Neither did the admiral.
Behind them, unnoticed, Lucas had come down off the stage.
He hadn't decided to. His legs had simply carried him down the three steps and onto the grass and partway up the aisle, until he was standing a few feet behind the admiral's shoulder, close enough to see his father's hand trembling at his brow, close enough to see the tears still running down his face. Close enough to understand.
CDR DANIEL R. CARTER. Cut into black granite. He'd put his hand on it. He'd crouched in the October wind and read a card from a man named T.R., and he'd taken a picture of it, and looked at it at night, and never once known why it made his chest hurt.
The best man I ever knew, his father had said, on the road to Bangor, about the man who had died in that hold. And all along, all of Lucas's life, he'd been talking to the man who had come out of it.
"Dad," Lucas whispered. It came out of him without permission, without breath, barely a sound. "Dad..."
* * *
The ceremony went on. Ceremonies do.
After a long moment the admiral lowered his salute, and Carter lowered his, and the two men stood looking at each other in the aisle as if there were nobody else on the lawn. Then Reyes said something too low for anyone else to hear, and Carter said something back, and the admiral laughed, a short, startled, helpless sound, and put the heel of his hand to his eyes.
Lucas heard it. He was close enough.
"Tommy," his father had said, hoarse. "You look good, Tommy."
And the admiral had said, "Nobody calls me that but my mother, sir."