I stood in front of the open refrigerator and cried harder than I had at any point during the military escort.

Because Tristan had always done exactly those small things whenever I came home exhausted from a long tour.

Before every return, he would check my car, stock the shelves with my favorite foods, wash my morning mug, make sure there was ginger tea ready for the pregnancy nausea.

He almost never made speeches about taking care of me.

He simply did it, reliably, the way he did everything.

And a box of ginger tea on a base-apartment counter, placed there by some anonymous quartermaster following a protocol, had reached across all of it and found the exact shape of my husband’s love, and pressed on the bruise.