Shaw didn’t say a word. Those kids were still running through my mind.

“I went in right behind them. I got them out just before the missiles hit, but I didn’t make it. The whole fucking building collapsed on top of me. The locals didn’t know I’d painted the target, they just saw me go in and get their kids. They dug me out by hand and kept me breathing until our people got there. That was it.”

“Sorry,” he said in a tone that carried his own experiences there. In a far more upbeat voice he wondered, “So how’d you get there?”

“There” being the Pro. “Friends in low places, I guess.” We both laughed. Subject changed. I gave him the pitch. In contrast to the denizens of Trumpworld, a place in which beliefs trumped truth, we took great pride in what we were doing. We believed journalism mattered. Rah, rah for the good guys.

Sha … Marty told me he’d heard of the Pro but hadn’t read it until a friend forwarded the article I’d written about the mother. “You did a nice job,” he said. His response told me a lot about what he wasn’t saying. After an uncomfortable pause he continued. “Listen, you understand I’m not allowed to talk to you about any of this. I doubt that’s going to change, but if it does, I promise I’ll get in contact with you.”

Some stories have to be developed slowly, like old-fashioned negatives coming to life in a darkroom, before you know exactly what they’re going to look like. When I hung up, I thought, That’s a good start. Whether it would lead anywhere or not, who knew? I gave him my contact information. No different from dozens of similar conversations. But now, sitting here, knowing what it led to, I do wonder sometimes that if I could go back to that night, would I have made that phone call?

I hope so.

Seconds after I’d hung up Cher told me in her lilting electronic voice that my sister was calling. It’s called timing, a ticka-ticka-ticka. Just when I’d finished exposing my emotions. “Cher, tell her I’ll call her back, please.” I liked my sister; I even loved her in a familial way, but we weren’t especially close. Before, when traveling was easier and the Army cooperated, I’d get home at least once a year to see my mother as well as my sister and her kids. She was six years older than me, so our lives just brushed at the edges while we were growing up. Bea was a settler, always was, living happily in a gated village with her accountant husband, a good guy, and their two girls. My nieces were repeating Bea’s life, but with more TVs.

We spoke around holidays or when there was a family problem or a decision had to be made or there was a payment due on our father’s headstone or when she saw me on air; often enough to know the broad strokes of each other’s lives.