Thomas Reed had imagined his homecoming so many times that the memory of it felt real before it ever happened.

He had imagined the porch light.

The chipped green paint on the front door.

The smell of his wife’s lavender soap drifting from the hallway.

He had imagined Sarah hearing his boots on the steps and running before he even knocked. In the darkest places of the war, that image had kept him alive.

When mud swallowed his knees.

When gunfire tore through the night.

When men beside him whispered names of people they would never see again.

Thomas held on to one picture. Sarah.

Home.

Her arms around him.

So when he finally stepped through the front door with his duffel bag hanging from one shoulder, he was not prepared for silence.

The house looked the same at first. The same yellow lamp near the window.

The same crocheted blanket over the armchair.

The same family photograph on the mantel from the day before he shipped out, when Sarah had cried into his collar and promised him she would wait.

But then he saw her.

On the couch.

Beside another man.

The man wore a blue shirt and sat too close to her.

Not touching.

But close enough.

Close enough for Thomas’s stomach to turn cold.

Sarah jumped to her feet so quickly the blanket slipped from her lap.