By high school I was splitting mornings between classes and chores and afternoons between farm work and ROTC meetings. Robert called it my “government costume phase.” When my university acceptance letter came with honors and an ROTC scholarship attached, my mother cried into the dish towel and my father said, “Washington will eat you alive.” He meant it as a curse. I took it as a dare.
I left for college and did not come home except on holidays and harvest weekends when my mother asked in the careful tone that meant she would never pressure me but hoped anyway.
Ashley stayed local for school. Education degree. Cheerful photos. Church bake sales. Safe choices. My father called her grounded. He called me ambitious the way some men say rabid.
By the time I commissioned, he had stopped pretending to understand my path at all. My ROTC portrait—dress uniform, shoulders squared, eyes younger than they should have been—hung in the hallway for years not because Robert liked what it represented, but because my mother put it there and dared anyone to take it down.
After college came the first gray rooms.