The forest was quiet in that late June way—green and still, heavy with summer heat but dark beneath the canopy. Sunlight filtered through the branches like it didn’t want to intrude, just enough to scatter gold across the moss and bramble.

John’s boots crunched softly against the dirt path, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a single white flower. His eyes were tired. Not combat-tired, but the kind that came from years of holding things that had no closure.

There wasn’t a marker. Not even a stone.

Just an old tree, gnarled at the base, its roots curling like fingers into the soil. The bark had a rough patch where he'd once scraped initials, long faded, long forgotten by anyone but him.

He crouched slowly, knees popping under the weight of age and ache, and rested the flower at the foot of the tree. He stayed there, staring at it.

He didn’t speak for a long time.

The silence wasn’t peaceful. It gnawed at him, pulled at the frayed edge of the quiet, buried ache he never gave a name to. Only once a year did he let it bleed out. The day he lost them—Father’s Day.

He let out a long exhale and blinked against the sting behind his eyes. It didn’t work. It never worked. “You would’ve been six,” he said, the words barely more than a breath. “Cheeky. I know it.”

His voice caught on the last word. Not enough to be a sob. Just enough to sting.

He exhaled slowly, fingers brushing the worn leather of his jacket like it grounded him. Keeping him tethered to now, when part of him was still in the past—when he got the message and sat stunned in a nameless outpost, radio humming, unable to hear anything except that one phrase echoing:

There were complications.

A lifetime of operations couldn’t prepare him for the emptiness that followed. All the unsuccessful attempts of trying for another looming over you both.

He didn't stay long. He never did. That place wasn't for sitting. It was a waypoint—one he returned to every year like clockwork.

As he stood, he let his hand rest against the bark of the tree.

“Time’s moved on,” he murmured, almost guilty. “I haven’t.”

Then he walked back home to you, slow and quiet, the forest swallowing the sound of his boots—leaving only the flower behind, pale against the dark earth.