She was looking for me.
She found me.
Something in her face — small, specific, the version of her expressions that was only available to people who had been watching her face their whole life — communicated: I’m here. You’re all right.
I was not entirely all right in that moment, but I was going to be.
I stood up.
The freshman section around me was doing the thing that nine hundred teenagers do when something unexpected happens that they haven’t been given a framework for — the specific confused attention of people who are recalibrating their understanding of a situation in real time. I moved through the row toward the aisle. Someone had to move their feet to let me pass.
Nobody made airplane noises.
Admiral Carter met us at the foot of the stage steps.
He extended his hand to my mother first, and they shook with the ease of people who have a history I was not yet fully privy to, a history I was putting together in real time the way you put together a picture you’ve been looking at the pieces of separately.
