Part 2

And because I had something to tell him that couldn't wait. "Dad," Rachel said from the table. "Please. Not tonight." He didn't even look at her. My father is Colonel Vaughn Lennox, retired. Twenty-six years in the regular Army. Then three companies, a lake house, and a seat on every board in this city. He has never once said the words National Guard without making them sound like a joke. Ten years ago, I left the regular Army to come home and take care of my mother while she was dying of cancer. I joined the Guard full time so I could stay near her. My father has called me a weekend soldier ever since. "You couldn't even change your clothes?" he said. "I came straight from Cotter Springs." One of his golf buddies, a man named Rex, chuckled into his glass. "Still playing army, Erin?" I didn't answer him. Rachel came across the room and put her arms around me, careful of my left shoulder. Rachel is a children's surgeon. She can see pain on a person the way other people read street signs. She stepped back and looked at my face. Her smile disappeared. "Erin, what happened to you?" "It's been a long weekend." "You're bleeding." "It's not mine." Dad heard that. His eyes went straight to my sleeve. "Whose is it, then?" he said. "For God's sake, Erin. You walk into my birthday looking like a butcher shop, and you expect people not to stare?" A woman by the window set her wineglass down too hard. The little clink sounded like a gunshot. I looked at my father for a long moment. At his silver hair. His navy blazer. The bourbon in his hand. I had driven two and a half hours rehearsing how to say it gently. In the end, there was no gentle way. "It's Matt's," I said. The room didn't just go quiet. It went dead. Rachel's hand flew to her mouth. My father's face changed color. First red. Then white. Nobody had said that name out loud in his house for nine years. Not at Christmas. Not on our mother's birthday. Not once. "Get out," my father said. His voice was shaking. "Get out of my house." And that's when the phone in my jacket pocket started to ring.