“Neither did I.”
Ethan leaned against the doorframe.
Madison wiped beneath one eye and immediately pretended she had not.
I turned the compass over.
There was an engraving on the back.
Not military.
Not ceremonial.
Three small words.
COME HOME WHOLE.
I stared at them.
Then I remembered something Mom had said during our last long conversation.
She had asked when I planned to stop volunteering for every difficult assignment simply because I was good at them.
At the time, I had dismissed the question.
Now the compass felt heavier.
Dad noticed my expression.
“What is it?”
I closed my fingers around it.
“There’s something I haven’t told any of you.”
Madison looked worried.
“About Lantern Bridge?”
“No.”
“Your job?”
“Sort of.”
Three months earlier, I had been offered another senior assignment.
A prestigious one.
The kind of assignment people built careers around.
I had accepted in principle.
It would mean another move, another demanding schedule, and likely several more years of putting everything else on hold.
The final paperwork was waiting for my signature.
Until that moment, I had assumed I would sign it.
That was what Colonel Claire Bennett did.
She went where she was needed.
She took the difficult job.
She solved the problem.
But sitting in my mother’s study, holding my grandfather’s compass, I realized there was another question I had never seriously asked.
What did I want if usefulness was no longer the only measure?
Dad waited.
“What haven’t you told us?”
I looked at the three people standing around me.
Then I said, “I’ve been offered a job that would take me overseas again.”
Dad’s face changed, but he said nothing.
“And?”
Ethan asked.
I looked down at the compass.
“And for the first time in twenty years, I’m not sure I’m going to take it.”
PART 4 – ENDING
Nobody tried to tell me what to do.
That may have been the most surprising moment of the entire weekend.
Not General Harrington standing when I entered the ballroom.
Not hearing Operation Lantern Bridge described publicly after seven years.
