“Go change—you look ridiculous,” my father laughed after my mother purposely ruined my dress. I left quietly. When I returned wearing a general’s uniform, the room fell silent as he stared at my shoulders and whispered, “Wait… are those two stars?”

Colonel Victor Aldridge, retired.

Tonight marked his sixtieth birthday and what he proudly called his Diamond Command Jubilee—a phrase printed in enormous gold letters across a banner hanging behind the stage.

“A Legacy of Leadership: Colonel Victor Aldridge.”

It was the kind of banner you might expect at a political rally, not a birthday party.

But subtlety had never been my father’s strong suit.