Two weeks later, she arrived with Ethan and Rachel carrying a rug I had specifically told them not to buy.
Dad came separately.
He brought a framed photograph.
Not my command portrait.
It was a picture from the gala.
I was standing beside Mrs. Alvarez.
General Harrington was laughing in the background.
Dad, Ethan, and Madison were visible just behind us.
None of us were looking at the camera correctly.
It was imperfect.
I loved it.
Dad placed it on my bookshelf.
“Better than the terrifying one.”
“Much.”
Over the following months, our family changed slowly.
That mattered.
Instant transformation would have been easier, but it would not have been real.
Dad still occasionally began telling someone about “my daughter, the colonel” with entirely too much enthusiasm.
The first time, I corrected him.
“Your daughter Claire.”
He understood.
After that, he usually got it right.
Ethan and I started having lunch whenever his consulting work brought him to Washington.
