“Can I… see her face?” George asks through his tears, but he already knows the answer before his father says it would be better to remember Shannon’s smile as she accepted the ring he offered her the night before.

Their world of two was a completed eternity from the moment they declared it to each other, and that will always have been the case, even though it’s over forever from now on.

He wipes his eyes, not for the last time, and pledges to become an excellent man, the promise somehow meaning more when the person to whom he first made it no longer walks by his side.