The coffee was black and strong, brewed in a French press that had accompanied her through four changes of residence. Faith poured a cup and stood beside the refrigerator, where a small collection of magnets held family photographs and an old grocery list written in her mother's careful hand. On the wall opposite the window hung a photograph of William Anderson in Army dress blues, his young face serious beneath a cap that sat slightly too high on his forehead. He had served during the Korean War, later worked whatever jobs would support his family, and never stopped speaking about military service as something measured by duty rather than decoration.
He had died nine years earlier, long enough ago that Faith no longer reached for the telephone expecting to hear his voice, but not long enough that she had stopped hearing his advice. When she had been promoted to colonel, he had hugged her in the front yard and whispered that stripes and stars were fine things provided a person remembered what stood underneath them. When she made brigadier general, he had sent a handwritten card instead of attending the large reception, embarrassed by crowds and reluctant to fly. The card was still in her desk drawer, its last sentence underlined twice: Never let anybody convince you that respect is something you owe only to people with rank.
Her mother, Evelyn Anderson, turned eighty-two that day. Evelyn lived in a modest house near the Shenandoah Valley town of Elton, where the porch boards creaked in the same places they had creaked when Faith was a child. She had taught elementary school, organized church food drives, and managed the household through years when William's military and civilian work kept him away. She understood how to stretch a dollar without letting a child know a dollar was being stretched, and Faith had spent much of her adult life trying to learn that same mixture of resourcefulness and grace.
For the previous two years, personal visits had been too few. Faith's calendar had filled with deployments, budget hearings, readiness reviews, congressional testimony, and late-night discussions about decisions most Americans would never hear described. She had missed a spring recital for a niece, a family reunion in Maryland, and one Thanksgiving dinner that Evelyn later insisted had been less enjoyable without her. That last remark had carried no accusation, which was precisely why Faith remembered it so sharply.
This birthday had been circled in red on Faith's personal calendar since January. She had asked her staff to clear a full day, declined a ceremonial luncheon, and instructed her office not to call unless an immediate operational matter made it unavoidable. Colonel Denise Whitfield, her aide, had raised an eyebrow at the firmness of the instruction. Faith told her that the Army would survive one Saturday without Lieutenant General Anderson, and Whitfield answered that the Army might, but several assistant chiefs of staff would struggle considerably.
Faith chose a linen blouse, khaki trousers, comfortable flats, and small gold earrings Evelyn had given her when she received her first command. She left the medals in their cases and the uniform hanging behind a closed wardrobe door. The clothes felt wonderfully unremarkable, appropriate for a daughter who intended to sit on a porch, eat birthday cake, and let her mother ask whether she was getting enough sleep. She wanted the woman waiting in Elton to see Faith before she saw the three stars.