I had wondered, over the years, what it would be like to watch Rhett Lockridge see them.

I had built the moment up in my mind sometimes, on the bad nights, into something operatic and satisfying.

It was not satisfying.

It was one of the saddest things I have ever watched happen to a person.

I think a younger version of me — the one escorted off the property with a suitcase, the one who cried in a barracks bathroom so her new colleagues wouldn’t hear — had genuinely wanted this to feel like a triumph.

She had earned the wanting.