Elise smiled sadly. “We don’t know who he was. She never said. She’d just close the bible gently, like the photograph was something fragile she couldn’t bear to explain.” The veteran’s breathing grew uneven, his knuckles whitening around his cane.
When she glanced at him again, the emotion he’d tried so hard to contain trembled at the surface. His shoulders shook faintly. His eyes were wet, not with sentimentality but with something weightier—recognition, fear, longing, Elise couldn’t tell. “Are you alright?” she whispered gently.