Page 147 of The Hometown Legend

And he wondered...he wondered if he had to change that.

He didn’t know what to do.

Because he was miserable.

And he’d been miserable before, but this was different.

This was brokenness.

He cleared his throat.

And he went inside. He unzipped his bag, and he took out his Purple Heart, which he generally never looked at.

What was the point?

Why hadn’t he died in Afghanistan?

So that you could live.

And it was like that wall he put up inside of himself had been broken down.

So that he could live.

Not as a symbol, not as a legend, not as anything damned near close to perfect. Just a living, breathing man.

He was fucked up and broken, and wanted to do better.

What was the point of going off into the sunset? It was selfish.

It wasn’t living.

It was dying before his time.

He found himself driving to his mother’s house.

Lydia was over there for dinner, and she gave him the side-eye when he came in.

“Rory’s in Boston,” she said.

“I know,” he grunted. “I told her to go.”

“Iknow,” she said. “She told me.”

“Well, I’m glad she went. But... I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something.”

“Me?” Lydia asked.

“Both of you.” He looked at his mother, and he could see the worry in her eyes. He hated that he’d put it there. He took a sharp breath. “Remember, Mom, when you told me that Dad would be proud of me?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was. He was so proud of you.”

“I want to believe that. He would be proud of me, but it would only be because he didn’t know everything about what happened after my injury.”

And he told him everything. All the things he had decided he needed to keep bottled up, to protect them from.

“I couldn’t call you,” he said, when his mother had asked through her tears why he hadn’t asked for help when he was homeless.

“I was too ashamed. I didn’t want you to see me like that. I couldn’t stand to see the disappointment in your face. It’s a thing that scares me more than anything. That if I’m not perfect, if I’m not a legend, who’s going to...” He took a sharp breath. “Why would anyonelove me? Why would anyone be proud of me? That’s what I’ve been this whole time. It’s what I’ve had to be. And the minute I wasn’t... Cassidy was done with me. I blamed myself, and I carry some blame. Trust me. I wasn’t a great husband to her those last few months. But the truth is she didn’t love me. Not the darker parts of me. Not the deepest parts. I was living two lives even before my injury. One as a deployed soldier who was beginning to question what we were doing, and who had reservations about a lot of things, and one who came back and relished in the military life. In our status. But I couldn’t share any of that with her.”

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