“Those were just the extra things we cleared out of the closet,” she muttered.

The colonel followed my gaze, and took in the scene in an instant.

“Do you require this box transported with your personal gear, Major?”

I swallowed the lump rising in my throat.

“Yes, Colonel.

Please take it.” The sergeant bent and lifted the box with complete care, as though it were fragile, as though it mattered, and loaded it securely into the rear vehicle.

And my mother turned her face away, unable to watch, because she was the one who had carried that box out to the concrete — had carried my dead husband’s photographs and his gift for his unborn daughter into a twenty-eight-degree garage and set them down on the cold floor beside the door.