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He nods. “Yeah, he loved to cook. He loved going out to eat too.”

I smile. “Well, out there, we’re reliant on military rations for weeks at times. He hated the food, and to be fair, it’s hard not to. But you need to eat in order to keep your strength and energy up. The day this happened, he’d barely gotten any sleep for the past three, maybe four, days. He was fucking exhausted, cranky as hell, and about to lose it.”

“We were staying outside a village for a couple of days. Nothing dramatic, mostly waiting around, which is approximately 80% of military service, despite what movies would have you believe. There were goats everywhere, and we were told very specifically to leave them alone. None of us gave a shit. Except…”

“Dad?” Kamden questions, eyebrows raised as he listens intently.

“Well, not for the most part, but then this one day he’s sitting outside eating lunch. Which, if I remember right, was supposed to be chicken—”

Kamden interrupts. “Supposed to be?”

I shrug. “It smelled like wet cardboard. Anyway, he’s sitting there, and this brown goat walks straight up to him. John told it to fuck off, of course, but the goat just kept coming closer.”

Kamden’s eyes widen.

“The goat wasn’t intimidated,” I continue. “Just leaned forward and took half his food right out of his hand.”

Kamden snorts—actually snorts—then, embarrassed by the sound, hides his mouth behind his rabbit’s ear.

I pretend not to notice.

“John loses his fucking mind.”

“What did he do?”

“Chased it.”

“No.”

“Across half the village.”

“You’re lying.”

“I wish I were.”

“He chased a goat because it ate his lunch?”

“He chased a goat because, according to him, it had ‘disrespected him.’”

Kamden’s laugh is small, breathy, and a little rusty around the edges, as though he hasn’t used it enough lately, but unmistakably laughter.

The sound hits me square in the chest, because I see John in it. Not in the pitch, nor the rhythm, but in the sheer fucking life of it.

For a second I see a different boy entirely—the kid John used to talk about, the one who wore crowns, painted his nails, and laughed often enough that his father had a dozen different stories about it.

Then it’s gone, and Kamden looks at me suspiciously. “So, what happened next?”

“Garcia caught him before he reached the goat.”

“Who’s Garcia?” he asks.

“He was another member of our team,” I answer, reminded that this boy knows literally nothing about that part of his father’s life. He had no one to tell him these stories, no one to put names to faces in pictures, nothing.

Then he asks, “So was Dad going to hurt the goat? Is that why Garcia caught him?”

“Well… Yeah, he probably would’ve throttled the thing.”

His eyes widen again. “Really? That doesn’t even sound like him.”