Staff Sergeant Michael Torres stepped off the transport bus at Fort Benning with eighteen months of sand, tension, and deployment fatigue still weighing on him. The sticky Georgia heat hit him like a wave—strange, heavy, but unmistakably home. He hadn’t told his wife, Emma, that he was returning early. He wanted the reunion to be unforgettable. He imagined her smile, her shock, her arms around him after months of loving each other through a screen.
The Uber driver chatted nonstop, but Michael barely registered it. Every street, every landmark pulled him closer to the moment he’d been replaying for months. He whispered the word “wife” when the driver asked who was waiting for him, and the reality of it almost overwhelmed him.
Then the car turned onto Maple Street.
And Michael’s breath left his lungs.
His home—blue shutters, familiar garden, the oak tree—was surrounded by soldiers in full dress uniform. A chaplain stood beside Emma, who wore a black dress and looked utterly devastated. Two soldiers held folded American flags.
A funeral detail.
At his house.
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