The Medal of Valor lived in the drawer of his nightstand for twenty years, until Carol, visiting one weekend, found it while looking for a bandage, and held it up and said, Dad. Dad, this is the Medal of Valor. Why is it in a drawer? And Harold, caught, said, It's just a medal, Carol. And Carol said, It's not just a medal, it's the highest honor the department gives, and Harold said, The honor was the crew. The medal's just metal. Carol looked at him for a long moment, and then she did what Eleanor would have done: she ignored him completely. She had the medal framed, with the citation and the front-page photograph, in a shadow box, and she hung it in the hallway next to the clock, and Harold protested for exactly one day, and then he found himself stopping in front of it sometimes, in the mornings, on his way to the porch, and looking at the young soot-blackened man in the photograph holding the blanket-wrapped old woman, and thinking, That was me. That was my life. And feeling, not pride, exactly, but something like gratitude, that he had been given the chance to be that man.
Eleanor's kindergarten legacy surfaced in the most unexpected ways. After the news story, Harold received a letter from a woman named Denise Park, who wrote that she had been in Eleanor's kindergarten class in 1989, that Mrs. Brennan had been the first person who ever told her she was smart, that she had become a teacher because of Mrs. Brennan, and that she now taught kindergarten in the same classroom, with the same reading corner, and she had a guinea pig named Professor the Second. Harold read the letter three times. He called the school. He arranged a visit. He walked into Eleanor's old classroom on a Tuesday morning, and thirty five-year-olds stared at him, and Denise Park, a grown woman with Eleanor's fierce eyes, said, Class, this is Mr. Brennan. His wife used to teach in this room. And a little boy in the front row said, Was she nice? And Harold, his throat tight, said, She was the nicest person I ever knew. And Denise showed him the reading corner, and the guinea pig, and the rule, still enforced after all these years, that every child would be hugged at least once a day. Harold sat in the tiny chair Denise offered him, and the children gathered around, and he told them about Eleanor, about the finger paintings at the district office, about the tree, and when he finished, the little boy from the front row climbed into his lap and hugged him, and Harold held him, because that was the rule, and that was Eleanor, still teaching, still hugging, through the hands of everyone she had touched.
The town council gave Harold a commendation, which he accepted with the same reluctance he had accepted everything, standing in the council chambers in his good jacket while the mayor read a proclamation about service and sacrifice and community. The proclamation mentioned Cedar Grove. It mentioned the thirty-five years. It mentioned, to Harold's embarrassment, the Mustang incident, praising his dignity under pressure. Harold's acceptance speech was eleven words long: Thank you. I was just doing the job. Now let's go home. The council laughed and applauded, and the mayor shook his hand for the photograph, and Harold went home and sat on the porch and told Eleanor all about it, and he could hear her laughing, saying, Hal, eleven words, that's a record, even for you.
The road trip to Ohio happened the following summer, and it was Carol's idea, and Harold agreed before he could think of a reason not to. They drove the Mustang, father and daughter, seven hours on the interstate, the V8 humming, the windows down, Carol driving the first half and Harold the second. They stopped at a diner in Pennsylvania where the waitress recognized the car and refused to let them pay. They stopped at a rest area where a truck driver spent twenty minutes walking around the Mustang, nodding, saying, They don't make 'em like this anymore. They arrived in Ohio to a hero's welcome from Carol's family, the grandkids swarming the car, David shaking his head and laughing, saying, Hal, you're going to spoil them. Harold stayed a week. He taught his grandson, fourteen, to check the oil. He taught his granddaughter, twelve, to drive in an empty parking lot, the way he had taught Carol, stalling and laughing, Eleanor's ghost riding shotgun. On the last night, Carol sat with him on her porch, and she said, Dad, Mom would be so proud of you. Not for the fire stuff. For the living stuff. For the car club and the speeches and the kindergarten. For coming back to life. Harold looked at the stars, the Ohio stars, different from the Maple Hollow stars but the same sky. I'm trying, Carol, he said. I think she'd say I'm trying. She'd say you're doing, Carol said. There's a difference, and she'd want you to know it.