Goodbyes are curious things. They are, in essence, brief moments — the closing of a door, the echo of departing footsteps — yet they linger far beyond their time, stretching themselves across memory like shadows cast by a setting sun. She had never much considered them before. A goodbye was, after all, a commonplace affair: a polite word exchanged at gatherings, a wave to a friend across a street, a farewell at a train's whistle. But this was different. This goodbye felt vast, final in a way that unsettled her spirit, and though she would not yet name it loss, she already felt the hollow of absence pressing at the edges of her heart.
It had begun innocuously enough. He had mentioned, one evening, over tea and lamplight, that his work might soon require him elsewhere. The words were spoken lightly, as though to soften their blow, yet the moment they left his lips, the air shifted. She smiled — she always smiled — but she felt a tightening within her, a shadow across her joy.
In the days that followed, the inevitability grew sharper. The arrangements were confirmed; his departure loomed like a date circled in red on an unseen calendar. They walked together, spoke together, laughed as always, but beneath it ran a current of awareness, a quiet reminder that their days were suddenly numbered.
On the morning of his leaving, the sky was heavy with grey, the kind of English morning that threatened rain yet withheld it, a sky that seemed to share in her reluctance. She rose early, restless, her hands moving through small tasks — folding linens, setting cups, tending to her niece — yet her mind remained elsewhere, fixed upon the hour ahead.
When at last he arrived, the world seemed both unchanged and entirely altered. He stood at her door as he always had, his presence filling the space with warmth, yet threaded now with something more fragile. His smile was soft, as though he knew that to widen it would be unkind.
"Shall we walk?" he asked, his voice low.
She nodded, unable to trust her own.
They went out together, their steps slow, deliberate, along familiar streets that suddenly seemed marked with farewell. The trees, just greening with spring, whispered in the breeze; the cobblestones, damp from the night's rain, glistened faintly. Everything looked sharper to her, as though her senses had been heightened by the knowledge that she must store it all away — the sound of his step beside hers, the way his coat brushed lightly against her sleeve, the cadence of his voice.
They spoke, at first, of ordinary things. He asked after her niece, after the garden, after her reading. She answered, but her words felt distant, as though she were speaking in another tongue. Beneath their conversation lay the silence of what neither wished to voice: You are leaving. I do not want you to go.
At last, as they reached the park where so many of their moments had taken root, he slowed, turning to face her.
"I wish," he said softly, "that it did not have to be so."
Her eyes met his, and she saw in them the same struggle that churned within her: the desire to hold on, the recognition of necessity, the ache of what must be endured.
"I know," she replied, her voice scarcely above a whisper. "But wishing does not change it, does it?"
"No," he admitted, his hand brushing against hers, though he did not take it. "No, it does not."
They sat together on a bench, their silence stretching long. Around them, the park carried on — a dog barked in the distance, a pair of boys kicked a football across the grass — yet for them, the world seemed suspended.
She wanted to speak, to say all that pressed within her: how she feared the emptiness of days without him, how she dreaded the distance, how she wished, foolishly, to halt the clocks and hold him there beside her. But words failed her, as they so often did in matters of the heart. Instead, she simply looked at him, memorising the lines of his face, the way his hair caught the pale light, the steadiness of his gaze.
"I will write," he said at last, his tone quiet but certain.
"And I will wait for your letters," she replied.
It was not a grand promise, not the dramatic declaration novels so often supply, but it was theirs — simple, earnest, and binding in its own quiet way.
When the time drew near, they walked back slowly, neither willing to hasten the moment. At her gate, he paused, and she felt the weight of everything unsaid pressing heavily between them.
"Goodbye," he murmured, the word thick in his throat.
Her lips parted, and though she meant to say the same, what came instead was softer, rawer: "Come back to me."
His eyes widened, not in surprise but in recognition, as though she had spoken aloud what he had himself carried silently. He reached then, finally, and took her hand, holding it tightly as though to etch the feel of it into his very skin.
"I will," he said. And in that moment, she chose to believe him.
The parting itself was brief — a step away, a glance back, a final smile — but it carved itself into her as deeply as any wound. She stood long after he had gone, the street empty, the silence pressing, her heart aching with a longing she could scarcely contain.
And though she had spoken words of hope, though she had promised herself to trust, she knew that this was a goodbye she had never wanted to say — and one that would echo in her heart until the moment it was undone.