Ordinary HEROES
Chapter One
STEWART: ALL PARENTS KEEP SECRETS
All parents keep secrets from their children. My father, it seemed, kept more than most.
The first clue came when Dad passed away in February 2003 at the age of eighty-eight, after sailing
into a Bermuda Triangle of illness-heart disease, lung cancer, and emphysema-all more or less
attributable to sixty years of cigarettes. Characteristically, my mother refused to leave the burial details to my
sister and me and met the funeral director with us. She chose a casket big enough to require a hood
ornament, then pondered each word as the mortician read out the proposed death announcement.
"Was David a veteran?" he asked. The undertaker was the cleanest-looking man I'd ever seen, with
lacquered nails, shaped eyebrows, and a face so smooth I suspected electrolysis.
"World War II," barked Sarah, who at the age of fifty-two still raced to answer before me.
The funeral director showed us the tiny black rendering of the Stars and Stripes that would appear in
the paper beside Dad's name, but my mother was already agitating ... read full excerpt from Ordinary Heroes ebook
