The funeral was short, the eulogy spoken and the casket buried far too quickly.
He and Abe were the only ones there; Abby's family had all long since died or fallen off their social radar.
The priest, thankfully, didn't bother with questions or meaningless comforting words about a 'better place'; he nodded to them respectfully and took his leave, along with the men who shoveled the dirt onto the coffin.
Henry barely noticed any of it.
He stared at the patch of freshly patted down earth, the headstone bearing the love of his life's name making this even more surreal. Abe kept blowing his nose off to the side, though there were no more tears to shed; the two of them had done plenty of crying last night.
He couldn't bring himself to cry anymore; despite the weeks of immense stress and fear and heartbreak he'd experienced just thinking about this moment, he didn't feel any of it now. He just felt empty.
He took a deep breath through his nose – smelled the crisp scent of earth and leaves with the tint of smog that seemed to be everywhere these days – and looked at the setting sun.
He hadn't realized they'd been here for so long; it'd been five hours, at least.
"Look to the future," Abby had once said, way back on their wedding night. "Not the past."
The future.
The future was a very hard thing to look at without her beside him.
But he still had a promise to keep.
Taking a deep breath, he turned away from the fading sunlight. "Come on, Abe," he said hoarsely.
"Let's go home."