“It’s something I feel I must do,” I wrote.
I have to at least try. I know you understand. I promise not to be stupid. To not take more chances than I already am. And to do everything in my power to stay safe and alive. But should the worst happen...please know how grateful I am to you both. For your sacrifices, your bravery, and your unconditional love.
My letter to William was harder and I propped the photo of us beside me as I wrote.
“My Love,” I wrote, and then sat for a long while staring at the blank page.
Rather than try and go into too much detail, I brushed past the details of who had died and why I was going home. I didn’t explain the home I was referring to was not where he thought it was. I didn’t give a definitive date of return, just that I would. And I promised I would write as often as I could, leaving him my address in New York, knowing that if it were possible, my aunt would find a way to get any letters he wrote to me. And as for my letters to him, I’d been told the postal system in Germany was a mess, if it existed at all, so I would just pray that they’d get to him eventually.
I hated that we’d be cut off from one another. But the pull of my past...and the little sister I’d left behind, were too strong. I had to go, but I would return as soon as I could. To him, and to the life we’d promised one another.
Making light of the trip I was about to embark on, so it would seem less than what it was, I turned my letter to other subjects, reminding him of silly moments we’d had together, hours spent in bed beneath the covers, sitting across from one another in our favorite pub, our knees scraping beneath the table, and how very much I loved him.
I will return to England, and to you, as soon as I can. I cannot wait to start the rest of our lives together.
I love you, William.
Forevermore.
Kate
23
William
Seattle
2003
I set theleather-bound book of poems down, the braided grass bookmark smooth and pale and fragile between my fingertips.
“I was heading to battle when I got the letter,” I said.
“The letter?” Selene said.
I nodded, remembering the young soldier who had delivered it to me. We were in a makeshift barracks on our way across the country to take up arms in place of the men that had fallen. The city of Metz in France and her many fortresses had proven one of the hardest cities to take back, the Germans in underground bunkers and a central fort with a fifteen-foot reinforced concrete roof, and dozens of tunnels leading to and from it like the unwieldy legs of an octopus.
I was tired. Weary from travel and from keeping up the morale of my men. So when the letter was handed to me, wrinkled and dirty from its own travels, a weight I’d been carrying on my shoulders lifted. Until I read the contents.
“Yeah,” I said. “She sent me a letter. Someone in her family had died. She didn’t say who and I remember being curious. The only people she ever talked about were her aunt and uncle, whom she lived with in New York. She didn’t say if it was one of them. And I knew her parents had died years before. I had no idea who this person was who was so important to her she’d leave her post and go back home. Lots of people lost loved ones while they were overseas fighting or helping, and they didn’t go home. I thought maybe an old boyfriend...? Anyways, I got the letter and of course wrote her back immediately, telling her how sorry I was for her loss and if there was anything I could do, to please tell me. Not that I could do much from the mud in the middle of France.”
I looked out at the water then, remembering that next month. How depleting the battle at Metz had been. The numbers we’d lost. The fear when communication and equipment failed. The desperation as we waited for more men, more weapons, and more food, our rations barely getting us through.
So many nights I’d wake from hunger, only to hear those around me suffering the same fate and shivering in the cold and damp, rain gear, like everything at that time, in short supply.
“War is strange, you know?” I said aloud. I turned to look at Selene, my eyes lingering on her features, looking for something I didn’t want to name, but not finding it regardless. And yet there was something. Not now, but when she smiled. And those eyes...
“Strange how?” she asked.
“Oh.” I waved a hand, laughing at myself a little. She hadn’t come here to listen to an old man wax poetic about the tolls of war.
“Tell me,” she said and my heart hitched inside my chest. There it was. Something in her voice. A timbre I knew I’d heard before.
I shook my head, trying to shake it loose from me. I was imagining it. Wanting to believe something wouldn’t make it so.
“You’re kind to listen to an old man’s ramblings,” I said.
“I love history. Love what it can teach us, if only we pay attention. Which so many of my generation do not.” She smiled and I peered at the way her lips lifted on either side before returning to the conversation.
