Chapter 6
I still have the rank I had when I hit the water at Little Creek.
It is possible the fourth star comes through an amended process, in time. It is possible it doesn't. I have been in this service for thirty-one years, and I have learned to measure progress by whether the next person who stands on a pier like that one stands on it differently than the person before them did — whether the culture underneath has changed rather than just the personnel on top of it.
Parker will be an officer in three years. He is good, careful, and direct in the specific way of people who have looked at something they knew was wrong and decided they could not pretend they hadn't looked.
Marcus Webb's daughter is eleven years old.
She knows the truth now about her father's death — not the version filed seven years ago in language designed to protect a command, but the actual version, the one that includes exactly what the safety record showed and what was done with it and who decided that his life was less important than managing the reputation of the man responsible.
May you like
She deserved to know.
The rest is what it is.
