“Did I make it home?”
I pressed his hand gently against my cheek.
“You did, Benjamin.”
His eyes settled on mine.
“Belle.”
A peaceful smile crossed his face.
Then his fingers slowly relaxed inside my hand.
Benjamin left this world just as the first rays of morning sunlight reached him.
I kissed his hand one final time.
“You kept your promise,” I whispered. “It just took longer than we thought.”
At the funeral, I stood quietly near the back until Edward walked over.
“Please sit with me,” he said. “You belong there.”
I followed him without speaking.
He placed a red carnation beside Benjamin’s photograph.
“My mother gave him a life after the war,” he said. “Isobel carried the love he had before it.”
Several weeks later, Edward and Wren met me beneath the willow once more.
Edward handed me the familiar blue box.
Inside rested the silver ring alongside a new photograph of Benjamin and me beneath the tree.
Then I divided the red carnations into three.
One belonged to Edward.
One belonged to Wren.
And one stayed with me.
For the first time in sixty-two years, I didn’t leave the flowers behind and walk away by myself.
I had spent most of my life believing Benjamin never found his way home.
In the end, he returned just long enough to leave me something even more precious than I had imagined.
He left me a family.
