I became a federal military prosecutor.
Dad didn’t call.
He didn’t send a card.
He didn’t even ask what JAG meant.
Gran drove four hours by herself.
Leaning heavily on her oak cane, she walked into the military auditorium for my insignia ceremony.
When they pinned the new rank to my lapel, she wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
Then she gripped both of mine.
Her skin was paper-thin.
Her grip felt like iron.
She looked at the insignia and whispered, “I see you, Mary.”
Fourteen months later, Gran died.
We sat in a sterile lawyer’s office in Winston-Salem beneath humming fluorescent lights.
The conference table was polished mahogany, the kind of wood Gran would have appreciated.
Dad checked his Rolex twice in the first thirty seconds.
He shifted impatiently, already mentally dividing the estate into investment portfolios.
He expected what he had always expected.
