But he understood, at the end, the only thing my uniform has ever really stood for, which is that you do the right thing because it is the right thing, and you do it when it costs you, and you do not do it for the parade.

So I saluted him.

And I like to think that somewhere his quiet, watchful ghost understood that of all the people gathered at his grave — the ones who shared his blood and his name and his fortune — the only full honors he received that day came from the small-town girl his son threw away, and the five grandchildren he loved by mail, standing together in the gray Georgia morning, getting it right.

Chapter 12 — Not a Father