It was a choice he had made every single time he smoothed over one of Helen’s comments, every time he laughed and called her incorrigible, every time he chose the path of least resistance because the alternative required him to confront the possibility that his mother was not simply protective, but deliberately cruel.
He said, “I didn’t know.”
I said, “I know.”
He said, “I mean, I knew your rank. I knew you were senior. I didn’t understand what that meant to the people in that room.”
I nodded.
He said, “I’m sorry. My mother—”
I said, “Let’s not tonight.”
He said, “Okay.”
He meant it.
We drove the rest of the way in a silence that was, for the first time in years, honest.
Diane was 44, a fellow commander, my colleague in the intelligence community, and the closest thing I had to a confidante in uniform. She had been at the ball. She had seen everything.
She sat down across from my desk and said simply, “That must have been exhausting.”
I laughed. Genuinely laughed for the first time since the ball.
The laugh surprised me, not because I did not expect to laugh again, but because the relief in it was so immediate.