“Daddy, Mommy said I was a burden and locked me here,” my 7-year-old wept from inside a dog cage. Returning from war, my heart shattered. Then, my wife walked out in silk with a stranger, shocked to see me alive. She thought I was dead-unaware that a trained soldier’s wrath had just begun…

no longer a Sergeant. I was no longer a soldier in a foreign land. I was a man with a hammer and a garden and a daughter who knew how to run.

The grooves in my imagination were finally being filled with new memories. The “Thinking Box” was a pile of scrap metal in a junkyard. The shadows were gone.

“Yeah,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “Holt sounds continue reading …