My Parents Died Before Graduation and I Thought No One Would Be There for Me — Then Two Hands Covered My Eyes From Behind

The hands slipped away.

I spun around so fast I nearly went down in my own robe, and there he was.

Ethan.

Standing on the grass in his sharp, pressed military dress uniform, the creases like blades, his shoulders broader than I remembered and his face tanned from someplace with a harder sun, and a small crooked smile — our father’s smile, I realized with a lurch — pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Ethan?” My voice cracked straight down the middle on the two syllables of his name.