Chapter 10 - Badges of Honor
Two years later.
The summer sun blazed down on the white sands of Coronado Beach.
The water was a clear, brilliant sapphire, rolling in gentle breaks against the shore. A few dozen yards away, a barbecue was in full swing. Laughter drifted on the warm wind, mixed with the smell of grilled flank steak, fresh lime, and sea salt.
Chief Warrant Officer Miller was tossing a frisbee with his daughter, whose laughter rang out like silver bells over the surf. Maria Santos was sitting on an ice chest, animatedly arguing with two Navy pilots about helicopter flight dynamics.
It was my thirty-sixth birthday.
I stood at the water’s edge, letting the cool Pacific foam wash over my bare feet.
I wasn't wearing a high-collared dress. I wasn't wearing an emerald blouse designed to hide my skin from delicate eyes. I was wearing an open-back, halter-style swimsuit, my dark hair pinned up loosely to catch the ocean breeze.
The scars were completely bare to the sun.
The pale lines crossing my shoulder blades. The thick, jagged ridge beneath my left shoulder where the shrapnel had torn through muscle. The faded burns along my ribcage.
A group of tourists walking along the beach glanced toward me. A young boy pointed, asking his mother what had happened to my back.
I didn't reach for a towel. I didn't flinch. I didn't feel the slightest urge to look away.
Miller’s little daughter came running up the sand, clutching a brightly colored sea shell in her chubby fist.
“Captain Emily! Look!” she squealed, skidding to a stop in the wet sand. She held the shell up proudly toward the sky. “Look what I found!”
I knelt down in the surf, smiling as I took the shell from her tiny hand. “That’s a keeper, Lily. Perfect spiral.”
She looked at my shoulder, her curious four-year-old eyes tracing the edge of the thick scar where I had shielded her father from an insurgent grenade two years before.
She reached out with one tiny, sun-warmed finger and gently touched the silver tissue.
“Does it hurt?” she asked innocently.
May you like
I looked at the scar, then out across the endless blue horizon of the ocean I had sworn to defend, and finally into the bright, clear eyes of the little girl whose father was alive because I had held the line.
“Not anymore, sweetheart,” I said softly, standing up tall beneath the bright California sky. “Not anymore.”
