I was far from perfect. I missed Emily’s first steps because I stayed late to practice land nav in a fogged-up classroom. I forgot to sign a daycare permission form and lost our slot for a week. One midnight, pushing Emily in her stroller down a street with too few lamps, a cruiser slowed beside us. “You okay?” the officer asked. “I’m fine,” I said. He circled the block anyway. I walked faster.

When Emily was three, I applied for an officer accession program that felt designed for other people, the kind with last names that open doors. The essay prompt was resilience. I wrote about the bench in December, the thermos of tea, and the sentence I couldn’t shake: God never wastes pain. I wrote about a deacon who cast out a daughter to protect a reputation. I wrote about shame turned into fuel. My hands shook as I slid the printed pages into the manila envelope. My whole life could have rattled loose from the tremor.

The acceptance letter came in late spring. Emily was coloring on the floor while a cartoon dog yapped from the TV. I opened the envelope and read the word accepted three times, just to see if it kept being true. No orchestra swelled. I sat on the floor, folded my knees, pressed the paper to my chest, and listened to Emily ask if we could have macaroni for dinner. “We can have anything,” I said. For once it felt true.