Chapter 7 - Home
Six months later, Rebecca stood in her parents' backyard, beneath the same maple tree she and Madison had built forts under as kids, holding a paper plate of barbecue she had absolutely no intention of finishing.
The occasion was smaller this time — no chandeliers, no string quartet, just a Sunday cookout her father had insisted on hosting the moment he learned Rebecca had a few weeks of leave before her next assignment. He'd bought a smoker for the occasion and had clearly researched it more thoroughly than he'd researched anything Navy-related in Rebecca's entire career, which she'd decided to find funny instead of frustrating.
He was currently three sentences into explaining brisket bark to a neighbor who hadn't asked, and somewhere in the telling, he'd mentioned, unprompted, that his daughter was "a Lieutenant Commander who ran operations most people will never be cleared to hear about." The neighbor's eyebrows had gone up in a way that, six months ago, would have made her father visibly pleased with himself for entirely the wrong reasons.
This time, he just looked proud.
Madison came and sat beside her on the porch steps, a good ten pounds of wedding stress lighter, sleeves rolled up, hair loose.
"He's told that brisket story four times today," Madison said. "The one where he works in you outranking half the guys at his golf club."
"I don't outrank the golf club," Rebecca said.
"Don't tell him that. He's had a good week."
They sat in comfortable quiet for a moment, watching their father gesture emphatically with a pair of tongs.
"I looked it up, by the way," Madison said. "The Silver Star. What it actually means. Robert Ellison's dad — Grant's grandfather — had one too, apparently. Grant told me at the wedding, after everything happened. Small world."
"Small world," Rebecca agreed.
"I'm sorry it took a ballroom full of SEALs standing up for our family to actually see you," Madison said quietly. "I should have seen you a long time before that."
"You're seeing me now," Rebecca said. "That counts for something."
Their mother came out with a fresh pitcher of lemonade, and for once, didn't immediately steer the conversation toward whose cousin was dating whom or which country club function was coming up. She sat on the step below them instead, close enough that her shoulder brushed Rebecca's knee, and didn't say anything at all — which, from her mother, was its own kind of apology.
Later, as the sun dropped low behind the maple tree, Rebecca's father came and sat beside her, setting down the tongs for the first time in an hour.
"I know I can't undo eight months of texts telling you to hide," he said. "Or the years before that. But I want you to know — whatever you're allowed to tell me about the next deployment, I want to hear it. All of it you're able to share. Not for the neighbors. For me."
Rebecca looked at him for a long moment — really looked, the way she used to before she'd learned to stop expecting him to look back the same way.
"Okay," she said. "I'll tell you what I can."
May you like
It wasn't everything fixed. It wasn't eight months, or eighteen years, undone in a single Sunday cookout under a maple tree. But it was real, and it was hers, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, Rebecca Hale didn't feel like she had to change out of anything to be welcome at her own family's table.
Above them, the first fireflies of the evening blinked on over the yard, and somewhere behind her, her father was already starting the brisket story again — this time, getting the rank exactly right.
