Chapter 1 - The Graduation Party That Wasn’t For Me
Logan grabbed the back of my graduation sash and shoved my face toward the cake before I understood what he was doing.
Vanilla frosting smeared across my cheek.
Someone near the patio laughed.
My mother laughed too.
“There,” Logan said. “That degree finally did something useful.”
I straightened slowly.
Twenty minutes earlier, Diane had been telling our relatives how proud she was to have “both her kids together.”
Now she stood beside my brother as if humiliating me were part of the entertainment.
I was twenty-four years old.
I had just finished my master’s degree in public health at George Washington University while working thirty hours a week at a pediatric clinic in Bethesda.
My brother Logan was twenty-eight.
He had dropped out of college twice.
Diane had never mentioned that at family parties.
Instead, she reached into her cream handbag and held out a luxury car key.
“For you,” she told him.
Logan stared at it.
“No way.”
Diane smiled proudly.
“You’ve earned it.”
I was still wiping frosting off my face.
The party was supposedly mine.
My aunt Karen looked uncomfortable.
My cousin stared at his plate.
Nobody said anything.
Then Logan noticed my diploma folder on the patio.
He stepped on it deliberately.
The old leather cover cracked.
Something slid out beneath his shoe.
A deep-burgundy envelope.
My mother’s smile disappeared so quickly I almost wondered whether I’d imagined it.
I bent down.
Diane kicked the envelope beneath the patio table.
I looked at her.
“Why are you hiding that?”
“No one’s hiding anything.”
Logan grabbed her arm.
For the first time all afternoon, he wasn’t smiling.
“Claire,” he said quietly. “Don’t open it.”
That frightened me more than the cake.
I crawled beneath the table and grabbed the envelope.
Inside was an old photograph.
A young brunette woman stood outside George Washington University wearing a graduation gown.
Around her neck was the same distinctive silver medallion on a burgundy ribbon that I was wearing.
My academic adviser had told me the Morrison Service Medal was given to only one graduating student each year.
I turned the photograph over.
There were four handwritten words.
Rebecca Hale — May 1999.
My mother lunged for it.
“You were never supposed to see that.”
I pulled away.
“Who is Rebecca Hale?”
Diane said nothing.
Then I looked at Logan.
May you like
His face told me something worse.
He already knew.
