“It’s the God’s honest truth, Yuli. He was up north the entire time,” he said, his voice strangled. “I’m telling you. I talked to him on the phone every day.” He asked me if I remembered how a group of civilians was waiting to cheer us in the assembly area the day we came out of Lebanon.

“No,” I said, even though that wasn’t entirely true. I did have a vague memory of a few people showing up there with small charcoal grills and Israeli flags. They threw a big barbecue for the whole unit.

“There were a lot of civilians there, Yuli. Your dad was one of them.”

“No way,” I said. “There’s just no way.”

“I’m telling you,” Grandpa stuttered with a choked-up voice. “He told me everything, said he stood at a distance, but he spotted you, all right. He saw you sitting there alone, far from the rest of your unit, smoking a cigarette. He said it pained him to see you like that.”

“Enough already!” I yelled at him. “Enough with the lies. Enough!”

Grandpa’s last sentence was more than I could bear. I kept screaming at him that it couldn’t be true, that it just made no sense. I sat back down in the chair, my legs shaking. The dizziness was driving me crazy. I couldn’t think straight. I felt how everything was crashing into me. Grandpa got up and approached me, putting his hand on my shoulder.

“Then why didn’t he tell me about it?” I asked. “Even in passing? He had two years to tell me.”

“I don’t know,” Grandpa replied. “To tell you the truth, I’ve asked myself the same question more than once.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Driving the entire way there without telling me,” I hissed. “It’s so like him.”

We started dragging ourselves down the stairs, holding on to each other, saying that maybe the two of us ought to consider a career in nursing. I collapsed onto the couch.

Grandpa went to his room, brought a blanket, and covered me up. “So maybe only I should consider a career in nursing,” he said, and put his hand on my head. “My Yulinka.”

I opened my eyes and saw him looking at me, his eyes full of pity.

“It was on your bucket list,” I told him.

“What?” he asked.

“The cigar,” I said. “It was on your list.”

He smiled. Then he got up and turned off the light.