His explanation came in fragments: a mission gone wrong, records tangled, a letter that never reached me, the belief that I had chosen to move on. While I was learning how to live with his absence, he was learning how to live with mine.
Telling Stacy was the hardest part. I watched her study his face, searching it like a mirror she’d never known she was missing. There were no perfect reunions, no instant forgiveness, only the fragile decision to try.
Under the willow, we did not reclaim the years; we acknowledged them. What remained was smaller, humbler, but real: three lives, finally allowed to exist in the same truth. And somehow, that was enough to begin again.
