"Excuse me! Sir! Soldier sir!"
I turned around, wiping my face aggressively with the back of my scarred hand. A little girl, no older than seven, was running down the cathedral steps. She was wearing a frilly, pale pink dress—one of Clara’s flower girls. She looked terrified, clutching something tightly in her tiny fist.
"Are you the man?" she asked, her voice breathless as she stopped in front of me, looking up at my towering frame.
"What man, sweetheart?" I asked, my voice rough and cracked from crying.
"The lady in the big white dress. The bride," the little girl whispered, looking over her shoulder as if she expected a monster to burst through the church doors. "She told me, right before she walked down the aisle, that if I saw a tall soldier crying in the back, I had to give him this. She said it was a matter of life and death."