I pressed it against my lips.
The stranger leaned closer.
“My name is Edward,” he said. “Benjamin is my father.”
I stared at him again and suddenly saw not only Benjamin’s eyes and dimple—but Benjamin’s son.
“No.”
Edward remained perfectly still.
“My Benjamin died in Vietnam.”
“He was declared missing,” Edward said. “Then he was presumed dead.”
“His mother stood on my porch and told me he was gone.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“My father survived. His identification was delayed for years. By the time his records were corrected, his mother had died and her old address led nowhere.”
Benjamin had lived.
While I spent decades mourning a man I believed dead, he had been somewhere beneath the same sky.
“Where has he been?”
Edward glanced briefly toward Wren.
Then he answered.
“My father suffered a severe head injury during the war. It damaged his memory, and dementia later made it worse.”
“He forgot me?”
“He forgot most of his life before the injury.”
A short laugh escaped me, though nothing about the moment was amusing.
Edward placed several records beside the box.
“How did you find me?”
“The photograph and a page from an old yearbook led me to an article about your volunteer work,” Edward explained.
Wren sat across from me.
“After I confirmed his documents, I told him about your yearly visit to the willow.”
My eyes drifted toward the carnations.
It was Benjamin’s eightieth birthday.
People often wondered whether I regretted never marrying or raising children.
The answer was always the same.
I had never stopped loving Benjamin.
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