“And this is dinnertime,” I said.
He sighed, closed the cover, and put the tablet on a shelf behind him.
“Good,” Nana Mama said, smiling. “A little drumroll, please?”
Jannie started tapping her fingers against the tabletop. I joined in, and so did Bree and Ali.
“Top Chef judges,” my grandmother said. “I give you fresh Alaskan halibut in a sauce of sweet onions, elephant garlic, Belgian blond beer, and dashes of cumin, cilantro, and curry.”
She popped off the lid. Sumptuous odors steamed out and swept my mind off my day. As we scooped jasmine rice and ladled the halibut onto our plates, I could tell Bree had managed to put her day aside as well.
The halibut was delicious, and Nana Mama’s delicate sauce made it all the better. I had seconds. So did everyone else.
The fuller I got, however, the more my thoughts drifted back to Chorey. Those thoughts must have shown on my face. My grandmother said, “Something not right with your meal, Alex?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’d order that dish in a fancy restaurant.”
“Then what? Your trial?”
I refused to give that a second thought. I said, “No, there was this veteran Bree and I dealt with today. He suffered a head injury and lost most of his hearing in an explosion in Afghanistan. He lives in shelters and on the streets now.”
Ali said, “Dad, why does America treat its combat veterans so poorly?”
“We do not,” Jannie said.
“Yes, we do,” Ali said. “I read it on the Internet.”
“Don’t take everything on the Internet as gospel truth,” Nana Mama said.
“No,” he insisted. “There’s like a really high suicide rate when they come home.”
“That’s true,” Bree said.
Ali said, “And a lot of them live through getting blown up but they’re never right again. And their families have to take care of them, and they don’t know how.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” my grandmother said.
“There’s help for them, but not enough, given what they’ve been through,” I said. “We brought the guy today to the VA hospital. Took a while, but they got him in detox to get clean. The problem is what’s going to happen when he’s discharged.”
“He’ll probably be homeless again,” Ali said.
“Unless I can figure out a way to help him.”
My grandmother made a tsk noise. “Don’t you have enough on your plate already? Helping your attorneys prepare your defense? Seeing patients? Being a husband and father?”
Her tone surprised me. “Nana, you always taught us to help others in need.”
“Long as you see to your own needs first. You can’t do real good in the world if you don’t take care of yourself.”
“She’s right,” Bree said later in our bathroom, after we’d cleaned the kitchen and seen the rest of the family to bed. “You can’t be everything to everyone, Alex.”
“I know that,” I said. “I just…”
“What?”
“There’s something about Chorey, how lost he is, how abandoned he’s been, hearing nothing, seeing little. It just got to me, makes me want to do something.”
“My hopeless idealist,” Bree said, hugging me. “I love you for it.”