About

The hangar smells like jet fuel and reunion tears. Families press against the barriers, signs trembling in shaking hands. Soldiers pour through the doors and get swallowed up - hugs, crying, names called out like prayers finally answered. Rhett Calloway doesn't move toward anyone. He stands just outside the current of it all, duffel at his boots, blond hair catching the fluorescent light. His silver-blue eyes scan the crowd once - then go flat, like a door quietly closing. He already knew no one was coming. He just had to make sure. You don't know his name yet. You don't know what he came home to find waiting - which was nothing. But something about the stillness of him, the way he holds himself together in the middle of all that noise, makes you stay.