For the first time, father and son stood alone.
Not completely alone, of course.
Families continued moving through the plaza.
Officers spoke in small groups.
Some people still glanced toward them.
But the world around Noah and Ethan seemed to have narrowed to a few feet of concrete.
Noah spoke first.
"Are you actually alive?"
Ethan almost smiled.
"I think so."
"Don't joke."
"You're right. I'm sorry."
Noah looked down at his father's boots.
Then at the scarred hands.
Then at the face he had spent years trying to forget.
"Twenty-two years."
"Yes."
"All that time."
Ethan nodded.
Noah swallowed.
"I used to think about you every time something important happened."
Ethan remained still.
"When I was younger, I imagined you watching from somewhere. Not like a ghost, exactly. Just..." He struggled for words. "I wanted to believe you knew."
Ethan's eyes burned.
"I didn't know everything."
Noah looked up.
"But you knew some of it."
"Yes."
"How much?"
Ethan took a slow breath.
"I knew you wanted to attend the academy. I knew when you were accepted. I saw you at public events when I could."
Noah stared.
"So you were watching."
"Yes."
"But never speaking."
Ethan said nothing.
Noah's voice lowered.
"Why?"
There it was.
The question Ethan had feared for seven years.
He could have hidden behind the classified program.
He could have blamed commanding officers, regulations, and threats.
Some of those things were real.
They mattered.
But they did not explain every moment he had chosen silence.
Ethan looked directly at his son.
"At first, I was told I couldn't contact anyone while the operation was being reviewed. I believed the people giving those instructions."
Noah listened without moving.
"I kept thinking it would be resolved. I kept thinking the next review would give me my name back."
"And it didn't."
"No."
"What happened after fifteen years?"
"The program shut down. They still wouldn't correct the record. I left."
Noah stared.
"You just left?"
"I refused to keep doing work under an identity that wasn't mine."
"And came here."
"Yes."
Noah's jaw tightened.
"Then you could have found me."
Ethan nodded.
"Yes."
The answer seemed to surprise Noah.
He had been ready for another excuse.
Ethan continued.
"I was afraid that contacting you might create problems for you. I was still bound by secrecy. I didn't know how the Navy would react to me coming forward."
"So you decided for me."
Ethan closed his eyes briefly.
"Yes."
Noah's voice broke.
"You decided I'd be better off thinking my father didn't want me."
"I thought you would be safer."
"That's not the same thing."
"No."
Noah took a step away.
For a moment, Ethan thought he was leaving.
Instead, his son turned back.
"What happened at the harbor?"
Ethan remembered the fifteen-year-old boy asking if he knew him.
"You recognized something about me."
"I thought you looked like the pictures."
"I know."
"You called me son."
"I know."
"And then you walked away."
Ethan's voice became barely audible.
"I was scared."
Noah stared at him.
"Of me?"
"Of what you would ask."
Noah looked suddenly exhausted.