Part Seven: What Sara Did Not Do
The briefing she had been called to was with Lieutenant Commander Walsh, who was conducting the standard integration review for new placements.
Walsh was thorough and procedural, and the review covered the expected material: unit composition, current operational priorities, the specific parameters of her role. It was professional and unremarkable and lasted forty minutes.
At the end, Walsh asked if she had any concerns about her integration with the unit.
Sara considered the question with the care she gave to questions that had obvious answers that she did not intend to give.
“No concerns,” she said.
Walsh looked at her with the expression of someone who has been in his role long enough to hear what people say and also what they are choosing not to say.
“I heard the introduction was — ” He paused, finding the appropriate word. “Uneven.”
“Introductions are often uneven,” Sara said. “The unit is good. They’ll be fine.”
Walsh held her look for a moment. “Your father asked me to check in with you. Directly. After the first day.”
“I know he did,” she said. “You can tell him it was fine.”
“Was it?”
She thought about Murray’s face when he looked at the identification. She thought about the specific expression of someone who has been operating on a set of assumptions and has just discovered the assumptions were wrong — not the defensive expression of someone trying to manage the discovery, but the more uncomfortable expression of someone who is actually receiving it.
She thought about what he had said afterward. I was out of line. Not just the last comment. The hour of it.
“It was instructive,” she said. “For everyone.”
Walsh made a note. He did not write down what she had said, because it did not require writing down. He wrote something else — a one-line observation that would become part of her integration file and that would be reviewed by Colonel Hargreaves, who reviewed everything.
He wrote: Lt. Hargreaves handled initial unit integration with significant composure and judgment. No escalation. No complaint. Recommend observation.
Sara did not know what he wrote. She had not said what she said in order to influence what he wrote. She had said it because it was accurate.
