Phantom

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The house at the seaward end of Captain’s Neck Lane in Bar Harbor is a three-story Victorian painted a lovely shade of pale yellow with white trim. The home has all the prerequisite nineteenth-century decorative gingerbread geegaws and doodads, but they are not overwhelming. There is a certain peace about the house that you can feel, just standing on the sidewalk at the front gate on a quiet summer evening.

Peace, yes, and should you step inside, abiding love.

There was red, white, and blue bunting hung from the portico surrounding the front door. A very large American flag was draped from the roof and obscured the two large windows on the third floor. A banner was affixed to the exterior wall just below the flag. It read:

A HERO’S WELCOME, U.S. MARINE SGT. CHRIS MARLEY!

Tonight, all the windows of 72 Captain’s Neck Lane are aglow, though it is well nigh the witching hour. Even lit is the tiny window at the top of the tower jutting out from the western front corner of the house. In that small round room, a little girl is sitting on her bedroom floor being read to by her father. The child’s name is Aurora, age six. The father is Christopher, age thirty-two, a warrior at heart. Still. He is missing part of his right leg, from the knee down. It is the result of an IED the Taliban had left waiting for him beside the road to Kabul. He’d been promised a prosthetic, but there was a very long line of amputees ahead of him.

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