It pressed.
A cold, relentless weight that settled onto shoulders already bowed with grief. If mourning had a season, it would look like that afternoon: low clouds tangled in dark evergreens, black coats soaked through, polished shoes sinking into wet earth.
The flag draped across my husband’s casket darkened thread by thread beneath the rain.
Even its colors seemed to be surrendering.
My name is Eliza Warren. I am thirty-six years old, and until nineteen days before that afternoon, I was married to Colonel Nathaniel “Nate” Warren of the United States Marine Corps.
Evergreen Hills Cemetery slopes gently toward the Puget Sound, but there was no view that day.
Only umbrellas.
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