PART 3 — THE SALUTE
Five hundred Marines raised their hands at exactly the same moment.
The sound was almost nothing.
Just the faint movement of fabric.
But to me, it was louder than any battlefield I had ever stood on.
I looked at my sister.
Saraphina was crying.
She quickly wiped her face and looked away.
My mother hadn’t moved.
My father stepped forward.
“Tenna.”
I waited.
He looked at the stars on my shoulders.
Then at the Marines filling every seat behind me.
“I was wrong.”
Four words.
After thirty years, four words were all he had.
I didn’t know what to say.
So I simply nodded.
My father swallowed.
“I thought you were trying to prove something.”
I looked at him.
“I was.”
He seemed surprised.
“To myself,” I said.
The chapel went silent again.
Then Evan smiled.
“Ma’am?”
I turned.
He held out his hand.
“Your wedding is waiting.”
I took it.
And as I walked toward the altar, five hundred Marines remained standing behind me.
For the first time, I wasn’t wondering whether my family was proud of me.
I already knew the answer.
They had spent thirty years asking me to become smaller.
But that day, five hundred people reminded me of something I had almost forgotten:
I had never been too much.
I had simply been standing in a room that was too small to understand me.