And somewhere in the years I was overseas raising his grandchildren on a captain’s pay, Ames Lockridge was quietly doing the thing his son never bothered to do, which was to ask questions.

I did not know any of that as I stood at his graveside.

I only knew that of all the people I might have crossed the country to honor, he was the one, and that my children had a right to stand beside the grandfather who had, in his own hidden way, chosen them — even if they had never once been allowed to meet him.

Chapter 4 — Elke