Just that.
The tears come quietly.
They start behind my eyes, burning hot, and before I know it I’m gasping. I press a hand over my mouth, but the sob still escapes, jagged and ugly.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, knees to my chest, compad clutched tight. My body shakes with every breath.
I used to think crying over him made me weak. That I had to stay angry, stay in control. That if I let the grief in, it would drown me.
But this isn’t grief.
It’s relief.
Because for the first time, I see him—not the soldier, not the teacher, not the man who keeps trying to make amends through grand gestures.
Just the father who wrote a two-line prayer from a cell and trusted the universe to carry it here.
I stay there a long time.
Long enough for the light to shift, for the apartment to grow soft and shadowed. My tears dry on my cheeks, sticky and salt-sour.
When I finally stand, I feel… lighter. Not fixed. Not forgiven. Justready.
I walk to Ben’s room. The walls are covered in his usual chaos of drawings—spaceships, cupcakes, clawed heroes. His shoes lie by the door, one upright, one fallen over. His blanket is still rumpled from this morning.
It smells like him. Soap and paint.
I press my face into it and breathe.
The front door opens an hour later.
“Mommy!” Ben’s voice is bright, bursting through the quiet. I turn before I even realize I’m smiling.
He’s running toward me, cheeks flushed, holding something clutched in both hands.
“Look what we made!”
He holds it up. A plush—roughly stitched, stuffed with something uneven, shaped vaguely like a person. Its fabric skin is a patchwork of scraps, but it has little felt claws and crooked eyes drawn in marker.
“It’s Daddy?Jav,” he says proudly. “He helped me sew it. He said it’s for when I miss him. But I told him I won’t miss him ‘cause I’ll see him again soon.”
I freeze.
Ben blinks. “Mommy? You okay?”
I take the plush from his hands. It’s warm from his grip. Lopsided, silly, perfect.
I kneel.
“Did you thank him?” I ask softly.
He nods. “He said you could visit too. He didn’t even smile when he said it, but his eyes did.”
That’s when the last piece of me breaks.
After Ben goes to bed, I move through the apartment like a ghost.
I pull a bag from the closet and start packing—no rush, no panic. Just quiet purpose. A sweater. Toothbrush. The book he loves to read. The one Jav used in class to make the kids laugh.
