I watched her walk down the driveway. Her head was up. She wasn’t hugging the sketchbook to her chest anymore; she was swinging it by her side.
I took a sip of coffee. It tasted better than it had in months.
The silence in the house was back. But it wasn’t the heavy, suffocating silence of fear. It was the peaceful silence of a perimeter secured.
I’m not a soldier anymore. I don’t carry a rifle. But I learned a valuable lesson right here in suburbia.
You don’t need a war to be a hero. You just need to be the person who opens the door when someone is screaming for help.
And God help anyone who tries to close it again.
