They told her her father was gone, leaving her to accept a painful loss. But everything changed when eleven Marines walked in, revealing a truth that challenged what she had been led to believe.

“He would want you to go,” I had told her.

It was the kind of thing people say when they don’t know what else to say.

We found a spot near the edge of the gym, close to the refreshment table where the noise was slightly less intense. Lily sat down on the mat, smoothing her dress over her knees, her eyes scanning the room in a way that made my chest tighten.

Everywhere she looked, there were fathers.

Real ones. Present ones. Laughing, dancing, kneeling to fix crooked shoes or wiping sticky fingers with practiced ease. It wasn’t that they were doing anything extraordinary. That was the problem. It was all so ordinary.