They looked like friends.
No.
They looked like two women keeping a secret together.
Emily reached for the phone, but her father pulled it back.
“Dad,” she said.
His jaw tightened. “Inside first.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Emily.”
“Don’t start protecting me by hiding things. Not now.”
The words shook slightly, but she did not take them back. Her whole life, her father’s protection had felt like shelter. Recently, it had begun to feel like a door he might close before she could see what waited beyond it.
Colonel James Bennett looked at his daughter, truly looked at her. The bruises had faded along her arms, but the memory of them had not. Her face was pale from exhaustion, her body heavy with pregnancy, yet her eyes held a steadiness that had not been there a week ago.
He lowered the phone.
Emily took it gently.
The photo blurred as tears filled her eyes. Her mother, Caroline Bennett, had been gone for nearly seventeen years. Emily remembered her in pieces: perfume and flour on her hands, a laugh that always arrived before the punchline, a voice singing softly while folding laundry. She did not remember this woman in the picture—standing beside Linda Carter, smiling as though the future were harmless.
