If he could abandon me at the doors of a church, then I was free, finally, of the exhausting decades-long project of trying to be enough for him.

By the time I was halfway to Ezekiel I was not crying because I was humiliated.

I was crying because I was, for the first time in my life, walking entirely under my own power, toward the one person who had never once asked me to be anything other than what I was.

I was halfway down the aisle when the chapel doors behind me swung open.

Chapter 3 — Dress Blues

Thirty veterans in dress uniform came in with quiet precision — men and women, young and old, their chests full of ribbons and medals.