I saw my mother’s mouth part slightly, as if she had been about to say something and had forgotten how. My father lowered his phone. Derek, standing near the front rows in his cap and gown, turned halfway toward Section 114, then back toward the stage.
He knew.
Or at least he knew something.
That realization landed harder than I expected.
The dean smiled beside me, unaware of the history gathering like a storm beneath the surface.
“Dr. Mitchell,” he said quietly, stepping aside.
I placed my notes on the podium, though I barely needed them. I had written this speech at two in the morning in a hotel room overlooking campus, the same campus where I had once eaten crackers for dinner because my research stipend had run thin before rent was due. The same campus where I had cried in bathroom stalls after experiments failed. The same campus where I had learned that loneliness could become either a wound or a forge.
