A look from his wife cut off the inquisition. It was another one of those times when his wife’s eye and his son’s tone warned him not to ask too many questions. Horace felt left out. They knew something that they’d chosen not to share with him, but he took no offense. The bottom line was that they had excluded him to protect him. He felt it down deep, just as he’d become convinced that his boy had been involved in something more dangerous during the war than sitting it out for two years behind an engineering drafting board in a secret government facility. His mother had intuitively known it when he left for Washington in 1942, supported by the fact that they didn’t hear from him but once in all the time he was away. What kind of peacetime job would keep a man from his family that long? But now, his wife was working out of more than her intuition. She knew something that her husband was not privileged to know.

But he didn’t need to know. He’d served in war, by God, and he knew that the bravest men didn’t always wear uniforms. The look he sometimes glimpsed in his son’s eyes was the same hollow gaze of war veterans everywhere, so it was time to let Bucky—Sam, his son—know that he knew.

From his reading armchair, he glanced at his wife embroidering in hers. “Monique, honey,” he said, “could you excuse us men for a while?”

Monique cast a startled look at her husband. Never had he asked her to leave the room for a private conversation with her son, and he had not said please. She was expected to go. “Of course,” she said.

When she’d gone, Horace looked at Bucky staring back at him, puzzled. “Sir?” he said.

“I don’t know what this trip is all about, son. All I know is that you have my blessing and that you go knowing how very, very proud I am of you. I ask your forgiveness if I’ve given you reason to think otherwise. No father in the world could be more proud of his son. You understand what I am saying?”

“Yes, Dad, I do.”

“Well now, that all ironed out, let’s call your mother back in.”

*  *  *

Joanna said to Brad, “You must have some new clothes for your trip to New York City, Sohn. We can’t have you looking like a ragamuffin among these people you’re going to meet.”