Page 100 of Don’t You Cry

“Maybe.”

“Dangerous?”

His smile fades slightly. “No.”

“Yeah, not that,” I agree. “Hm… There was the time he tried to teach Smith to dance.”

Kamden perks up. “Dad could dance?”

I grin, remembering the scene. “No. Absolutely not.” I laugh softly.

“Oh, no,” he murmurs, his lips twitching up.

I tell him about a night overseas when the entire team had been stuck together too long, everyone tired enough to start finding anything entertaining, and somebody managed to get music playing off a terrible little speaker with one blown side.

John had decided that he knew how to salsa, and that it was only right to share that knowledge with the team.

“He did not know how to salsa,” I assure Kamden. “He stepped on Smith’s foot three times. Knocked over a chair, too.”

“Dad was tall,” he says on behalf of John’s pride.

“He elbowed me in the throat,” I tell him.

Kamden giggles. “You’re exaggerating.”

“I am not,” I say, though I’m aware I’m stretching the truth. John only clipped Smith’s toes twice, and the chair went down because Garcia’s foot snagged its leg. Still, Kamden is smiling, and John really did elbow me in the throat. Hurt like a mother.

I move on to another one, then another, and another.

“I don’t believe you,” he says after I finish telling him about the time he got a tattoo after losing a bet with the guys.

“I have photographic evidence somewhere.”

His laughter cuts off. “Really…?” The word carries such open hope that it catches me off guard.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never seen pictures of him from when he was deployed, except the official ones.”