“What is this?” I asked.
Her smile was worried. “I’m sorry I didn’t send them before but we had no idea where to send them—and then we heard reports that the postal system was a mess. I hope... I hope you aren’t too mad.”
She left me alone then and, my heart racing, I lifted the lid of the box.
Inside were letters. Letters from William. At first he’d written weekly, but after a while they were spaced out more, the words filled with weariness from the constant fighting, pushing forward, losing men, needing sleep...and worrying that he hadn’t heard from me.
“I’m scared you aren’t receiving these. Why else would you not respond? Unless... Please, Kate. Please write me soon. I am desperate to know you’re okay.”
My heart hurt as I raced through the letters, reading his pain, his worry, his loss of hope, until I got to the last one.
“I fear the worst now,” he wrote. “I cannot imagine why you would not write. Even if you’d changed your mind about me, I know you would never be cruel enough not to tell me. And so I have to believe you have gone. I write this letter to the woman you once were. The woman I will always love. Goodbye, Kate. Goodbye, my love.”
My heart was in my throat as I rushed from the room, the letter clutched in my hand.
“I need to get home,” I said, choking on a sob as I shoved it at my aunt. “I need to get to Seattle.”
I paced the room as she read it, my mind racing. How soon could we get to New York? How long would it take to get to Seattle? Would I bring Willa? Of course I would. He’d want to see her.
My aunt’s voice broke into my thoughts.
“Oh, Kate,” she said, passing the letter to my uncle as she got to her feet. “We’ll go out first thing tomorrow and get some stationery so you can write him. And then we’ll see about getting you both home.” She pulled me to her. “It will be okay.”
In the morning, stationery bought and Willa fed, I sat down to write to William, trying to explain that I had written, but feared my letters had been burned, never finding their way to him. But I was alive, and I loved him, and I was coming to Seattle as soon as I could.
I looked to Willa, asleep beside me in her bassinet. I wanted to tell him, but something so important. So precious. It had to be said in person.
We hurried to the post office, then returned to the hotel, where Uncle Frank told us to pack.
“I’ve gotten us rooms at a hotel in Paris,” he said. “There’s a train that can take us there this afternoon. We’ll stay there a few days. At most a week.” He held up a hand as I started to protest. “I am working at getting you an American passport. It could take a little while. Once we have it, we’ll go to New York.”
Aunt Victoria looked to me and I nodded and then hurried to my room to pack Willa’s and my belongings.
And so we went to Paris. While Uncle Frank met with his contacts there, the three of us ladies took long leisurely walks by the Seine, stopping for crepes, buying baguettes to take back to our rented flat, and meandering in and out of shops. I ate, regaining some of the weight I’d lost, and I became stronger, both physically and mentally.
My new American passport arrived on our fifth day. I was Kate once more.
After a week in Paris, we boarded a plane for New York.
As soon as we were home I reached for the stack of mail on the entryway table. But there was nothing for me from William.
“Do you think he hasn’t gotten it yet?” I asked my aunt. “Or maybe his parents moved?”
William had given me two addresses before he’d left for the front. One in France, and the other—his parents’ address in Seattle.
“It’s possible they moved,” she said. “But who knows how the mail system is working between countries these days. I’m sure they’re overwhelmed with getting letters in and out. Be patient, my love.”
But I grew more anxious by the day, unable to concentrate or carry on conversations. I had resumed my friendships with Claire and Janie, whose husbands had returned from war, one with a bullet wound to the arm, the other with some shrapnel in his back. But while they cooed over Willa’s pale eyes and hair—“She looks like an angel, Kate... She’s the spitting image of you”—and asked questions about my eventual move to Seattle, I was barely able to remember the lie my aunt and uncle and I had come up with to explain my disappearance and my return with a baby on my hip.
“The simpler the better,” Uncle Frank had said before launching into the idea while we were still in the hotel in Paris.
After they’d gotten word that I had stayed behind in Germany, they’d come up with a story in case things went awry or they didn’t hear from me.
“When you got too far along in your pregnancy, you quit your nursing position and went to stay with family friends in a remote town in northern England. We didn’t know about the pregnancy because you were embarrassed about having the baby out of wedlock and were waiting for William to rejoin you after the war so you could marry and then come home and tell us the happy news. But then you got sick and we had to go retrieve you. We met William, who then went home to Seattle to see his family and see about acquiring a house before you and Willa joined him.”
“Can you remember all that?” Aunt Vic had asked.
“Of course,” I’d said.
