I stood on the yellow-painted curb of the Norfolk airport taxi lane, my sea bag heavy against my right shoulder. The salt smell of the Chesapeake always stayed in my Navy wool uniform coat, even after six months of active duty on the carrier.
I pulled out my phone and dialed my mother, Evelyn. It rang four times before the automated voice cut in, telling me the mailbox was full and could not accept new messages.
I tried her number once more, then my younger brother Mason’s phone, and finally my sister Chloe. Every call went straight to voicemail without a single ring, as if they had all turned their devices off at the same time.
The taxi driver, an older man with a faded anchor tattoo on his forearm, lifted his trunk lid. “Need a lift, Lieutenant?”
“Elm Street,” I said, sliding into the vinyl back seat of the cab.
We crawled through the afternoon traffic toward the residential streets of Norfolk. The gray sky was dropping the season’s first real freeze over the tidewater, turning the puddles along the bypass into thin sheets of white ice.
I adjusted my uniform collar, the stiff wool rubbing against my throat. I had expected at least a text message confirming they were home, or a brief note about who would be waiting for me.
“First tour?” the driver asked, eye meeting mine in the rearview mirror.
“Third,” I said. “Flight surgeon.”
“Good unit,” he said, turning the wheel onto the avenue that led toward the historic district. “My nephew was on the Eisenhower. Always said the doctors were the only ones who slept with their boots off.”
The driver adjusted his sun visor as the glare from the river hit the windshield. “You been away long?”
“Six months,” I said. “Deployments have a way of stretching.”
“My brother did twenty years in the Navy,” he said, checking his blind spot. “Said the hardest part was always the first ten minutes after you got back. Everything looks the same, but it feels like you’re looking at it through someone else’s window.”
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