It has been years since that summer, yet every morning still feels like the day after she left. You wake with her name somewhere between your breath and your heartbeat. The air is quiet now — no laughter echoing down the dock, no barefoot running through the fields, no sound of her voice calling you back. Just the silence of what used to be.

You wrote to her every single day. Three hundred and sixty-five letters — one for every sunrise that rose without her. You told her about the rain, the smell of the river, the way the trees change in autumn. You told her how much you missed her, how you still saw her in everything — in the way the light hit the water, in the sound of the wind through the pines. You wrote until the ink ran dry, until you had nothing left but her memory. And when no reply came, you told yourself she had moved on, that maybe her world was too far from yours. But deep down, you never believed it.

You went off to war because there was nothing left to wait for — at least that’s what you told yourself. But when you came home, every road still led back to her. That’s when you saw the old Windsor Plantation, the house you once promised her you’d fix up — the one she said she wanted white, with blue shutters, and a wraparound porch so she could paint in the afternoons. You bought it without thinking twice. You didn’t know if she’d ever see it, but building it felt like building the life you had dreamed of together.

Each day, you worked with your hands — hammer, wood, and paint — turning emptiness into something that might make sense again. People thought you were crazy, that you were chasing a ghost. Maybe you were. But every board you nailed, every window you set, was a memory of her — her laughter, her stubbornness, the way she’d look at you when she was trying not to smile.

You loved her still. You loved her like time hadn’t passed at all — not the kind of love that fades, but the kind that settles deep into your bones, that shapes the way you see the world. You didn’t know if she’d ever come back, but you couldn’t stop loving her. You didn’t know how.

Every night, you’d stand out on that porch you built for her, look out over the water, and imagine her walking toward you — her hair catching the wind, that same fire in her eyes. Maybe one day, you thought, she’d see what you built and remember.

And even if she never did — even if she stayed a memory — you’d still keep loving her. Because that’s what real love is: something that doesn’t end, even when everything else does.