“I was going to tell you all of it.

Tonight, after the reception.

I never wanted it to touch today.

I’m so sorry.”

I looked up at the man my father had spent six months calling worthless — this quiet man who defended the people no one else would, who had, somehow, earned an honor guard of thirty decorated veterans, who had apparently spent our engagement quietly pulling apart my own father’s secrets to protect people I had never met.

And before I could even begin to ask him the thousand questions rising in me, Commander Hayes’s head turned sharply toward the chapel doors, and his easy manner vanished, and I understood that whatever was happening was not over.