𝑪𝑶𝑺𝑰𝑴𝑨 | 𝐓.𝐒 |

𝒙𝒗𝒊. 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒌𝒆𝒚

Cosima sat beside him. He continued, quieter now, “Sometimes I think we all died out there. The men who came back, they’re just walking ghosts. Just took Freddie longer to lie down.”

The cigarette burned between his fingers. She could see the weight in his shoulders, in his eyes. There was no dramatic grief. No wailing or breaking. Just a man with dirt under his nails, one more name carved into the wall of his mind.

She reached for his hand. It was cold. “Tomorrow we bury him,” Cosima said.

Thomas nodded. “Yeah.”

A moment passed, “Thank you,” he said suddenly.

“For what?”

“For making him look like himself again.” His voice cracked then, just a little. “It means something.”

Cosima didn’t speak. She only pressed her cheek to his shoulder, let the silence have them both. Inside, Ada wept still, and Polly held the boy. Outside, beneath the bruised sky, Freddie Thorne waited to be laid to rest.

The cemetery was quiet.

Not silent—no, not quite. There were birds in the hedges, a soft rustle of wind in the weeds, the hush of Sunday shoes pressing damp earth. But in the heart of the gathering, there was a stillness like the eye of a storm, holding back something heavy, something unbearable.

Freddie Thorne was lowered into the ground.

The sky had turned a soft grey, the kind that doesn’t threaten rain—it simply waits to cry with you.

Cosima stood at the back at first, watching, holding Karl in her arms, the little boy too dazed to fuss, too young to understand that the hole in the earth was now where his father would live forever. His small fingers clutched the collar of her coat, damp curls pressed to her shoulder.

Thomas stepped forward, his face was drawn tight with restraint, yet beneath his eyes, the grief was there. Not loud, not public—but carved in like old scars, the kind only the dead remember. He cleared his throat. “I promised my friend Freddie Thorne,” he began, voice low and steady, “that I should say a few words on his grave if he should pass before me.”

The wind moved slightly.

“I made this promise before he became my brother-in-law. When we were in France, fighting for the King.”
He paused. His jaw tightened. The weight of years was pressed behind his ribs like shrapnel. “And in the end, it wasn’t war that took Freddie. Pestilence took him.”

Arthur murmured softly, “Amen.”

Thomas continued.

“But Freddie has passed on his soul and spirit to a new generation before he was cruelly taken.”

He looked toward Ada. Her eyes were swollen, but dry now—grief so deep it had no more tears to give. She held her head high. Beside her, Polly clutched a rosary.

Around them, a crowd had gathered. Not just the Shelbys. There were men from the old union, caps in hand, their red flags held up high. A generation that had fought for change and survived long enough to see it taken, man by man.

Rain began to fall.

Not a storm. Not a deluge. Just a slow, steady weeping from the clouds.

Cosima looked down at Karl in her arms. He was staring at the grave—no words, no comprehension, only the wide-eyed solemnity of a child. She tucked his head against her chest and pressed a kiss to his forehead. After the words were spoken, Ada turned to Thomas. They walked together, shoulders brushing, heads low in quiet conversation.