No Goodbye, Just Gone

Kyson Hale, a regimental commander, finally lets his wife and their seven-year-old son, Darryl Hale, move onto the military base — but only if the boy never calls him "dad" and the two of them tell everyone they are merely relatives from the countryside. Only then does she learn that Kyson has another family of his own in the military, and that Jodie Duncan, a soldier in the art troupe, holds the tenderness he never shows her.

After eight years of secretly caring for his parents in the countryside, she finds her small hopes uprooted one by one: the vegetable garden he orders her to dig up, the expensive fabric he calls a waste, the moisturizing cream he buys for Jodie without a second thought. Even Darryl comes home in tears, told by other children that he is shameless for staying in someone else's house.

Quietly, she asks the village head, Mason Gilbert, for a job back home and begins sewing new clothes for Darryl, counting down the days until she and her son leave the base without looking back.