“He’s not dead, sir.” She shouldn’t have said it, but, there, she did. His solemnly sympathetic tone grated. It was treacle-phony. It combined with his self-congratulatory implication in every bodily tic, unintended move, and breath taken. Each denoted something like: Poor asswipes like us are here while la-di-das back home go shopping. He wanted her to get with him on this—what was it?—oh, that this personal-effects processing was sacred duty for gritty people. All it was, in fact, was something someone dreamed up to prevent family claiming the air force lost or stole something. And Frank didn’t give a damn about any of these so-called personal effects. He didn’t consider any of them personal. Family photos, he used to tell her, were so overexposed, so military-endorsed, so encouraged to be promoted in any public setting, that any authentic meaning had been shrink-wrapped away. Everyone agreed that everyone could agree: We’re supposed to be fighting for them and wanting to return home to them. That’s the only emotional experience we’re supposed to be having. It’s universal. See, they love their kids, these Afghans, just like we love our kids. What if you hate your wife? What if your mother up and left when you were three? Everybody loves who they’re supposed to love. We’re all the same. The Great Same. That’s what he called it. She’d heard him hold forth on it more times than the days they’d spent together.

“He was your wingman.”

“Still is.”

“That was a pretty stupid stunt you and he pulled.”

She wasn’t sure it even rose to the level of stupid stunt. Stupid stunt would be picking off the turbans of locals with a sniper rifle from a secluded promontory. Sledding—what was sledding?

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“He may never fly again because of it.”

“He may not.”

“You were outside the wire for no good reason.”

“That’s correct.”

So Frank still had the photos above his head, first thing he saw every morning. She’d wondered, since she’d never seen his quarters, if they would be here.

Finally, they were done with everything else; it was time for the documents. She turned to the shelves at the foot of his bed. There was a stack of file folders. She pulled them out and sat down on the bed to look at them.

They were filled with sealed envelopes. Each had a date on it. After opening a few more folders, she saw that the dates went back to their first tour. She looked at the sicmo.

“For inventory purposes, we’ll just put ‘X number of folders, Y number of sealed envelopes,’” he said. “Let’s divide the folders and count the envelopes. No need to open them. They’re for your eyes only.”