They did not know that the mission that killed him was still classified, still active in ways I couldn’t speak of, and that his death had set legal machinery moving that had nothing to do with insurance policies and everything to do with the fact that his estate was, in the eyes of the United States government, sensitive.

They did not know that I was still on active duty.

That the black dress and the folded flag had been an interruption, not an ending — emergency bereavement leave, granted for a funeral, and that less than twelve hours earlier, while my family slept off the wake they hadn’t attended, an encrypted message had come to the phone I kept charged on the nightstand and formally ended that leave.

The last time I saw Niko alive was a Tuesday, in a parking structure near the airfield, because that was where we said our goodbyes — never at the house, never anywhere soft, always somewhere gray and functional where I could get in the car afterward and drive home dry-eyed.

He had his bag over his shoulder and that far look already coming into him, the one where part of him had left before his body did.

I told him I was late.