Nicholas Sutter was the only one in his fifth grade class whose dad had died. Well, been
killed. Trent Sutter had been in the army, stationed in Iraq, since 2010. An official from the
army knocked on their door at 3 p.m. on April 9, 2011, and given Nicholas’ mom the news. It
had been an IED—an “improvised explosive device”—set off by an approaching vehicle. The
army official tried to assure Nicholas’ mom that her husband had died instantly and painlessly.
The TV was on in the living room, and Nicholas was sitting on the floor in front of the
couch, holding his baby sister Lily on his lap. She kept tugging on his shoelaces and trying to
crawl away, but Nicholas didn’t let her. He watched his mom’s back and the front door with
the official’s silhouette out of the corner of his eye, but was otherwise focusing all his
attention on the TV. He tried to block out the sounds from the doorway, even though he knew
what the visit meant. His mom had tried to prepare him for it ever since he was old enough to
realize that his dad’s long absences meant he was at war.
The Looney Tunes were playing on TV; an old Bugs Bunny cartoon showed Bugs running
in circles around the hunter. If Nicholas couldn’t hear the conversation, then did it actually
happen? Bugs was chewing on a long, orange carrot, but Nicholas was thinking of the last time
he and his dad were alone together. They had gone to the beach a few days before he left for
Iraq and held hands as they walked down into the surf. The water was freezing, and his dad
picked Nicholas up so he wouldn’t get the bottoms of his pants wet. Nicholas felt like
Superman, flying above the ocean civilization, held up by his dad’s strength and his dad’s love.
Nicholas could hear the conversation at the front door beginning to wind down. Before
his mom got a chance to say goodbye to the official, Nicholas turned off the TV, picked up his
baby sister, and ran to the bathroom, where he locked the door and climbed into the bathtub.
He held Lily up and looked at her face closely. She had the same color eyes as his dad—deep
blue—and people said she had his dad’s nose too. It was hard to imagine Lily’s nose on his
dad’s face, but Nicholas tried. And then he realized it was hard to imagine his dad’s face at all,