Chapter 1

Jack sat at his desk with a pen in his hand. There was a minor tremor as he practiced writing. His grandfather greatly appreciated that he needed to practice because he was the beneficiary of it. They’d been writing--writing real letters--for nearly six months now as Jack needed to work on his manual dexterity.

Of course, he supplemented this “doctor-approved” physical therapy for his hands with a few hours of video games every day too. Jack thought the video games helped more, but he’d promised to keep writing his grandfather, at least once a week. And even though he complained to his parents about the task, Jack was willing to admit--if only to himself--that he actually did enjoy receiving the letters. His grandfather never liked speaking about his time in Vietnam during the war, but he was able to write about it, and Jack found the stories fascinating.

“Jack!” his mother shouted from downstairs. “You’ve got a package!”

Jack frowned and picked up his phone. Checking his app, he frowned. He wasn’t expecting anything from Amazon and couldn’t remember ordering anything from anywhere else.

“Did you hear me, Jack!?”

“Yeah, Mom!” Jack shouted back. “On my way.”

Jack signed as he picked up his cane and grunted with pain as he pushed himself to standing. Each step was less painful than it was just to stand up, but there was pain. The doctors and physiotherapists never would say for sure if the pain would ever fully go away, but they were clear about him probably always needing the cane.