When the sergeant major placed the flag in my hands, the cloth felt heavier than any material had any right to be. I heard the formal words about a grateful nation and honorable service, but all I could think about was that Terrence had never even served in uniform. He was a civilian architect who made pancakes shaped like stars and cried at sad movies, yet the Army was honoring him because he was mine.
My neighbor, Mrs. Gable, pressed a foil covered casserole dish into my hands after the service like it was a sacred relic. Mia’s teacher held both my wrists and told me, voice shaking, that my daughter had once spent a full recess explaining why kittens should be allowed to go to school. I laughed for a brief second and then immediately hated myself for finding a moment of humor in a graveyard.
General Vance stepped close enough that nobody else could hear us, his silver temples glinting in the dull light. “Captain Rossi,” he said quietly, “did your family make it in for the service?”
My throat closed up and all I managed was the smallest, most pathetic shake of my head. His face changed to an expression of recognition, the look of a man who had seen many battlefields and knew what abandonment looked like. He put his hand on my shoulder once and told me I wasn’t alone, but it only made me feel embarrassed.
By the time I got back to our house on post, the sky had gone that flat white color it gets before a heavy rain. The entryway was crowded with flowers, and Mia’s yellow rain boots were still by the door with one fallen sideways on the rug. I moved through the rooms like I was trespassing in my own life, eventually sitting on the edge of Mia’s bed.
I finally looked at my phone while sitting at the kitchen table, still wearing my uniform with one glove off. There were missed calls and condolence messages, but then a social media notification from my mother, Andrea, popped up. I opened it with a spark of hope, thinking there might be an emergency or a heartfelt apology for their absence.
The screen showed my mother in a floral sundress and my father, Paul, holding a bottle of beer by a bright blue pool. My brother, Tyler, was grinning with both thumbs up in a tropical paradise that looked completely fake. The caption read, “Greetings from the Rossi family in Maui,” and it had been posted three hours before the funeral.