Teresa smiled through tears.
“Don’t worry about me. Just take care of yourselves.”
And then the waiting began.
Twenty years.
Twenty years of phone calls that sometimes cut out mid-sentence. Voice notes she replayed again and again. Video calls she learned to use with a neighbor’s help.
Twenty birthdays spent alone.
Every time she heard a plane overhead, she would step outside and look up.
“Maybe that’s one of my boys,” she would whisper.
Her hair turned fully white. Her steps slowed. But hope never left her.
THE RETURN
One ordinary morning, while sweeping the entrance of her small house — modest but now her own again after years of saving — someone knocked.
She assumed it was a neighbor.
When she opened the door, her breath caught in her throat.
Two tall men stood before her, uniforms crisp, insignias gleaming in the su
