Commander Hayes glanced, once, at Lucas, and then he looked back at me, and he told me the first true thing anyone had said in that chapel all day.

“Your fiance,” he said, “is not merely a public defender, Victoria.

Every single veteran standing in uniform in this room is a person that man risked his entire career to protect — when powerful people tried to bury the truth, and everyone else who could have helped decided it was safer to look away.

He did not look away.

He never once looked away.”

In the front rank, a woman in dress uniform lifted a gloved hand and, without any embarrassment, wiped a tear from her cheek.