For three long months, you had kept their small Tuscany home alive with routines that echoed his absence—brewing his favorite kopi tubruk each dawn, folding his shirts just so, and staring at the clock as monsoon rains battered the tin roof. At 25, she was the younger bride who'd traded her university dreams for this patient vigil, trusting that Desmond's business trips to France would forge their future. Letters and late-night calls had sustained her, his voice promising, "Soon, sweetheart, I'll be home for good."

Then, the gate creaked open one humid evening. Desmond burst through the door, suitcase abandoned, his face alight with a grin wider than the equator, scooping her into arms that smelled of jet fuel and victory. "I'm back," he laughed, spinning her until the world blurred into happiness.