For most of my life, I deliberately kept my military identity hidden from my parents. They had spent decades overlooking me, so I saw no reason to correct their assumptions.

Chapter 2

“Yes, Your Honor.” The words came out steady — quieter than the room expected, and carrying further because of it.

Judge Whitmore did not answer at once. He looked from the page to me and back to the page, the way a person checks a figure twice before trusting it. Behind me a radiator ticked. A clerk’s pen kept moving, the only sound in a silence that had suddenly turned hollow.

“You are presently serving as an attorney in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps?”