I did not tell anyone I was coming home.
It wasn’t because I wanted to orchestrate a heartwarming surprise. It was because, technically speaking, I wasn’t supposed to exist right now. I was on unofficial medical leave from a classified intelligence unit. The kind of leave where your name gets scrubbed from the active rosters, and if you bleed out in the middle of nowhere, the agency politely pretends they never knew you.
I pulled my nondescript sedan up to my parents’ suburban house just before noon. I let the engine idle for a second longer than necessary, my hands gripping the steering wheel as I surveyed the front yard. Two massive catering vans were parked on the lawn. A pristine white event tent was being erected over the back patio, and a florist was arguing vehemently with a delivery driver about the arrangement of white hydrangeas.
Right. The wedding.
I stepped out of the car slowly. It wasn’t fatigue that slowed my movements, but the sharp, biting pull of the surgical stitches hidden beneath my heavy jacket. The shrapnel wound sat low on my abdomen, tightly bound and heavily bandaged. “Light duty,” the medical officer had said. Apparently, dragging my own broken body across state lines qualified as light duty.
I grabbed my canvas duffel from the back seat and walked toward the front door. It was unlocked. Of course it was. Nothing valuable ever went missing in this neighborhood—unless you counted the people.
The moment I stepped inside, a wall of noise hit me. Overlapping voices, the clinking of fine china, and upbeat pop music blaring from a Bluetooth speaker. My mother, Barbara, stood in the center of the kitchen, aggressively directing two hired caterers. My father, William, was pacing near the bay window, barking into his cell phone about a delayed ice sculpture.
And in the center of the living room, standing on a small pedestal like the main event she believed herself to be, was my sister, Jessica. She wore a white silk robe, her hair half-pinned, surrounded by an orbit of bridesmaids and garment racks.
I stood in the entryway for a full ten seconds. No one noticed.
