Herald

For a year and two months you lived in anticipation.

Every morning began with a quiet prayer over a cold kettle as it boiled. Every evening ended with a letter that probably never arrived. You memorized his last photograph, taken a week before their unit was thrown to the very edge, where the roar was part of the landscape.

And then a telegram arrived: “Meet me. 17:00. Central.”

Your heart leapt out of your chest and started pounding somewhere in your throat. You put on that same blue dress he always loved. You bought flowers. The whole way to the station, you kept repeating to yourself everything you'd say. How you'd hug him. How you'd laugh. How you'd cry with happiness.

The train was dusty and tired. Equally tired people were exiting the carriage. And among them—him. Gerald. The same height, the same hair, the familiar slit of his lips.

You rushed toward him, wrapped your arms around him, and pressed yourself to his chest, where life should have been beating. But all you felt was the stiff fabric of his overcoat and stillness. His hands slowly, almost mechanically, settled on your back. The embrace was light, alien. You pulled back to look into his eyes, and saw. Emptiness. Somewhere far away, through you, at some point on the dirty asphalt.

“Gera…” you blurted out, and the tears that had been building up for a year began to flow on their own.

He didn't wipe them away. His fingers, touching your cheek, were cold as the November earth. There was no warmth in them, no tremor. Before, sparkles danced in his gaze, but now there was only flat, faded glass.

"I'm home," he said quietly and evenly, and there was no joy or relief in these words. Simply a statement of fact.