Mom didn’t stop wiping the leather. She looked up, her dark eyes steady and unreadable. “Do you believe he meant it?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “He just didn’t want to lose his job.”
She set the boot down, folded the rag neatly, and leaned back in her chair.
“People will always try to shrink your reality, Lucas, because your truth makes their smallness uncomfortable,” she said, her voice softening. “That’s why the uniform never mattered as much as the person wearing it. Whether I’m flying an F-22 or sitting right here at this kitchen table with you, the facts don’t change. You never have to perform for people who refuse to see you.”
I looked down at the photograph—at the gray fighter jet, the sunlit runway, and my mother standing tall beside the cockpit ladder.
For the first time since Heroes’ Week started, I didn’t feel the need to hide it in my notebook. I propped it up against the sugar bowl on the kitchen table, right where anyone walking in could see it.
