They were suing for full ownership of the farmhouse. My house. The house I’d lived in since my discharge eight months ago. The house that had been willed specifically to me—to me alone, not to my brother Ryan, not split between siblings, but to me—in Poppy’s will because he knew, he absolutely knew, that Robert and Margaret would sell it to developers the second he was in the ground.
The land was worth money now. The area was gentrifying, transforming from rural farmland to upscale suburban development. The house that had once been in the middle of nowhere was now prime real estate, and my parents could smell the profit.
And the legal justification for this betrayal? The grounds on which they were petitioning the court?
Abandonment and Willful Neglect.
The petition stated that the property had been “neglected and abandoned” by the owner for a period exceeding five years, that said abandonment had caused the property to fall into disrepair, and that the plaintiffs—as the defendant’s parents and family members—had suffered “emotional and financial distress” due to said abandonment and the estrangement it represented.
Therefore, they argued, they were entitled to seize the asset for the good of the family and the preservation of family property.
Abandonment.
I stared at that word until it blurred, until the letters stopped making sense, until they looked like random marks on paper instead of an accusation that cut deeper than any shrapnel.
They called my service abandonment.
I closed my eyes and the desert rushed back. Not the farmhouse, not Virginia, not the safe civilian world. The desert. The real one. The one that smelled of burning diesel, hot sand, and fear.
