“I knew the truth about us: I could not be okay if he was not okay. Pain, nightmares, fighting- all of it aside- he was a part of me.”

“The fear, momentarily paused, returned with full force, and in this frantic, baffled state I ran to him, and leapt into his arms. He seemed surprised at first but soon was squeezing back. "It's all right," he soothed. "No one's hurt. You're okay."His words sliced through me, and for the first time since he'd taken me from school, I knew the truth about us: I could not be okay if he was not okay. Pain, nightmares, fighting- all of it aside- he was a part of me.”

“He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.”

“ Don't. I understand. I knew going into this that a story about us was also going to be a story about the two of you. And it should be. He was a big part of your life, and I'm okay with your history. It made you who you are. And I happen to be in love with who you are.”

“Okay,” he said. “I gotta go to sleep. It’s almost one.” 
“Okay,” I said.
 “Okay,” he said. 
I giggled and said, “Okay.” And then the line was quiet but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone. “Okay,” he said after forever. “Maybe okay will be our always.”
 “Okay,” I said.
 It was Augustus who finally hung up.”

“All my life my dad felt this need to protect his kids from a war he fought, a war I believed could never reach out and touch us, could never hurt us—and yet he fed us lies with his answers, shielding us from the truth about what he did there, about what he saw, about who he was before the war, and about what he became because of it. He lied to protect us from his memories, from his nightmares. Standing with my dad at The Wall, I knew the truth—no one could know so many names engraved in granite if he 'never was in danger.”