Colonel Eklund smiles sadly. “No, I didn’t, I’m sorry to say. He looks a lot older than the gangly kid who served under me, but then we all do. I’m glad to see him, though, no matter how he looks.”

“Of course. But isn’t it fair to say that you never really knew him intimately?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“You only knew him for four months, you said.”

“Mr. Johnson, after the night of November twenty-fifth, I knew Private Cage better than most people ever get to know anybody.”

Shad steeples his fingers as he walks. “Because you served in combat together?”

“That’s right.”

“So one night of combat brings men closer than, say, a man and wife who live together for fifty years?”

“Have you ever served in combat?”

“No.”

“Well. If you had, you’d know that you can get closer to someone in fifteen hours of fighting for your life than you could in fifteen years of living in the same house with them.”

“A common belief. But there’s no way to prove that statement, is there?”

“I beg to differ. In combat, soldiers are asked to prove their love for their fellow men in ways that people in civilian life never are.”

This answer throws Shad off his rhythm.

“Ask any Vietnam wife,” Colonel Eklund says. “Who knows her husband better? Her? Or the men who spent a year in the mud and the blood with him in Southeast Asia?”

Shad seems to honestly weigh the implications of this. He’s breaking a cardinal rule of jurisprudence, asking questions to which he does not know the answers. For a few moments I am confused, but then it hits me: Shad actually believes that Dad murdered Viola. And because he does, he believes that even in this story of heroism, he will find some hint of the moral decay that led to Viola’s murder five decades later.

“I listened closely to the nomination you made for the Medal of Honor. Let me ask you this, Colonel. Couldn’t it be said that on that night Private Cage—rather than going above and beyond the call of duty—performed his duties exactly as required?”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m suggesting that Private Cage performed the standard duties of an army medic, performed them well, and then, after your position was overrun, did whatever was required to save himself and the other survivors from certain death.”

“That’s what he did, all right.”

“Is that in itself remarkable?”