My wife severed our marriage through an email while I was serving overseas…

I used the money to buy a small cabin outside of Missoula, Montana. Two bedrooms, ten acres of land, a creek running behind it. No neighbors for miles.

I took early retirement from the Army. Twenty years was enough. I’d given enough.

I got a dog. German Shepherd named Scout. Started doing carpentry work for locals.

Nothing fancy, but it kept my hands busy and paid the bills. My military pension covered the rest. Sometimes I thought about Becky.

Wondered where she ended up. James heard she’d moved back to her hometown in Oregon. Working at another dental office.

Starting over, I guess. I didn’t hate her anymore. Didn’t much feel anything about her, to be honest.

She’d made her choices, and so had I. One evening I got a letter from a woman in Fort Worth. Her husband was in the Navy, deployed when Jeremy and Spencer tried to run their scheme on her. The FBI had given her my name as part of the case.

You don’t know me, she wrote. But you saved our home. Thank you for fighting back when it would have been easier to just walk away.

I read it twice, then pinned it to my refrigerator. Some days, when the silence got too loud or the memories too sharp, I’d look at that letter and remember that something good had come from all of it. Last I heard, Jeremy was still in prison.

Spencer, too. The system worked for once. As for me, I was finding my way forward.

One quiet day at a time. Building something new. Something that couldn’t be stolen or forged or betrayed.

Something that was just mine.