Afterward, I sat in my car gripping the steering wheel.
Daniel came out of the visitation center alone.
He stopped several feet away.
“You were right,” he said.
I looked through the windshield.
“About what?”
“Seeing them isn’t the hard part. Leaving them after an hour is.”
I said nothing.
He put his hands in his pockets.
“My review hearing is next week.”
“I know.”
“I’m resigning my commission.”
That made me turn.
Daniel’s face was calm in a way I had never seen.
“No deal?” I asked.
“No. No quiet reassignment. No family pressure. I gave them everything. The documents. My statements. What my father did. What I did.”
“And the Reynolds name?”
A faint, sad smile touched his mouth.
“I think it has survived enough lies.”
I studied him.
There was no triumph in me.
No satisfaction.
Just a strange mourning for the years that could not be returned and the future that would not look like anything I had imagined.
