24/04/2025
“The Sound of the Gate”
The wind whispered through the wheat fields as if it too were waiting for something—someone. In a small farmhouse at the edge of town, Anna stood at the kitchen window, drying the same dish for the third time. Her hands worked, but her eyes were elsewhere—fixed on the gravel road that led to the old iron gate at the end of the path.
Her son, Caleb, sat on the floor with his toy truck, while her daughter Lily helped braid her grandmother’s hair in the next room. It had been three years since James—husband, father, son—had left in uniform. Letters came and went. Promises were folded into envelopes, and hope was pressed between the lines like dried flowers.
But then the letters stopped.
Months passed with no word. Some said to prepare for the worst. Anna refused. She kept the gate unlocked. She left the porch light on, no matter the hour or the storm. Every night she whispered the same prayer, not for answers, but for the sound—the one she ached to hear most.
And then, on a quiet Sunday morning, it came.
Clink. Clink.
The old gate creaked open.
Anna dropped the dish, and it shattered at her feet.
There he stood. Dusty boots. Faded uniform. A duffel bag in one hand and a bouquet of wildflowers in the other. His beard was longer, his frame thinner, but his eyes—those same steady, ocean-colored eyes—were unchanged.
Lily screamed and ran. Caleb stood frozen for a second, then burst into tears. The children clung to him like ivy on stone.
Anna didn’t speak at first. She just touched his face, half-afraid he’d vanish if she blinked too long.
“You came back,” she whispered.
“I promised,” James said, his voice cracking. “I never stopped walking toward you.”
They stood there, wrapped in a silence fuller than any words. The gate swung shut behind them, gently this time—no longer a symbol of waiting, but one of return.
And inside the house, laughter replaced longing.
Because the war had taken time, sleep, and peace—but it hadn’t taken love. And love, they learned, always finds its way home.
