Note: This story goes by the original Mystery Stories canon, which established that Nancy's mother died when she was ten years old.

"Coming to bed soon?"

Nancy glanced up, her next breath an involuntary gasp. Nancy trusted her roommate implicitly, especially since George had been by her side through many strange and difficult mysteries. It would have been difficult for her to hide what she was doing from George, anyway.

On the table in front of Nancy were several scribbled sheets of paper, the paper with a copy of the original code she was working on deciphering this week, a map, three codebooks, and the last letter Ned had sent her. She had only received it the day before, and she missed him so much that she had closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of the paper, warmed by the knowledge that his fingers had been on it recently.

November. The weather had turned cold and wherever Ned was, she thought he was cold too, cold and miserable and missing her just as she was missing him. The nearly invisible scar on her forearm felt like a thin thread of ice.

I can't—oh, Nancy, I am so sick at heart, so sick to know that any of this is possible. It is beyond all nightmares.

This is why I'm here. To punish the people who did this and make sure they can never, never do anything like this again.

He hadn't told her what had provoked his letter, but Nancy was fully aware that his mail was intercepted, and so was he. Anything that could reveal where he was or what he was doing, anything that could help the enemy if they found it, had to be eliminated.

Even so, the words, the increasingly disturbed tone of his letters, were frightening her. The only thing she could do in response was work as hard as she could on the coded messages Agent King was sending to her.

Ned was in danger. She couldn't go over there, couldn't take a gun and defend him, but she could do this, and so she did. She hated that she couldn't tell him, but just as his mail might be intercepted, so might her own. As frustrating as it was to not know what Ned was going through, she understood it—if a slip of her pen could hurt him, then she wouldn't risk it.

She would have the rest of their lives together, or she wouldn't, but she would curse herself every day for the rest of her life if something she did had resulted in his being hurt.

Nancy gave George a tired smile. "Soon," she said.

George chuckled, but the sound was humorless. "I've heard that before," she murmured. "Tea? Milk?"

Warm milk would make her tired, and Nancy had a feeling she was close to cracking the code. "Tea," she requested.

Under other circumstances, she would probably be showing by now. Nancy glanced over as George went into their small kitchen area, taking out a pot to warm the water. Under the table, Nancy's hand stole to her flat belly, stroking it briefly. The scar on her forearm still felt cool.

George knew, just as everyone else did, that Nancy and Ned intended on marrying on his return from the front, and they both prayed for the war to end soon. Nancy still wore Ned's family ring on her finger when she could, and she always, always wore her wedding band against her skin, on the necklace or, some nights in bed when she missed him so much she could barely breathe, on her finger.

They understood, now that Ned was her fiancé and they had admitted their feelings for each other. They understood that she missed him so, so much; they understood the time Nancy spent with Ned's parents. The last time she had been in Mapleton visiting them, Edith had said that she and James wanted Nancy to come over and spend at least part of the holidays with them, and she had said that they would remodel a part of the downstairs so Nancy and Ned would have a place to live together on his return. Once Ned had found a stable job and he and Nancy had saved up some money, they could find their own home.

But the remodeling hadn't begun yet, and Nancy knew what they were waiting for. It might not be that declaration of peace that she prayed for every night and every morning. It might not even be the letter informing them that he was on his way home. It might be the moment his boots touched the front doormat, the moment he was safe in their arms again. To build a room and prepare for their life together would only make their grief that much worse, if he never came home to see it.

But Nancy had, slowly, come to understand that she had already done the same thing. She knew that she might never see him again, but it was purely intellectual knowledge. She believed with all her heart that she would see him again, that they hadn't seen each other for the last time. They would be together again. She needed it to be true.

The war had changed everything. When it was over she wasn't sure she would recognize the world that was left, and she had changed so much since it had begun. But part of finding who she was and what she wanted to do always involved being with her husband again. She would never, never be able to imagine the alternative, not unless her life became that nightmare.

While everyone else in her life knew that she missed the man who had sworn to be her husband, only Edith understood that Nancy already was her daughter-in-law.

Gently, Nancy traced the faint track of her scar again, then bent to her work. The faster she solved the code, the quicker Agent King and the people he worked for could respond to the threat or enemy plans.

George returned with a mug of warm tea, and Nancy took a grateful sip. When she took the other seat close to Nancy at the table, turning a curious gaze on the papers, Nancy's hand gravitated to the letter from Ned still lying partially open on the table. He signed all his letters as she did; he called himself her husband, and she called herself his wife. Nancy knew she could just tell George that he was looking ahead as her fiancé to the day that would be true, but she disliked the prospect of deceiving one of her best friends.

Although, Nancy had to admit to herself, she already was deceiving George and almost everyone else in her life. Some people, when they found she was engaged to a soldier, asked if she was looking forward to being a wife, but she had seen the way that gentle teasing could become wordless sympathy when the soldier in question was a husband.

They still thought that if she lost him, she would be able to step back. But her spirit, her heart, already was knit to his, and had been for the longest time.

Nancy pulled the letter toward her, slipping it into her lap, and George chuckled before taking a sip from her own mug. "It's all right, I recognize Ned's handwriting," George reassured her. "I don't need to read your sweet nothings."

Nancy smiled. "Sorry. I... I know I'm just too sensitive about it."

George shrugged. "I know it must be hard," she said. "To love someone so deeply and be forced to wait."

Nancy swallowed, stroking her thumb along the curve of the band around her finger, the ring she wore to mark her as Ned's fiancée until they acknowledged their marriage. In the time she had been living with George, Nancy had checked the mail and found letters hand-addressed to George; twice the return address had included the first name Raymond. All in the same handwriting. Nancy could barely wait long enough to open the envelope to read Ned's letters to her; George just accepted the envelopes with a smile and waited until she was alone to read them or otherwise dispose of them, and she never talked about it.

"Is that how... how it is with you?"

George looked down and didn't respond, and Nancy shook her head. "I'm sorry. I know it's none of my business—"

George glanced up again. "He's one of Tommy's friends," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "He asked permission to write to me, and I've written to him, but Tommy told Bess he has a—a fiancée, back home." She sniffled. "I don't... I don't understand."

Nancy let out her breath in a soft sympathetic sigh. "Oh, I didn't know..."

"I know." George took another sip from her mug. "Sometimes I just try to believe that this is who he is, that he just writes to many women, but it's... I just can't believe that..." She trailed off again. "It's just some foolish wartime romance."

Nancy shook her head. "Maybe he's just able to tell you things that he can't tell—anyone else," she said.

George looked up with a small humorless smile. "And when he returns and he can tell everything to his sweet, beautiful fiancée, and there's nothing left to talk to me about?"

Nancy just gazed at her downturned face for a moment, then reached over and wrapped her in a hug. "I'm sorry, George. I'm so sorry."

George sniffled. "It was my own fault," she said softly. "When I found out I should have just told him, and stopped writing to him... but I can't help feeling—wishing that he would want to be with me."

And if one day the letters stopped, and the first man George had serious feelings about was lost... Nancy shook her head, more determined than ever to try to crack the code. "We don't know," she said. "We don't know how any of this will turn out, George. Maybe he will. Maybe he will come back and figure out that this other girl doesn't hold his interest anymore. Maybe he'll find that he misses writing to you because he's fallen a little in love with you, too."

"Maybe," George agreed, but she didn't sound at all convinced. "I can't... I've already spent too much time thinking and dreaming about him, and wasting your time too, Nancy. I'm sorry. Is there any way I can help you?"

Nancy nodded. She was happily surprised that George had told her as much as she had, but she sensed that George was already uncomfortable. "I remember seeing something about an alternating cipher in the blue book," she said.

The breakthrough came forty-five minutes and another mug of tea later. Nancy looked down at the piece of paper she had been using; after so many scribbles and crossing so much out, she had rewritten her current translation, making sure each letter and number matched the cipher she was using.

George was peering down at it with her; the two women looked at each other in dismay. "Coordinates," Nancy said. "Oh, coordinates!"

"What if it's been too long?" George's eyes were wide.

"Oh, I can't believe that." She snatched up the piece of paper. "I think the notation below means that it will be—Friday!"

"Where are you going?"

Nancy had whirled out of her seat and was going to the coatrack beside their front door, slipping her feet inside her light house shoes. She whipped her coat around her and hastily tied it. "To Captain Morrow's house," she replied, her words tumbling over each other in her haste to speak them. "He can contact Agent King for me. I have to pass this along immediately."

"You'll freeze," George declared. "At least put some socks on."

Nancy smiled. "While I'm waiting for the car to warm up," she promised.

Nancy, my love.

I've told you before of the nights when the moonlight paints all around me silver-blue and the battlefield, I can readily imagine, really is the surface of the blasted moon. On those nights, and even tonight, I feel that if I just searched long enough, I might find you. You would be hidden well to keep you safe. Or maybe I would wander through some ring of mystical stones and find you, on the moon or back home, in a mysterious circumstance that you would find perfectly enchanting. All else falls away and the earth hums beneath us, and time feels meaningless. One day this moment will just be a memory. One day, the depth to which I'm missing you will be answered by a reunion.

I miss you so. I sleep tucked tight and motionless against the chill when all is cold around me and I remember burying my face in your golden hair and breathing you in, and I miss even the scent of your hair. Just a hint of lavender soap on the air here is almost enough to bring me to my knees; how fast it draws me from where I am to where we were, and I find myself wishing to know that we are closer to the end than the beginning, that this will be the last December we spend apart.

But our Herculean task is apparently not quite finished.

I see you as I wish you to be right now: at my parents' house, in the living room, the tree lit up and sparkling, presents piled beneath, stockings on the fireplace. I see you with my parents, your hair gold in the light and your eyes so, so beautifully blue.

But I see you more often as you were on the beach in San Francisco, that afternoon before the fog crept in and turned the world into a waking dream. I see the way you looked at me, your lips a little parted, your eyes gleaming as the wind whipped your dress around your knees. My band on your finger. My sweet, my one and only love.

Sometimes I think that when we exchanged our blood, you lent me a little of what I admire so much about you, that determination and intuition. I pay more attention to it now, and it has saved me and fellow soldiers from grievous injury at least twice that I know. I like to think that it's the soft breath of my guardian angel, of you, doing all you can to keep me safe and bring me home. When I feel unsure or doubt a decision, I take my time and think it through just the way you and I would when I would help you with your mysteries.

I want to come home to you. I would do so much to be home with you. The first day of every month, I think, A wedding next month would be lovely. On December first, I couldn't help imagining a wedding at New Year's. A new year, a new beginning, with you beautiful and sweet in your white dress and red roses in your arms. Last month I imagined you a Christmas bride. I see you sweet with blush-pink roses for Valentine's, with the first blooms of spring, flush with the heat of summer. I hope it won't be fall. I hope we will not be married a year before our marriage can truly begin.

But if I could count and know the years, if I were given a list of tasks I had to complete before I could be with you again, I would finish them all as fast as my fingers would work, as fast as my feet would carry me.

It would be the best Christmas present of all, to be with you again.

I could see in your last letter that you've had another success, and I am left to imagine in what way. Perhaps you have recovered the crown jewels of some displaced prince and he has granted you any wish of your heart in return, hoping you will choose him. Instead, though... oh, instead, you ask for your own heart to be returned, and I can come to you again.

To come to you, to be with you again. It cannot be as sweet as I imagine. I think it must be sweeter. To feel you in my arms would not undo all that has happened since we parted, but it would help more than I hope you ever know.

I travel through an endless night. You are the dawn, my darling. When I sleep it is to dream you real again.

I miss you so, my angel. Know that my every wish and prayer is for your safety, and the safety of all I love.

As always I remain, wholly and eternally yours, my love,

Your devoted husband,

Ned

Ned, my dearest, my beloved.

I am writing this to you from your parents' house, from your old bedroom, where I slept and dreamed of you when our love was still bound by ink and paper and words I had not yet spoken. It is the night after Christmas. I spent yesterday at my father's house, and Hannah prepared what passes for a glorious feast for us, now. It was still delicious. My father's housekeeper can do much with so little, and she even taught me a few new recipes while I was there. I should hope that when it is time for me to cook for you, love, everything will be plentiful again, and I can make you glorious buttery-crusted pies the way I learned at my mother's side when I was a little girl.

I digress, and I know I have told you this before, but how I wish you could have met her, Ned. It is strange to me now that she has been gone and she has missed more of my life than she was able to see. There is so much I wish I could have shared with her. I imagine that she loved my father much the way I love you, that she would have delighted to hear of our wedding plans, and I know she would have been proud to have such a handsome, brave, good-hearted son-in-law. I am so proud to be your wife, Ned, and I cannot wait until everyone knows it. I can't wait to be by your side. The joy I feel with you—oh, love, no one could ever mistake it. I will warm the hearts of all who see us with the radiance of my smile, with you by my side.

My mother taught me to run the household, and I like to think that a lot of my self-reliance now comes from her. I could sew a hem, prepare a pie crust from scratch, and wash clothes myself before she was gone. More than that, she and my father both encouraged me to puzzle through problems, to think for myself, to learn and discover and help those who need it.

The one problem I have not yet been able to solve is how to get you home to me. It would be perfect as a Christmas card, were I to hear a knock at the door even now, to see you there. Oh, Ned, it would be all I could do not to draw you up here to this room with me, to sleep beside you by candlelight, but I would not be so selfish. I would let your parents hug you for precisely a minute each, and then tell them that you needed your rest.

They have been so sweet to me, and I know that your mother in particular is giving me all the attention she wishes to be giving her only son. Both your parents miss you so very much. We had a nice day together, and your parents' house looks much like the front of a Christmas card, with the yard blanketed in blue-white snow. You can see the moonscape on the battlefield; I need only look out your window to see it.

And oh, if it were true, that I could sneak out of the house and find you somewhere among the dim bulk of snow-softened trees, to see first your silhouette and then your beautiful dark eyes, your smile, and feel the warmth of your arms around me. Love, I shudder with pure delight at the thought, so much that I wish it could be true.

I love you so much. The longer we are apart, the more desperate I feel to see you again. I know it may be hard for you to believe, and I know you have forbidden it in so many words, but my patience dwindles like sand grains through an hourglass and I know, I know that I could find the right person to ask, and they would bring me to wherever you are. I think Bess—she reads romantic novels, and for the past few years they have been about soldiers at wartime, girlfriends and wives waiting at home. I think she calls it 'following the drum,' following a soldier to war. I would do whatever I could to help, well back from the front, as I probably make a much more tempting target than I would a marksman, and then at night I could hold you and let your heart lull me to sleep. I would follow the drum of your pulse. I would let our desire lead me to you.

I love you, Ned Nickerson. I lie in your bed and look at all the keepsakes you've left behind you, all that surrounded you while you were here. I look out the window and see the same stars that shine above you. I wrap myself in the blankets that used to keep you warm and imagine that some echo of you lingers here, that the arms I imagine around me are more solid than usual.

Oh, how I love you. How I need you. We will be so good together, my love. I just need to see you, to hold you again—and you say you will never let me go, but I will never let you go either. Never, never. We will never be parted again, you and I. You will get tired of me, but oh, I will never be able to look at you long enough. I could never hold you long enough to make up for all this time apart.

I must stop. It's so hard to stop crying once I start, and when I clench my fist near my heart I feel the ring you put on my finger cool against my skin. Oh Ned, I love you so.

The girls and I have been invited to a New Year's dance, and Bess and George have insisted that I attend. My heart is heavy at the thought, because yours are the only arms I ever wish to linger in again, and celebrating the end of 1944 and the dawning of 1945 while we are still at war seems so hollow. But I am not the only person here missing someone I love more than life itself, and maybe it will be good to be there and support each other through this. Just know that at midnight, yours are the lips I wish to be kissing. I have let the war have you long enough—too long, I think. I will pray then, just as I always do, that every moment is the last, every day the last, every week the last we will ever be apart.

Next Christmas, maybe we will sleep beside each other in this bed, on a night much like this one. Maybe I will be able to hold you as tight as I wish I were right now. When I think of our future together, love, I need you beside me to help me imagine it, to tell me all you want. The children we will have, the home, and oh, such love.

Please, Ned. I need you. Come home to me, my love. We have pressed our luck so much already, and with every passing day I know how close we must be—

I love you. No matter when you come home, it will be the best Christmas present of all to look into your eyes and see your smile again.

You are my true guardian angel, Ned. And oh, every day, how I pray that I can somehow be yours.

I remain, always and ever, loving you down to the very depths of my soul and beyond. And I will wait for you, for always, but if you can, do not make me wait too much longer, my sweetest, heart of my aching heart,

Your devoted wife,

Nancy