My father mocked my burn scars—until a Navy SEAL stood up, stared at them, and whispered, I’ve seen those before.

Later, when there was a lull in the conversation, I quietly mentioned that I was being transferred to a new post.

He didn’t even look up from his plate. He waved his hand dismissively, as if swatting away an annoying fly.

“Another boring embassy job, I suppose,” he sighed. “The picture of paternal disappointment, shuffling papers for some bureaucrat in a country no one’s ever heard of.”

He then turned to my mother, a woman who had long ago decided peace was preferable to justice, and said, “Just try not to be so intense, dear. It’s unladylike.”

I just nodded, the familiar burn of injustice settling into a dull ache in my chest.

That’s when he used the nickname he’d given me when I first joined the State Department.

“The postcard.”

Because, as he loved to tell people, all they ever got from me were occasional, vague postcards from supposedly unimportant places.

It was his way of reducing my life, my career, my very existence, to a flimsy piece of cardboard with a pretty picture on it.

He had no idea.

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