Ned,
is it any wonder that I can feel my heart beating now, because it senses that this will find you. I touch the paper and the words you send me and I can almost feel your breath against my ear, and it will never be good enough, but it's something.
Bess and I went up into my attic today. You've never been up there. When Mother, when Dad lost her, he put everything in boxes and it's all still there. Like she's out there somewhere and she'll come back for it one day, come back to us. Even though everything I remember about her can be put in one sentence, the smell of lavender and her hair curling over her bare shoulder and the way her ankles looked when she wore heels and the way her lips were shaped like mine, even though that is the sum of it and this is the war and we have to sacrifice and make things stretch, I can't bring myself to go through those boxes, looking for anything to give away. I can't give away any piece of her, any piece at all.
Bess and I found her wedding dress. Bess told me I should try it on and I stood there looking down at it, and--
Bess is getting married.
I think they must have sent out another round of draft letters because she came over, fidgeting with the hem of her dress and biting her lip and eventually she started talking about Tommy Grey. Maybe you remember him, the last time-- there was a party at Emerson and a bonfire and he sat on the grass a respectful foot away from her while we sang and toasted marshmallows and waited for the stars to fall. She wrote to him sometimes, and right after-- he came to River Heights while I was still in bed convincing myself that there was ever going to be a reason to get out of it again. I don't think you will ever understand how pointless it all seemed to me right after you were gone, and the way it felt like if I could only kiss you one more time that it would have just been a little better.
I still feel that way, even now.
Tommy asked Bess and she said yes, and while they wait for the certificate she comes to see me and she couldn't be happier. This is Bess we're talking about. This is Bess who has been at her mother's elbow every day she didn't spend getting into trouble with me. She cooks and she cleans and when we sit in a circle darning socks (and Ned, you know that I love you and I can drive on snow and manage to untie myself in ten minutes, but darning socks, it is beyond me, and George is no better) she gets hers done first. It makes sense to me that she would be the first of the three of us to get married.
But it doesn't feel real and I think that maybe she knows that. She says her name will be Elizabeth from now on, though. Elizabeth Grey. Maybe to everyone else, maybe it will be that way on paper, in the newspaper and on the marriage certificate and the wedding announcements, but to me, she will always be Bess Marvin.
You told me you wouldn't do that to me, that you wouldn't ask if we could be married before you left, and if you had then I don't know what I would have said. It all feels so hollow, the gold on a cheap weekend wedding ring, when what we have is blood.
I brought my mother's wedding dress down to my room and I'm looking at it right now, and Dad went to bed hours ago, even the fireflies are asleep, because it's one o'clock in the morning and I know you said you never wanted me to do it again but I can't stop crying and I don't know why, and I wish you were here with me.
It's impossible but I love you more with every single day and every passing hour because I know it will bring you that much closer to me.
My hand is numb and I have to try to sleep now, because every night that you've been gone I've dreamed of you, and for the second after I wake up, when I believe it's not true... it's a little better.
I love you. I love you so much, so much. Come back to me as soon as you can.
With every breath I take I remain, as ever, wholly yours.
Nancy
--
Nancy...
Sometimes your name is all I know anymore. Rumors are going around, that it's going to be soon, and there's a boy here, Nan, he's just a kid, he lied about his age and he can hold a gun steady against his shoulder and that seems to be enough, and he's scared out of his mind. I think on some level we all are. I stare at the bedsprings over my head while I try to sleep, and the only thing I can think is your name.
Bess has always wanted to be married, is that what you mean? I can't imagine doing that to you, I can't imagine standing with you on my arm in front of a pastor and promising that I would be by your side forever, knowing that the next day I would ship off and it would have been a lie. Because Nancy, if I don't--
I can remember Tommy Grey, a little. It feels like so long ago, that bonfire, and do you know that now the only thing I remember with any clarity is the fact that your hand brushed mine when we both reached for another marshmallow. Touching you, Nan, it was like a drug to me, and I lived for the next time it might happen. Now I live for the next time I can put my arms around you, because nothing has ever felt as right as that, and that's where you belong. In my arms.
I want to see your mother's wedding dress, and I... I bet you would look lovely in it.
You say that every night you dream of me. What do you dream, Nancy? Do you dream of how it's going to be when I come back, or do you dream that I never left? Because I dream that there is no war, sometimes. I dream that there are no curfews or rations or guns, that there is only you with me, and your hand in mine and those blue eyes.
It wouldn't be enough to kiss you one more time. I will never kiss you enough.
Nan, you can't... you can't spend this time doing anything less. Do you understand me? We've been apart before, for so long, and you've always been able to find something to keep yourself occupied. Maybe even a little more than I sometimes liked, because I hate seeing you in danger. I hate the thought of your being in pain. Don't, darling, don't do this, because when we are together again this will all feel like a dream and you need to keep living. You have always looked so alive, when we're trying to puzzle through another mystery, and even if I hate your being in danger, I would hate the thought of never seeing that look on your face again more.
Without you here I feel that my life has stopped and I'm borrowing someone else's time, to learn how to kill. I always thought I would just follow my father into his work and eventually one day... well, that day has come, and all that matters to me is coming back to you because I have waited so long, hoping that one day you would feel the same way for me as I do for you. I need to know that one of us is living, that for one of us life is going on something like normal, and you are the only one who can tell me that.
I think that maybe the training will get easier but that being away from you never will. I love you, I love you so much, and when I come back to you and we're together again, that it would take an act of God to make me leave your side. I will come back to you, I will find my way back to you, and I want you to live for me, live for this, but most of all I want you to live, for you. If I give you nothing else I want to know that I've given you the strength to carry on, because Nancy, if I thought it would have hurt you less, even though it would have killed me inside, I would have kept from saying any of it. Even if it meant never knowing that you love me, I never, never, want you to live only to wait for me. You are worth so much more than that, to your father, to Bess and George, to everyone who knows you.
One day it will all be a bad dream. Until that day, until the day that I see you again and my life begins again, don't let yours stop. Tell me everything. And don't cry, please don't cry, because I can't bear the thought of causing you so much pain.
Sometimes I almost think I can hear your voice. Like you, sometimes I wake and the memory of you in my dreams is almost enough, for just a second, just a little while.
Until I see you again, until the second I can breathe again, I remain always and ever, loving you.
Ned
--
Ned,
I am trying to take to heart what you said in your last letter, and it's difficult. Everything is changing here. You're gone, Tommy is gone and Bess-- Elizabeth. Elizabeth. I have to say it over and over under my breath before I knock on her parents' door, so that I don't slip and call her Bess again, but we both know who she is. She spent twenty-four hours with her new husband and now he's gone.
Last night we went over to see your parents. I've seen them a few times since you left. Your mother is thinner and your father, the look in his eyes, I don't know what to think. But they really seem to enjoy having us over. Your father sits with his feet up listening to the radio and reading the paper, and your mother and B-- Elizabeth, Ned I can't do it, not with you. Your mother and Bess and I sit around the fire and knit socks and make blankets, and she gives us tea, and then I go back home just tired enough to whisper a prayer over your picture and then go to sleep.
Last night, though, we came to your parents' just as the rain started, and it lasted all evening, and you know how the river road floods. By the time we were ready to go home, it was so dark, and I think your mother misses you so much that she almost wanted us to stay so long that we would have to stay over.
At three o'clock this morning I couldn't sleep, so I watched the rain for a while and then I found myself in your room, and if your parents had walked in I don't know what I would have done. I saw the picture of me that you keep by your bed, the pennants on the wall, the trophies, and when I laid down for just a minute on your bed, I could almost feel you there. The smell of your hair is still on the pillows.
I must have fallen asleep, and I slept better than I have since you went away. I dreamed of you and you had come home and the war was over, and you were so handsome, and you kissed me in front of my father and I didn't care.
I woke up when I heard your parents downstairs, but your father didn't throw me out of the house and your mother smiled at me like everything was as normal as it can be now, so they must not have known. I brought Bess a cup of coffee but she was feeling poorly this morning, and she didn't wake while I was gone. It's as though I stole a night with you, and no one knows.
Hannah grabbed my arm the other day and asked how I had hurt myself, and I told her something about the thistles down at the river. She offered to put a bandage on it for me, to help it heal, but I told her it would be fine. Can you still see the mark on your arm? Do you still think of me, Ned? Do you still think of it?
Ned, no matter what, I don't regret telling you how I feel... I only wish that I had been able to do it when you were standing in front of me, not through some cowardly letter. No matter what, I'm glad that we know now. I'm glad we did have that time together, and once you're with me again, there will be no force on this earth that will take me from your side.
Before you... I was a bridesmaid, and I was convinced that any man foolish enough to think that he could spend the rest of his life with me would never understand that I wasn't meant to sit at home pining away all day, waiting for him, and satisfied that my life was meant only as a complement to his. I thought that would be the most confining fate, and that I would do everything in my power to make sure that my father never pushed me into it. There have been boys, junior litigators in his office, who have had their eye on me, before. I knew that. Every single one of them saw me as a way to cement his future with my father.
But you were never like that. I know that when you protest, it's because you care. I know that you are the only one who has ever understood that what I do isn't a hobby and isn't a way to kill time until I find someone suitable and make a seamless transition between my father's house and his. This is a part of me. When you share that part of my life... somehow your presence has become so necessary to me that I turn to run an idea by you, and you aren't there, and it breaks my heart.
I never thought I would be a wife. As much as I love Bess, I would not change places with her now, and Tommy, who seems nice enough... I feel like neither of us know him as well as we should and yet I find myself keeping her busy so she doesn't stay in bed all day, so that she doesn't sit by her window and sigh and daydream. She is as I was.
I still miss you as deeply as I did before, but I think together that Bess and I manage to find enough to do to keep from giving in to it. Weeding victory gardens and volunteering at the Red Cross downtown and darning socks. We can do so little, but at least it's something. Helping Hannah find new ways to get around our rations and make a meal that doesn't taste abominable and go untouched.
Ned... my only. I would be stronger with you here, but I will be stronger than I ever was before when you are with me again. Sometimes I wish I could scream that I love you so loud that you would be able to hear it, and maybe, some nights, maybe you do hear it, across all this space between us. One day it will all be a bad dream. I believe that. Without your letters to get me through this, though, it would be all the worse.
Dream of me, because I know tonight I will dream of you. And if your life is with mine now, when it begins again it will be better than you have ever imagined.
I love you, I love you, I love you so very much, and I remain
Always and ever yours,
Nancy
--
Nancy. Nancy, I have never been this close--
Your letter came yesterday and your package came today, and if it had been any later, I would have missed it and I'm so glad that it came here on time.
It's tomorrow.
Now that I finally almost feel like I know who I am here, what I'm doing here, like I've finally built a place for myself, it's all going to be gone tomorrow morning. We'll be gone. I've heard, from some of the others, that mail will be slow, and the kind of day I have seems to depend almost entirely on whether I receive one of your letters. I'm going to be in for a terrible time, without you to keep me sane, Nancy.
Thank you so much for the package, and thank Hannah too; I know her cookies when I taste them. Thank you for the pictures, thank you for all of it.
When this letter finds you, I won't...
When I imagine you curled up in my bed at home, it looks right. I'm sure my mother planned it all, Nan. After you met her, that night over dinner she asked when you'd become her daughter in law. All I did was laugh, because I was sure that you were so far out of my league. I still think you are, but now...
If I could be with you right now-- I have willed, begged, with every fiber of my being that somehow it would be possible. I know what you meant, that one last kiss would make it almost better, would make me forget how this feels for just a moment. If I could just manage it. I would give everything I have just to have five more minutes with you.
I am so afraid of this. I am so afraid of what will happen when the plane lands and I'm one in a sea of green, just another American with a gun in a line of heartsick men. I try to stop it but the thought that it's going to be nearly forever before I see you or my mother or father again, it's almost too much to bear.
I love you, I love you, I love you, never forget that, never ever forget that. Look at the mark on your arm and remember that afternoon when we were under the trees, I came so close to telling you then, and now I wish I had.
But I would still be here right now, the only difference... I would have been able to tell you how much you mean to me. You mean the world to me. You mean everything to me. Nancy.
Before I met you, Nan... I was no different from anyone else. I wanted some sweet girl to keep my house and wait for me to come home to her at night. But since I met you... Nan, I had never imagined that I could meet anyone like you. You aren't some mindless girl who has only ever wanted to find someone, some guy willing to be a groom in the perfectly planned wedding and wrap the entire rest of her life around him. You have a personality. You know who you want to be and I feel that even without me or anyone else, you could find a way to be happy. You have your own ideas and dreams and I honestly feel that, when we see each other again, if you were ever to have me, that you wouldn't be-- you wouldn't be like everyone else. You would be a partner, a companion, an equal. I never have to weaken anything to help you understand. We work so, so very well together. I could be twice as good with you beside me. I could be twice the man I am with you beside me.
But you aren't here. Even if... I can barely think it, but you would be all right. You wouldn't let your father make you unhappy by marrying you off to some jerk in a suit and tie. If you.
I can't. I can't think about this right now.
Tomorrow before the plane leaves, before this string between us stretches so tight, I'm going to send you something, and I hope it finds you.
I will never, never stop loving you, and I will write every day, even if it's only to tell you how much I miss you. I am so glad that you're in my life, that you were in my life, that you aren't here to see the desperation that comes over us while we sleep, that eats us inside out. I need to make sure it never finds you. I need to do this for you, for us.
I love you, my darling, my only, my angel, I love you. I dream of you every night, daydream about you, every second... I love you so much.
Until I see you again, until the day I die, I will remain, always and ever yours,
Ned