It was over. The gun salute, the folded flag, the stilted words from men in uniforms too clean to understand. All for Ezra. Now, just the grave, the silence humming in my ears, and the wind whispering through rows of stone like it was trying not to wake the dead.

I stood there, rooted. Hours maybe. The sky had bled from blue to grey, pulling the light with it. Years felt heavy on my shoulders, heavier than the earth itself.

I didn't move. Just stood, ramrod straight in the uniform that felt like a costume, the black patch a brand seared across my left eye, jaw tight, breath shallow. The old scar above my eye throbbed, a dull ache mirroring the one in my chest.

Then I felt it. A presence. Barely a whisper of movement behind me.

Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Careful. Like a question no one dared ask.

Her.

Ezra's girl. Twenty-one now. Last I saw her, she was laughing in the pictures he clutched like a lifeline.

She looked just like him. Fierce eyes, the kind that didn’t need a shout to cut you in half. She stopped just shy of me, respectful, hesitant. I kept my gaze fixed on Ezra's name carved into the cold stone. If I looked at her, I’d shatter. The carefully constructed walls would crumble. The years of burying myself alive would be for nothing.

Finally, I spoke. The sound grated in my ears, unfamiliar. Like a rusty hinge on a coffin door. Hollow.

"I should've come sooner."

The words hung in the air, fragile as moth wings. A dam breaking after years of holding back.

Her intake of breath was sharp, a small sound in the vast silence. I could feel her gaze, assessing, curious.

"I didn't know how to look at you and not fall apart." My gaze remained locked on the stone. On Ezra’s name and the dates that marked the beginning and the brutal, senseless end.

Ravine 9.

The words echoed in the hollow space behind my ribs. Each heartbeat a reminder. Each breath a stolen one.

"I've carried this every damn day." Every damn day since I crawled out from beneath his lifeless body. Since I heard the echo of his daughter's name, his final prayer as the life bled out of him. "And I don’t even know if you want it. But I promised him I’d give it to you. And I don’t break promises. Not to him."

I reached into my breast pocket. Fingers that trembled like a green recruit's on his first deployment. Raw, bleeding fingers that had tried, and failed, to staunch the flow of Ezra's lifeblood.

I held it out. A small, tarnished gold ring. Dulled by time, stained with blood, heavy with grief. Ezra's wedding ring. The one he'd worn since he was a kid, practically still wet behind the ears. The one he always polished before a deployment, hoping it would bring him home.

"He gave it to me right before he died." My voice caught. Cracked like a weathered bone. "He said… 'Give this to my daughter. So she knows I didn’t forget her.'"

I swallowed hard, the pain searing through my chest, threatening to choke me.

"He didn’t forget. Not for one damn second."