The C-17 Globemaster touched down at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst with the kind of bone-jarring jolt that would have bothered me four years ago. Now, after four consecutive deployments across three continents, the turbulence felt like a lullaby. I was thirty-four years old, looked forty, and felt ancient.
My name is Kenneth Dunar. I joined the army at eighteen, chasing a sense of purpose after my father, a decorated Vietnam vet, died from complications of Agent Orange exposure. My mother had remarried quickly—too quickly—to a man who brought a son into our lives.
Michael, two years my junior. He was charming where I was reserved, smooth where I was direct. We had never been close.
Michael had a way of taking shortcuts, of finding the easy path, while I was wired to choose the hard right over the easy wrong. Our mother doted on Michael, maybe because he reminded her less of war and loss. I left for basic training the day after high school graduation and, in many ways, never really came back.
I met Sarah McLean at a veteran’s charity event nine years ago. She’d been volunteering, bright-eyed and eager to “support our troops.” Sarah was beautiful in that conventional, curated way: blonde, perfectly maintained, always camera-ready. Still carrying the psychic weight of my first deployment to Iraq, I had been drawn to her lightness, her apparent normalcy.
She represented everything I thought I was fighting for: the American dream, stability, home. We married within eight months. She was twenty-two; I was twenty-five.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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