I crouched beside Marcus.
He reached for my hand.
“This is Julian,” he said.
The name meant nothing to me at first.
Then I noticed how Marcus was looking at him.
It was not the look of a soldier greeting an old friend. It was something deeper. There was grief in it, and gratitude, and a kind of love forged in a place I had never been allowed to see.
Julian wiped his face with the back of his wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”
“You didn’t,” Marcus replied. “You could never.”
Lily finally lifted her head.
She stared at Marcus, then at Julian.
Her cheeks were wet.
I picked up the photograph from where it had fallen beside her welcome sign. The creased picture had slipped from the little pocket she had insisted on carrying it in.
I looked from the grainy image to the two men kneeling in front of me.
My stomach tightened.
In the picture, the soldier’s face was partly turned away. The image was heavily pixelated, and the desert light had washed out most of the details. Marcus and Julian had the same dark hair, the same build, and nearly identical uniforms.
Lily had not run past her father because she did not love him.
She had run toward the man she believed she had kissed goodnight for two years.
“Oh, Lily,” I breathed.
She looked at me with frightened eyes.
“That’s Daddy,” she said, pointing at Julian.
Marcus inhaled sharply.
“No, baby,” he said gently. “I’m Daddy.”
Her lower lip trembled.
“But the picture.”
Julian’s face tightened.
Marcus took the photograph from my hand and studied it. The color drained from his face.
Then he turned it over.
There was writing on the back, but it was faded and smudged. I had seen it before and assumed it was a date or military notation.
Marcus stared at it for several seconds.
“This wasn’t the picture I sent you,” he said.
“What?”
“The file must have been mixed up before it cleared review.”
Julian looked over.
His expression changed when he saw the photo.
“That’s me,” he whispered.
The words landed heavily between us.
Lily glanced from one man to the other.
Marcus sat back on his heels and pulled her into his lap.
“Sweetheart, you didn’t do anything wrong,” he told her. “You saw the picture and thought Julian was me.”
