A sister.
An officer.
Apparently the categories had never excluded one another.
My family had just decided they did.
Nathan stepped aside.
Giving me a choice.
That mattered.
He didn’t order me forward.
He waited.
So did everyone else.
I looked at Ryan.
His face had changed.
The arrogance was gone.
So was the faint amusement he had shown when Madison insulted me.
What remained was confusion.
And something I recognized at once.
Fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear of realizing the story he’d believed about me might be wrong.
I bent down.
Picked up my purse.
Then turned to my mother.
She stared at me as though she had never seen my face.
“Emily?”
I held her gaze.
“You wanted me moved away from the front.”
Her cheeks flushed.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
Three words.
Nothing more.
I followed Nathan toward the stage.
The reserved chair sat exactly where I’d noticed it earlier.
Beside two senior officers and a retired admiral.
My name card leaned against the back.
CAPT E. CARTER.
The woman seated next to it stood and offered her hand.
“Good to see you again, Captain.”
“You too.”
I sat.
My family stayed behind me.
For years, they had complained that I never explained myself.
The truth was simpler.
They had never noticed how much I had explained.
When I was twenty, I left college.
That part was true.
What my parents told people was also partly true.
I had been miserable there.
Restless.
Undisciplined.
Unsure what I wanted.
Dad called it my first great failure.
What he never remembered was the conversation we had two weeks later.
