Lauren followed.
My younger sister was the “golden child,” the one with the kind smile and the right words at the right times. She was soft where I was hard, and pliable where I was rigid. She basked in the warmth of their expectations, absorbing their approval like sunlight, while I stood in the shade all the while, wilting.
I left for West Point the week following my high school graduation. When the car drove away, I didn’t look back. For the first time, the distance felt less like exile and more like breathing.
The years that followed were challenging for me in ways that are incomprehensible to laypeople. Every blister from basic training, every freezing night in a foxhole during field exercises, and every promotion I earned through tenacity and perspiration all contributed to the solidification of something inside of me. It forged a steel spine that no one from home could touch.
I ascended the ranks discreetly and gradually. The way you move through hostile territory: stay alert, be prepared with a weapon, and avoid making unnecessary noise. I deployed to places where the sand seeps into your soul and the heat scorches the rubber soles of your boots. By the time I received my first star as a Brigadier General, the letters from home had already decreased to a trickle.
After my father’s funeral five years ago, they absolutely stopped.
I stood at his grave in my dress blues, my white gloves sticking out against the dark wool, the wind tugging at my cover. None of them looked at me long enough to say, “Thank you for coming.” Lauren gave me a short embrace, the kind you give to a stranger you met at the grocery store, and whispered that they “needed time.”
That time, I gave in to them. Five years of silence. Birthdays and holidays missed for five years.
Then, suddenly, I received an envelope at my quarters in the Pentagon. The paper was thick and cream colored, and the lettering looked expensive and uninterested. It lay on my counter like an unexploded ordinance.
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