilliant white in the morning sunshine. It would be another postcard-perfect Florida day and he thought again that his grandparents had chosen a nice place to settle down for good. Pensacola had always been a military town and many veterans moved to the area to retire; he suspected that his grandparents, especially his former army mechanic grandpa, had fit right in.
He left the key beneath a flowerpot for the realtor, who planned to come by later. The furniture had already been moved out, painters had been scheduled, and the realtor had hinted that the place would sell quickly. Tanner had spent much of the last month sorting through his grandparents' things and processing the final months he'd spent with his grandma.
He glanced over his shoulder one last time, missing her, missing his grandpa. His grandparents were the only parents he'd ever known, his single mother having died minutes after Tanner had been delivered. It felt strange to know they were no longer around, and the word orphaned felt apt. After all, his mother had existed for him only in photographs, and until recently, he'd known nothing about his biological father at all. In their taciturn way, his grandparents had implied they hadn't known his father's identity, and Tanner had long ago convinced himself that it didn't really matter. Sure, sometimes he wished he'd known his parents, but he'd been raised in a loving home, and that was all that really mattered.
Pushing his thoughts aside, he started toward his car, thinking it looked fast even while parked in the driveway. A reproduction 1968 Shelby GT500KR from Revology Cars, it was candy-apple red with Wimbledon white stripes; even though it was brand-new, it looked identical to the ones that rolled off the line more than half a century earlier. It was the most extravagant thing Tanner had ever purchased for himself, and when it had arrived, he'd wished his grandpa had been alive to see it. They'd both loved American muscle cars, and while this wasn't an original, it was made to be driven, not stored in a collector's garage, which suited him just fine.
Yet, come summertime, it was going to end up in a garage anyway.
Tanner squeezed the bags into the trunk next to a box of keepsakes from the cottage. His backpack was already on the passenger seat. The engine started with a throaty roar, and he headed through town, toward the interstate, passing chain stores and fast-food restaurants, thinking that aside from the beach, Pensacola didn't strike him as all that different from other places in other states he'd visited recently. He was still getting used to the sameness in much of the United States and he wondered whether he'd ever stop feeling like a stranger in the country.
As he drove, he felt his mind drifting through the highlights of his life: a youth spent on a dozen different military bases in Germany and Italy, basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia, nearly a decade and a half in the army. The numerous deployments to the Middle East and after he left the service, his security work with USAID—the U.S. Agency for International Development—all of it spent overseas.
And since then?
He'd pretty much stayed on the move, if only because it was all he knew. Much of the last couple of years had been spent on the road, his travels taking him from one side of the country to the other. He'd filled his phone with photos of national parks and various monuments as he'd reconnected with friends and, more important, visited the families of other friends he'd known in the service who'd passed away. In all, he'd been able to name twenty-three friends who'd been killed or died by their own hand after they'd left the service. Talking with their widows or parents felt right somehow, as though he was getting closer to an answer he needed, even if he still wasn't sure what the question might be.
...
