“Don’t push it,” he snapped, then exhaled, his shoulders sagging. “I was hard on you.”
“That’s one phrase for it.”
“I thought if I broke you early, the world wouldn’t get the chance,” he said. “That’s how my old man did it. That’s what felt like love when all you’ve ever known is shouting and push-ups in the rain.”
I stared at him.
“So you tried to beat me before the world could,” I said. “And when I wouldn’t break the way you expected, you decided you’d rather call it a failure than admit you didn’t understand me.”
He winced like each word struck something tender.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Pretty much.”
The admission landed between us like a dropped weight. Heavy. Irrefutable.
“I washed out, you know,” he added, voice rough. “Never told you kids that. Made it sound like I left on my own terms. Truth is, I choked on a field op and never got my slot back. Spent the next thirty years convincing myself if I’d just been harder, meaner, tougher, it would’ve gone different.”
I’d suspected pieces of that story. Hearing it out loud still felt like watching a wall crack down the middle.
“So when I froze at nineteen,” I said slowly, “you didn’t see a scared kid. You saw yourself.”
He nodded once.
“And you hated me for it,” I finished.
He didn’t deny it.
“I’m not asking you to forgive that,” he said. “Hell, I wouldn’t, if I were you. But I need you to hear this much: I was wrong about you. I was wrong to use you as a mirror for my own failure. And I was wrong to let my pride matter more than my daughter.”
For a man who’d spent his life shouting, those words came out barely above a whisper.
“I don’t know what you do,” he continued. “Not really. I know enough now to know I won’t ever know. But I know this: when that sergeant saluted you, he wasn’t confused. And when that tribunal called you Commander, they weren’t mistaken. And when my son asked you to put his patch on today…” His voice cracked. “…I realized I’m the last one to catch up.”
I didn’t rush to fill the silence.
Years in Echo taught me that people reveal their truest selves in the space after they think they’re done talking.
“I’ve been telling everyone you cracked,” he admitted. “That you quit. That you walked out because you couldn’t handle the uniform. Saying it enough made it feel true. Easier than admitting I never bothered to look past the version of you I built in my head.”
He looked at me, really looked, maybe for the first time in my adult life.
“I’m not asking you to tell me your secrets,” he said. “I’m just… asking if there’s a way back from here. Any way at all.”
The tarmac seemed to tilt around us.
Once upon a time, I would have leapt at that opening. I would have spilled everything I could, desperate for a scrap of approval. I would have taken his half-formed apology and built an entire relationship on it, no matter how unstable the foundation.
I am not that girl anymore.
“You don’t get to erase what you said,” I replied, voice steady. “You don’t get to pretend the porch chair and the empty frame on the wall never happened. You don’t get to rewrite my childhood because you’re uncomfortable with who you were in it.”
His jaw clenched, but he didn’t look away.
“What you do get,” I continued, “is a chance. Not at a clean slate—I don’t believe in those. At an honest one. You tell the truth when people ask about me now. You stop using me as a cautionary tale. You learn what it means to respect boundaries even when you don’t understand them. And maybe, if you do that long enough, we figure out what a different kind of father and daughter looks like.”
He swallowed hard.
“I can do that,” he said hoarsely.
“We’ll see,” I replied.
He huffed out something that might have been a laugh or a sob.
“You always did set the bar higher than I thought I could reach,” he muttered.
“Good,” I said. “It’s about time you tried.”
Adam jogged back over then, sensing perhaps that whatever needed to be said had been said.
“They’re calling us in,” he said. “Last family hugs.”
My father stepped aside, giving me space.
“Bring him back,” he told me quietly.
I met his gaze.
“I’ll do everything I can from where I am,” I said. “The rest is on him and the men above him.”
He nodded. For once, he didn’t argue with realities he couldn’t control.
I hugged Adam again, hard enough to feel the patch press into my palm.
“You know where to find me,” I said.
“If I don’t,” he replied, “I have a pretty good idea who to ask.”
“Stay safe,” I added.
He smiled crookedly.
