He had been listening for a long time.
“Not me,” he said.
“I’ve been gone a hundred and twenty days.”
“I came home and I’m holding my kid.”
“That’s how men are.”
“Some of them.”
“Not you.”
Somebody started to clap.
It was only one person at first, an older woman near the back, slow and deliberate.
Then another joined her.
Then fifty.
It rolled across the terminal floor like a wave, and it was not for me, or for my mother.
It was a verdict.
Dillon stood in the center of it, small and gray, with his collar damp.
My mother raised one hand, and the clapping stopped.
She stepped up to him until the gold stripes on her sleeve were a foot from his face.
She said it quietly.
“It isn’t how men are, Dillon.”
“It’s how you are.”
He swallowed.
“Mr. Kendrick,” she said, without turning her head.
