I came home eleven months early without telling anyone and found my wife sitting against a wall with her head shaved and her face bruised, while my mother shouted at me to throw her out. I didn't argue. I looked at what had actually been broken in that room, and then I asked my wife for the notebook.

Then I drove Tova to the emergency room in Verrick and had her injuries documented by a doctor with the date and time on them, which she did not want to do and which I insisted on, and which is the single most useful thing I did in three days.

Then we went to the county sheriff's office and she made a statement.

Then I rang the legal assistance office on post, and a captain I have never met called Ilsa Braddock walked me through an identity theft affidavit on a telephone for fifty minutes on a Thursday afternoon and then rang me back twice over the following month on her own time.

I filed a police report on the eleven accounts. I filed the federal identity theft report. I put a freeze on my credit, which takes about eleven minutes and which I had never once thought about in fourteen years of service.