They’d been watching the news, idly, the way people do when nothing else is on. The anchorwoman’s voice droned through a segment about rising interest rates, and Harper sighed, tilting her screen toward her mother.
“Look at this dress,” she said. “For the country club gala next month. Thoughts?”
Eleanor glanced over, her expression distracted. “It’s lovely, dear. But maybe something with more sleeve?”
Richard grunted, pausing on CNN. The screen showed the exterior of a grand hall, flags fluttering against a gray sky. “Isn’t that the thing? The military award ceremony?”
“Probably just some old generals,” Harper said, returning to her scrolling. “Boring.”
Eleanor didn’t look up. “I hope it doesn’t preempt my shows.”
The broadcast cut to the interior of the hall, the president stepping to the podium. Richard’s thumb hovered over the channel button, but something made him pause. Maybe it was the gravity in the anchor’s voice, or the way the camera panned across rows of uniformed officers. Whatever it was, he left it there.
“In a time when our nation faced unprecedented threats,” President Adams began, “one mind brought clarity to chaos.”
Harper’s scrolling slowed. Eleanor glanced up from her napkin.
“One leader, forged not in comfort but in crisis, charted the course we followed to security.”
Richard took a half-step closer to the TV. “What’s this about?”
“The Department of Defense proudly recognizes Major General Khloe Sterling…”
The name hit the room like a thunderclap.
Harper’s phone dropped into her lap. Eleanor’s hand froze midway to her chest. Richard just stared, his face unreadable, as the camera cut to me—Major General Khloe Sterling—walking across the stage, shaking the president’s hand, the four stars on my shoulders gleaming under the lights.
No one spoke. The silence was different from before. It wasn’t the silence of dismissal, of erasure. It was the silence of shock, of a reality too sudden to process. The crystal tumbler on the side table rattled as Eleanor’s elbow knocked against it, and she caught it just in time, her knuckles white.
Harper’s voice came out as a whisper. “That’s… that’s Chloe.”
Richard said nothing. His eyes never left the screen. He watched as I saluted, as the applause thundered through the hall, as the president clasped my shoulder with a warmth he had never offered. He watched the daughter he’d dismissed, the one he’d told to go back to the barracks, now standing in the most hallowed halls of power.
Eleanor’s voice cracked. “Major General? When did… how…”
