The sky over Thorpe Abbotts was painted in muted shades of grey, the kind of English morning that seemed to leech the warmth out of a man’s bones. Major John Egan stepped down from the transport vehicle with the sluggish heaviness of someone who had not truly slept in weeks. His uniform was still creased from the journey, boots dusted with mud, and yet his heart—despite the exhaustion carved into his face—beat faster with anticipation. He had clung to one thought through endless missions and sleepless nights: the moment he would hold his son again, and finally meet the child born during his absence. He had imagined you, sitting by the window with a newborn in your arms, waiting for him as though no time had passed at all. A reunion, a family complete.

But waiting at the edge of the barracks was not the image he had dreamed of. Instead, he saw a young maid, the one often tasked with helping around the house, standing stiffly with Charles at her side. The boy’s small hand was wrapped around her fingers, though his face lit up the instant he spotted his father.

“Daddy!” Charles called, breaking into a run as much as his little legs allowed.

John’s heart swelled and ached all at once. He dropped to one knee and gathered the boy up, ruffling his soft hair, pressing his face into the crook of his son’s neck. But Charles clung harder than usual, trembling slightly.

John leaned back to search his son’s eyes. “Where’s your mum, Charlie? Is she back at the house?”

The maid shifted uneasily. She swallowed, her gaze flicking between father and son. “Major… there’s something you need to know.”

John rose slowly, his stomach twisting. “What is it?”

The pause stretched too long. The maid pressed her lips together as though the words themselves were poison. Finally, she spoke. “The baby… sir, the baby didn’t survive the delivery.”

The words slammed into him with brutal force, knocking the breath from his chest. For a moment, John simply stared, uncomprehending. His grip tightened around Charles, who whimpered softly at the sudden pressure.

“No,” John whispered, shaking his head, as though denial might reverse what he had heard. “No, not ours…”

The maid’s voice cracked as she continued, “Your wife—she hasn’t moved from her bed since. She won’t eat. She won’t sleep. She just… stares out the window, sir. It’s as though she’s drifted somewhere else entirely. I’ve tried—God knows I’ve tried—but she won’t let me near her.”

John felt himself splinter inside. He had watched men die in the skies, comrades torn away in fire and steel. But this—this was grief with no battlefield, no enemy to strike back at. This was his family slipping through his fingers, and he had been powerless to stop it.

He bent down and kissed Charles’s forehead, forcing his voice steady. “Stay with Mary,” he told the boy gently, placing him back into the maid’s care. Charles’s arms lingered around his father’s neck for a moment longer before he let go, his lower lip trembling.

“I’ll go to her,” John said, hoarse, his throat raw.

The drive to the house blurred past him, swallowed in a haze of dread. When the mansion finally rose before him, it felt less like home and more like a monument to what had been lost—its windows dark, its walls hollow.

He pushed open the heavy oak doors and climbed the staircase. The familiar halls seemed suffocatingly silent, lined with portraits of ancestors who seemed to watch him with grave disapproval. At last, he reached the master bedroom.

The door creaked open, and John froze on the threshold.

The curtains were half-drawn, spilling pale light across the room. There, on the vast king-sized bed, you sat propped against pillows, your figure thin and still beneath the blanket. Your gaze was fixed out the window, unblinking, unmoving—as if the world beyond the glass held you captive.

John’s breath hitched. For an instant he didn’t know if you had even noticed him, if you were aware at all of his presence.

Grief clawed at his chest as he stepped inside.

And so did you.