I found a small house in western North Carolina, tucked at the edge of the Pisgah National Forest. It was just me, the trees, and the sound of running water from the creek beyond the back porch.
I found work as a peer counselor at a regional veterans’ clinic. No titles on my door. No nameplate. Just Alyssa.
Most of the people who came through didn’t ask about my story, and I didn’t offer it. They didn’t need to know what happened in Kandahar. They just needed someone who understood why the scent of diesel made them twitch, or why silence was sometimes the loudest sound in a room.
Some days, I would catch myself watching the clinic door, as if expecting them. My father. Loretta. Even Mason. But they never came.
I heard through someone at the clinic that my brother took a lobbying job in Florida. My mother still hosted charity events, smiling for the cameras. I became a footnote in their social script. The daughter who drifted. The “troubled one” they tried to love from a distance.
