Homefront Video -

He paused. A bird sang somewhere off-camera.

The tape cut. New scene: Christmas morning, 1992. A small boy—Leo—wrestled with wrapping paper. Then another cut: Frank’s mother, baking pies, her hands floured to the wrists. Every few minutes, Frank would ask a quiet question: “What was the happiest day of your life?” or “What do you see when you close your eyes at night?”

Leo found it in his late father’s attic, wedged between a moth-eaten army jacket and a box of silver stars. His father, a taciturn man named Frank, had never spoken about the war. He’d died three weeks ago, leaving behind silences Leo had spent his whole life trying to fill. Homefront Video

It wasn’t a battlefield. It was his mother, Ruth, young and radiant, standing in their old kitchen. The date stamp read: October 12, 1991. Leo was three years old then, a ghost in the next room.

Leo’s throat tightened. He leaned closer. He paused

“Hey, Frank,” Ruth said, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. She wasn't looking at the camera; she was looking past it, at her husband behind the lens. “Leo ate a whole apple today. Peel and all. Had to fish the stem out of his hair.” She laughed—a sound Leo hadn’t heard in twenty years. Cancer took her in 2004.

The screen fizzed with static, then resolved. New scene: Christmas morning, 1992

It was a dusty VHS tape, unlabeled except for a single word scrawled in faded black marker: Homefront .