General Kerr read every line of it to a silent ballroom.
By the time she finished, my mother had turned all the way around in her chair, and she had a hand over her mouth, and twenty-five relatives were looking at the back table.
People were looking, all right.
Chapter 3: Why Leon Okafor Stood
The first person on his feet wasn’t a senator or a donor or my father.
It was Leon Okafor. My brother’s CEO. The man Brett had spent the entire day performing for.
He stood before the applause even started, the way you stand when sitting is suddenly impossible, and he was staring at me like he’d seen a ghost.
He found me afterward, at the back table, while my family hovered twenty feet away not sure they were allowed to approach.
“Brennan,” he said. “The citation. That action. That date.” His voice wasn’t a CEO’s voice. “My son was a corporal in the element you went back for.”
