This is Just a Dream

Chapter 12

The cemetery was a sea of pressed wool, polished brass, and the biting, antiseptic scent of lilies. It was a day of aggressive, unyielding sunlight that seemed entirely out of place, as if the heavens had forgotten to mourn along with the small gathering assembled under the stark white canopy.

Eden stood at the edge of the assembly, feeling like a phantom in her own life. She wore a black dress that hung loosely on her frame; she felt as though she had been hollowed out, reduced to a collection of sharp edges and translucent skin. She wasn't really there. Part of her was still in that apartment, trapped in the loop of the previous week, and part of her was still in the wadi, standing in the dust, waiting for a heartbeat that had stopped, the heart beat that was connected to her very own.

The rhythmic, ceremonial snap of the honor guard’s rifles as they performed the three-volley salute sounded like thunder—dry, percussive, and final. Each shot was a physical blow, a punctuation mark on the end of a sentence she had fought to keep reading for months, a 21 gun salute.

She watched the flag—a crisp, geometric triangle of red, white, and blue—as it was folded with agonizing precision. She knew the meaning of every fold, the history of every corner, but all she saw was the shroud covering the pieces of the boy who had once called her "Edie" with a tone that felt like home.

He’s in there, she thought, her mind a cold, clinical processor. He’s in there, and the sun is shining, and the grass is green, and none of it makes sense.

The chaplain’s voice was a low drone, a mixture of platitudes and scripture that blurred into a singular, meaningless hum. Eden barely heard him. The only thing she saw was the coffin, the polished wood box that contained the remnants of a life she craved, a life that she spent years speaking into existence.

To her left, Garrett Hanson was a monument in dress blues. He stood with a posture so static it suggested he had been carved from granite. He was the commander, the leader, the man who had brought the news, and now, the man who was officiating the finality. He hadn't left her side since that night in her apartment, serving as a silent, invisible buffer between Eden and the crushing weight of the world. He intercepted the well-meaning strangers, he managed the funeral directors, and he stood as a wall of iron against the tide of her grief.

When the service concluded, the crowd began to drift, a slow, somber migration toward the parking lot. Eden stayed behind, rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed on the patch of freshly disturbed earth.

Garrett stepped toward her, his movements stiff and cautious. He removed his peaked cap, holding it against his side, his hair shorn short and the tattoos matching the somberness and seriousness of the day. He looked older than the day he had appeared at her door, his eyes carrying the heavy, weary toll of a thousand goodbyes.

"It’s time, Eden," he said softly.

She turned to him, her face pale, her eyes dark and sunken. "Is it? Is it really the end?"

Garrett looked at the grave, then back to her. "The ceremony is, yes. The rest... the rest is something you take at your own pace."

He reached into his breast pocket and produced a small, sealed plastic bag. Inside were the contents of Adam’s personal effects: a heavy brass dog tag, a silver watch with a cracked face, and a single silver band.

He held the bag out. His hand was steady, but his expression was a fragile thing, the iron finally beginning to buckle.

"I wanted you to have these," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly murmur. "These were his. They were the things he kept closest. Right before we left to go to the wadi he found this ring in the dirt, and said that was his sign that you were with him. He never stopped talking about you and we all gave him so much s**t for it but ive never seen someone so devoted as we he was to you"

Eden took the bag, her fingers brushing against the cold plastic. She didn't open the bag. She simply clutched it to her chest, feeling the sharp edges of the tags press against her palms.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Garrett stood for a moment, his gaze shifting to the horizon. The military life was a cycle of departures and arrivals, of standing in the wake of losses, but he had never carried a burden like this one. He had promised to look out for her, and in the quiet, brutal honesty of his own heart, he knew that leaving her here—at the graveside of the man she loved—felt like the greatest dereliction of duty he had ever committed.

"I have to return to base," Garrett said, his voice tinged with a regret that he usually kept buried deep. "My leave has expired. My squad is preparing for the next rotation."

Eden felt a fresh wave of panic, a cold, surging dread. Garrett had become her only tether, the only person who understood the specific, jagged shape of her grief.

"I understand," she said, though her voice and her hands shook, Garrett took notice.

Garrett reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a small, plain business card. He took a pen from his breast pocket and wrote a number on the back, his handwriting sharp and angular. He pressed the card into her hand, his fingers lingering for a brief, reassuring second on hers.

"That is my direct line," he said, his voice intense, searching her eyes. "Not the office, not the main switchboard. Mine. If the nights get too long, if you find yourself unable to breathe, if you just need to hear someone talk to you who remembers him, you call that number."

"I shouldn't," she started. "You’re a commander. You have—"

"I don't care about rank, Eden," he interrupted, his voice dropping to a low, fierce intensity. "I promised him. I told him I would look after you. That isn't a promise I’m going to break because of a piece of paper or a set of regulations. You are a part of his story, and that makes you a part of mine.I failed him, I will not fail you too"

He stepped back, his posture shifting back into the rigid, disciplined line of a soldier. He snapped a crisp, sharp salute—not to the grave, but to her.

“Ma’am” he said as he saluted and then turned sharp on his heels and walked off.

Eden stood there, the plastic bag of effects in one hand and his card in the other, watching as he turned and walked toward the waiting sedan. He walked with a heavy, deliberate stride, his silhouette cutting a sharp, lonely line against the bright, indifferent sky.

She watched until the car pulled away, the dust of the cemetery road swirling in the wake of the tires. The silence that rushed back in to fill the space was profound, a vacuum that seemed to suck the oxygen out of the air.

She was alone.

She turned back to the grave. The flowers were bright, the colors vibrant and artificial against the brown of the earth. She sank to her knees, the dirt staining the hem of her black dress. She didn't cry. The capacity for tears had been exhausted days ago.

She opened the bag.

She pulled out the dog tag and ran her thumb across the lettering of his name that was engraved into the metal, she placed a single kiss to his name and placed it back into the bag. She pulled out the ring and slid it onto her ring finger, snug against the ring that Adam had placed there, it fit perfectly. Adam was right, it was a sign.

"You kept your promise, Adam," she whispered, her voice a ghost of a sound. "You did come back to me one way or another. You also sent a very scary looking man to look after me and protect me. I should have known that in the midst of all that chaos you would still manage to come up with one last plan of action, that's just who you were." she sobbed, her chest hurting from the lack of air in her lungs and the heaving her body had undertaken.

She thought of the commander, the “Monster”, He was a good man. Adam had been right. Adam was typically always right, he didn't see the world in rose colored glasses, he saw the world for what it was.

She tucked the Commanders card into her own pocket, pressing it against her hip. She felt the weight of the metal of the tags, the biting cold of the silver ring on her finger, and the crushing, vast expanse of the future.

The sun began to dip toward the horizon, casting long, mournful shadows across the headstones. The cemetery was emptying, the living returning to their lives, to their dinners, to their families, to the mundane, rhythmic beauty of a life that continued.

Eden rose.

She didn't know who she was anymore. The girl who studied Educational Psychology had died in that wadi along with the soldier. She was someone new, someone forged in the furnace of grief, someone who carried the weight of the dead in her heart and the shadow of a vow in her heart.

She walked toward the exit, her steps slow and measured. As she crossed the threshold of the cemetery, she felt a sudden, sharp gust of wind brushing against her face. She got an overwhelming scent of Adams cologne and the breeze seemed to caress her face in the soft touch of a lover. She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent that she once knew as home and safety.

She reached up and touched the dog tags as one single tear tracked down her face. The funeral didn’t feel like goodbye, the flag being placed in her lap didn't feel like good bye, the 21 gun salute didn't feel like goodbye. But this, this soft caress of the breeze and the scent of the man she loved, this felt like good bye.

She was his Eden, always HIS Edie.

She walked into the cooling evening, the dog tags held tight against her heart. The war was over for him, but for her, the long, slow, and emotional recovery was just begining.

She was a ghost of a girl, but she had his tags, she had his watch, and she had the memory of a man who had loved her fiercely.