A/N: You don't really need to read In the End to understand this, but it makes a lot more sense if you do.
The dark blue SUV sidled slowly up to the gravesite. It came to a halt in an older part of the cemetery, one that had filled up years ago.
It was early and the sun was just beginning to cast an orange glow over the manicured grass. Except for the car, the graveyard was empty.
A man stepped out, looking around to make sure that he was alone. He ran a hand through his formerly dark brown hair that had slowly turnedto ashade of gray.
He walked over to a marble headstone that time was beginning to damage. Bending down as best he could in his advancing age, he reverently cleared away the underbrush that had grown since his last visit.
He came to her grave every year on the anniversary of her death. He wanted to remember her and honor her memory. He was the only one left to do it anymore.
He wouldn't let her be forgotten.
It was 25 years to the day she'd died. 25 long years since she'd been violently stolen away from him. 25 rough years since her short life had ended at the hands of a man who'd killed before.
Every time he came back here, he could feel her again. He felt her in the swaying branches of the trees, the soft breeze, and the gentle sunshine that was just starting to turn the weather warm again.
He could see her in the rustling grass, the waving flag, and the soaring birds.
But most of all, he could hear her.
It wasn't the city traffic, or the rushing river, or the chirping birds. They didn't have her sound.
He heard her in the silence that came only when the world was asleep.
He found comfort in the silence. During those moments when he was alone, he would find himself thinking of her. In the quietest moments of his life, he could almost hear her voice again. In his memories, she was usually laughing, but sometimes she was serious too. He would all at once remember the most important and the most trivial things, fromthe first time he asked her to dinner to random cases to the first time she told him she loved him.
It was a welcome escape, thinking of her. Sometimes after the nurses left and he was alone in his room at Kalida Lake, he would pull out the old photo from the office Christmas party, the last one before her death. It was old and worn around the edges from being handled so often.
He'd always said it was his favorite picture of her. He smiled as he thought of his younger self and the things he'd always told her about that picture. She always smacked him playfully when he said that. He stood in front of her headstone and smiled at the memories.
He missed her every single day.
For a long time after it happened, he'd been consumed by thoughts of her. Eventually, he'd learned to hold in the tears caused by her memory.
In time, he'd even learned to smile instead of cry.
The sun had risen fully by now. People would be coming soon to visit the graves of their own loved ones and his perfect silence would be shattered.
Bending down again, he placed a single white lily in front of her headstone.
You will never be forgotten
We pledge to you today
A hallowed place within our hearts
Is where you'll always stay