When my mother had complained that a naval career was far too hard and too unwomanly a thing for her daughter, it was Raymond, every time, who had defended what I wanted for my own life.

“I love you, Dad,” I whispered.

It was the first time in thirty-six years that I had ever called him Dad.

It was also the last.

He passed away peacefully, a little before dawn, with his hand in mine, and he did not let go of it until he was gone.

I have wondered whether I waited too long to say it — whether I should have called him Dad years earlier, at the graduation, in the truck outside the exam hall, in any of the ten thousand ordinary moments he had earned it and I had held back out of some misplaced loyalty to a word.