And finally I find a loose thread. It’s a phone number with a 703 area code, meaning northern Virginia. According to old phone bills, someone using our landline called that number six times in the year after my father returned from Iraq.

I go back through the phone records again, slowly, looking for any other patterns. The 703 number is hardly the only unknown number in the bills. It could be any number of things. An old friend. A repairman who had moved to Georgia and kept their old cell number. Or maybe a former client or colleague of Dad’s—after he got fired from his first bank for screaming at a customer, Dad would regularly reach out to any contacts who hadn’t already broken off with him, always searching for a better job.

One way to find out. I dial the number. After the first ring, it’s picked up by a man, his voice crisp and tight as a snare drum. “OIG, this is Manning.”

I have no idea what OIG means, so I improvise. “I’m looking for Steve Rogers,” I say, using the first name that comes to mind. Then I wince. Real smooth there, Suzie—why not just say Tony Stark or Peter Parker?

“There’s no Steve Rogers in this office,” the man says. No hesitation, all business.

Wilson noses my ankle and looks up at me, tail wagging. I gently push him away with my foot. “Maybe I dialed the wrong office?” I say, letting my voice lilt upward at the end, trying to sound like a slightly helpless female.

“Are you looking for a particular service branch, ma’am?”

Service branch? “Army,” I say automatically. “I’m sorry, which office is this again?”

“DoD inspector general,” he says. “I can give you the number for the Army IG whenever you’re ready.”

He rattles off a number and I thank him and hang up. Then I jump onto the internet and look up the website for the Department of Defense. On the page for the DoD’s inspector general, I find two contact numbers. One is a toll-free number, and the other starts with the same area code and prefix as the number I called, but the last four digits are different.

So years ago someone, probably Dad, called the office of the inspector general for the Department of Defense, and he used a number that isn’t listed on their website. A private line, then, or at least a direct one—there was no operator or recorded greeting with a menu to navigate, just a good old-fashioned human. Why had Dad called the DoD? And why multiple times?