holding him on his knee. Both of them laughing.
He held it up.
“Can Dad be in the picture too?” he asked.
Mrs. Ortiz had to stop for a minute. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes.
“Of course he can, sweetheart,” she said.
So Caleb held up the photograph. Right in front of his chest. Over the gold crest on his navy blazer.
I stood behind him with my hand on his shoulder.
Then the admiral stepped forward.
“Chief,” he said. “Would you mind?”
“Not at all, sir,” I said.
He stood on Caleb’s other side. He put his hand on Caleb’s other shoulder.
Three generations of Navy, standing under a magnolia tree. An eighty-one-year-old chief. A seventy-year-old admiral. And a nine-year-old boy holding a picture of his father.
Mrs. Ortiz took the picture.
It hangs in the front hallway of Hampton Roads Preparatory Academy now.
