“He’ll see you before he sees anything else.”
“Will he know me?”
The question stopped me.
I crouched beside her and held her shoulders.
“Of course he’ll know you.”
“But I got bigger.”
“He knows, sweetheart. I’ve told him all about you.”
She studied my face as though deciding whether I was telling the truth.
Then she lifted the sign.
“Do you think he’ll like this?”
“He’ll love it.”
The waiting stretched on.
Every announcement made the crowd shift.
Every movement near the double doors caused people to stand taller.
Then the military arrival gate opened.
A wave of uniform-clad soldiers walked through.
The terminal erupted.
People shouted names, cried out, and rushed forward. Lily climbed onto her toes, trying to see around the adults.
“Where is he?” she asked.
I scanned the crowd.
Then I spotted Marcus immediately.
He looked exhausted.
His face was thinner, his cheeks hollowed, and there were shadows beneath his eyes. His hair was shorter than I remembered, and he carried a heavy olive-green duffel bag over one shoulder.
But it was him.
My husband.
My breath left me.
“There,” I whispered. “Lily, there he is.”
Marcus saw us at the same moment.
His entire face changed.
The exhaustion vanished beneath an expression so raw that I felt my chest tighten. He dropped his heavy olive-green duffel bag onto the floor, opened his arms wide, and cried out Lily’s name.
“Lily!”
Her welcome sign slipped from her fingers.
“Daddy!” she screamed.
She took off running.
For one perfect second, I thought I was watching the reunion I had imagined every night for two years.
Then the most bizarre and heartbreaking thing happened.
Instead of throwing herself into Marcus’ open arms, Lily veered to the left.
She ran right past him.
The crowd of onlookers gasped, and my breath caught in my throat.
Marcus remained frozen with his arms still open, confusion spreading across his face.
“Lily?” he called.
She did not stop.
I watched in absolute horror as my daughter collided with a different soldier who was walking a few paces behind Marcus.
She wrapped her tiny arms around his leg and began crying.
“I missed you so much!”
The stranger froze.
He was a rugged, heavily scarred soldier, and he looked so shockingly similar to my husband that, for a split second, my brain short-circuited.
They had the same height, the same broad shoulders, and the same dark eyes.
