“I wasn’t there when you needed somebody, and I let a man like Dillon fill that space because I couldn’t.”
“That’s on me, too.”
I looked at her hands, the small, brown-spotted hands that had commanded vessels carrying three thousand people.
They were shaking.
“You were at the birth,” I said.
“You held my knee for eleven hours.”
“You told me I was stronger than I knew.”
“I should have said it for thirty years,” she said.
I leaned into her shoulder, the way I hadn’t since I was a girl.
She smelled of salt and lavender soap and starched cotton.
The four of us sat there on a bench, and no one came to hurry us.
Mr. Kendrick approached after a while, with his tablet tucked under one arm.
He cleared his throat.
“Captain, Ms. Tennant,” he said.
“For the record, the termination review will be conducted by the Conduct Committee.”
