“Okay?” I asked.

Her midnight-blue eyes blinked at me solemnly, and then she nodded.  “I’m really glad you’re here with me.”

“Nothing could have kept me away.  Wherever you go, so must I.”

Elaina mouthed the words “love you” to me as we followed behind the servicewoman who was leading us.

She stopped us at a room that appeared to be set up, just as a viewing area in a funeral parlor would be.  Darkened lighting, rich décor with stained-glass windows, and even a platform of sorts.  This whole experience was eerie.  The very idea that this facility had returned partial remains, so many times, to so many families—the Yanks had been forced to make a room especially for that purpose—was depressing.  I worried about what Elaina would be presented with.  It didn’t take profound logic to understand that there wasn’t going to be a body for George Morrison.  If there had been a body for him, it would’ve been identified almost immediately, not a decade later.  There would be very little for the family to claim, and I ached for my girl, and her mother, and brother over it.

“Right through here is where you’ll take possession.”  Staff Sergeant Knowles gestured with her arm.  “The documentation is on the altar beside your father’s remains, and you’ll take that with you as well.”  She gave instructions for Elaina and spoke to her directly.  “This room is yours for however long you need it.  When you’d like to leave, please use the exit out the hall and to the right.  As you come out of the building, you’ll see the car waiting to take you back to your hotel.”  She smiled placidly, as if she’d done her small speech thousands of times and could recite it in her sleep.  “Whenever you’re ready though.  Again, please take all the time you need.”

Yes, Dover AFB had done this far too many times for my liking.  The Yanks had a protocol, which had been honed to perfection because of it.  I hated the whole thing.  I hated that George Morrison had been killed in a terrorist attack.  I hated that a good man had been snuffed out needlessly, as so many others had been, in a pointless war, over semantics…and ideals that would never change any minds.  Stupid.

My own service in the very same war had made me somewhat of a cynic.  Seeing troops die right in front of me was something my mind probably would never let go of. Lost friends and brothers, people you talked to, ate meals with.  People you trusted with your life.  Lost.  Taken.  Dead.  Was hard for me to evade feelings of guilt, when I still had a life, and they no longer did.  Why them and not me?

I also hated that the daughter had to be here claiming the few small bits of her father, a decade after his death so the family had something to bury.  I hated what the circumstances of his death had done to Mum, to Ian, and to Elaina.  It brought home the knowledge of how quickly somebody you loved could be taken away from you forever.  Like Gran, like my own mother.

Sergeant Knowles gave a salute and left us, the sound of her boots in regulated step tapping out a beat as she departed, leaving us in quiet once again.

Elaina started forward to the altar, still holding tightly to my hand.  She hadn’t broken down or been visibly upset by going there, but I knew it had to be very hard on her to be the one to actually make the trip.  There was never a doubt in my mind about coming with her.  She needed me and that was all.  Family came first, no matter what.  The Morrisons were my family.

We stopped at the altar and looked down at the two things placed there.  An envelope and a small square box made of cardboard, with a self-closing lid and label marked with his name and address.

Elaina put her hand out and touched it.  “It’s so tiny…”

I didn’t know what to say.  I just put my arm around her and looked down at the small, tidy box containing some small portion of her dad.

A whole person reduced to what could fit inside a minute cardboard box.

“Let’s go now,” she said.

Elaina picked up the box and the envelope in her hands and looked up at me.  Not much expression on her beautiful face, just a kind of blankness that showed me she was suffering from no small amount of shock.  She had to be in disbelief at what she’d been given of her father to bring home.

“I want to leave this place.”

So I walked her outside of the building and into the sunshine. A few puffy white clouds in a clear blue autumn sky displayed above our heads.  We both looked up at it and I imagined we were both thinking the same thought that didn’t need to be expressed out loud.  This day was very much like the final day of George Morrison’s life.

I sat at the table in our hotel room and stared at the box.  A box that held some small parts of my father inside it.  So many emotions were boiling around inside my head.  Things I’d put aside over the years because the passage of time does dull the ache when you have to live daily life.  Also, I’d been a child when he’d died, so the more years that passed without him, made the time I’d had with my father become shorter by comparison.  In a way, death is easier than letting go.  When the person is gone, you have no choice but to accept that fact.  Death is final.  When they are still alive but lost to you, the grief stays alive.

But Mum had had many wonderful years with my dad.  I thought about Neil, and how it would be for me if something like this happened to us.  If he was just…gone.  And there was never another chance to be together again.  I shuddered.  Yeah, G&T’s every day didn’t seem like something that far off the mark, when I put it in my terms.  My mother had lost her husband, the father of her children, the love of her life.  Who was I to judge how she handled her grief?  I didn’t even know how I would present this—what should I even call it?—portion of my dad to my mother, when we arrived back home.

“Neil, I can’t bring him back to Mum in this…box.  There has to be something better we can find.”

His response was to bring his hand up to the back of my neck and rub with his thumb gently back and forth.  He’d been so good about everything, showing me, with his quiet strength and support, how much he loved me, and my family.  I’d done a number on Neil when I’d left him six years ago.  I realized now, how much my abandonment had hurt him to the point he was unreasonably worried about me going anywhere without him.  I suppose he was still afraid I might not come back.

This was something I agonized over each time I saw the signs of his obsessive worry about me.  It made me feel guilty and I didn’t like feeling that way.  I knew he had me on surveillance in his office at work, that he could watch me at my station and hear me talking to clients and such.  I was being patient with him for now, but I didn’t think it was healthy for us either.

“I saw some shops on the street like antiques and such.  Maybe you can find something suitable in one of them.  You want to go right now?” he asked.

“You don’t have to come with me, you know.”  I sighed without meaning to.  “I’ll be fine by myself.  It’s just a block of shops on the same street as this hotel.”

He shook his head at me and frowned.  “I’m coming with—”

“You don’t have to worry anymore, babe.  I know I hurt you badly, and I own up to what I did to you by leaving like that.”  I put my hand on his face.  “But I’ll always come back to you.  I love you and I can’t live without you.  There is nothing that will ever keep me from my man again.  I’ll always come back to you.  Promise.”

The look he gave me nearly split my heart in two.  His eyes turned glassy and he brought his head to my lap and just rested it there, saying nothing.  He reached for my hand and clasped it against his lips.  I ran my fingers through his hair with my other hand and we just stayed like that for a while.  No words needed.  We communicated just fine without them.

Decisions were permanent, and although we could regret some of them, we couldn’t call them back.  I had made some poor ones.  Neil had too.  I guess the best we could hope for, was to love each other as honestly as possible on each day we had left together.  And hope for many, many long years of those days in our future.

He still had his head in my lap when he asked, “I want to take you somewhere before we go back to London.  Please?”

“Of course, my darling,” I answered immediately.  “Wherever you go, so must I.”