The Homecoming I Had Imagined for Months
For four long months, I survived by holding onto one picture in my mind.
I imagined opening our front door and seeing my wife, Mara, waiting there. Imagined the surprise on her face, her arms around my neck, the moment she’d finally place our newborn twin daughters in my arms.
Katie and Mia.
I’d never met them.
My mother had mailed me a photo a week before I came home. In it, the girls slept side by side under a yellow blanket, their tiny faces turned toward each other like they already understood they’d never have to face the world alone.
I carried that photo in my uniform’s breast pocket the entire journey home.
Unfolded it so many times the paper went soft along the creases.
Whenever the pain got hard to ignore, I looked at their faces.
They were the reason I kept moving forward.
They were also the reason I’d hidden the truth from Mara.
I was coming home with a prosthetic leg.
