She dreaded going into work the next morning. Her life had done a complete turn-around in the 55 hours since she had left work on Friday evening, and there would be the inevitable questions, not all of which she was sure she could answer even if she wanted to.

She tried to keep the explanations as quick as possible. Pollack was gone, Woody had been deployed to Iraq, and she let her co-workers fill in the blanks of the unspoken: something had happed between Woody and Jordan.

"It's about time," Nigel muttered under his breath in the coffee room, and Lily poked him in the ribs.

Someone suggested they organize a care package, and they comforted her and each other with reassurances that Woody would be all right and the year would pass quickly. The worried glances they traded among themselves suggested they feared otherwise.

She threw herself into work, and it was a welcome distraction. Something about the solitude was oddly comforting, and long after dark that night, she was sitting at her desk trying to concentrate on a stack of paperwork when Nigel rapped lightly at her office door.

"You still here, Jordan?"

"Double shift. I...didn't really want to go home."

He nodded in understanding. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, sure. I'm fine. I'll be fine. Thanks." She had been avoiding them all day, and it felt good to finally talk.

He wandered in and sat on the sofa. "Wartime romance. It's heady stuff, isn't it?"

She frowned at him and flipped over a page of her file. "I hadn't really thought about it."

"My mum's older sister fell in love with an American G.I. in WWII. They met at a canteen in London. The invasion was coming any day, and they couldn't bear to be apart, so they eloped. Three days later, he was sent off to Normandy."

"So, what happened?"

His face fell, as if he suddenly regretting bringing it up. "He was killed at Omaha Beach. They'd been married less than a week."

"Gee, thanks for the heart-warming story, Nige."

"I suppose when emotions are high, it's easy to get carried away," he went on carefully.

She looked up from her file. "What? Are you talking about me? Come on, Nigel! Woody and I are adults. We're not going to get carried away. It's 2006, not 1944. We're just going to take it slowly and see what happens when he gets back."

He watched her there for a moment and then stood. "Well, I'm off." He paused in the doorway. "He's going to be okay, Jordan," he said quietly.

Her head popped up from her desk, and she felt the tears dampen her eyes. She couldn't speak and nodded quickly before Nigel smiled at her reassuringly and left her to herself.

She moved as if in a fog those first days. She was emotionally drained, not just from Woody's departure, but from the turmoil of the last few months. She missed Woody, of course. Even in friendship, he had been an important part of her life, and she felt his absence keenly. But it was more than that. She ached now with worry for him.

Death was an ever-present spectre in his life on the force, she knew that all too well. But this was something different altogether. Suddenly, it seemed a very real possibility that he would not be returning to her in a year.

She gave up watching the news. Nightly reports of downed helicopters and suicide bombers in Baghdad became too painful. She watched stories of hometown funerals where the mothers and widows stood in shock, gripping pictures of their lost loved ones, and she thought with icy fear: That could be me.

She got a card from Woody two weeks after he left telling her that he'd arrived safely and all was well. She raced to the drug store and stood for a half hour in front of the card rack looking for something appropriate to send him. The cards were either too sentimental or too impersonal, and it occurred to her she had no idea what she wanted to say. Confessions of love? Newsy chit-chat? Breezy banter? She wound up buying a box of generic note paper and struggled for hours striking just the right tone.

It was easy to fall into a kind of routine. Every day simply became something to get through as she waited for some word. She checked her email ten times an hour and ran up the stairs of her building into the lobby each night, hoping there might be a letter. Each day, there was nothing.

And then as the February chill had finally broken, there was a letter in her mailbox. There was no postage stamp, just a purple hand stamp from the Post Office reading: COMBAT ZONE -- NO POSTAGE DUE.

Her heart lurched as sat on the stairs and tore open the envelope. It was a few hastily scratched lines on scrap paper. He was well, and the Air Force was keeping him very busy, although he was very vague about what he was actually doing. He thanked her for the care package and asked her to send more baby wipes and Q-tips, if she had a chance.

He signed his name, and then underneath, in a different ink, as if he had added it just before sealing the letter:

I miss you. I think about you and the Lucy Carver Inn often.

She clutched the letter to her chest and then re-read it three more times before she went upstairs and laid it on her bedside table, where she read it many more times before finally turning out the light.

Winter melted into spring. Garret was arrested for another DUI, and Renee had no choice but to let the charges stand. He got off with a fine and community service, but it was the wake-up call he needed to finally seek treatment.

Lily and Jeffrey Brandau's relationship blossomed. She had just moved in with him, and there was talk of an engagement, leaving Bug more morose than ever.

Jordan got back into running and had signed up for a few 5Ks around Boston that spring. She had just returned from a Saturday morning run when she heard the phone ring on the other side of her door. She fumbled with her keys and made it just before the call dropped into voicemail.

There was only a hissing noise, and then a voice that sounded as if it were coming from the end of a very long tunnel.

"Jordan! Jordan can you hear me? It's Woody!"

"Woody! How are you? Where are you?" she sputtered, a thousand questions churning through her mind. "I thought you couldn't call!"

"A buddy of mine works the switchboard at Hanscom, and he patched me through as a favor. Listen, I don't have long. I just wanted to hear your voice," he said achingly. "God, it's great to hear your voice, Jordan."

"It's great to hear you, too." She let out a peal of giddy laughter. "Are you all right?"

"Fine. I can barely make you out. How are you? How is everything?"

"Fine! Same old, same old. Yesterday, we had..." There were noises in the background: voices, the roar of a plane engine. "Woody? You there?"

"Look, I've got to cut this short. I just wanted...I just wanted to say I love you, Jordan." His voice was full of a weary longing. "You don't have to say you love me. You don't have to say anything. I just wanted to tell you that."

There was a silence. She couldn't breathe. "Woody..."

"I've got to go. I'll try and call you again soon."

And then he was gone, leaving her with only the crackle of static in her ear.

She had known that the word would be spoken sooner or later, but she hoped she would be more prepared. She had told herself that she wouldn't get in too deep. This...this separation, this uncertainty and fear was hard enough as it was. Could she dare let herself love him?

But it was too late, of course, and she knew it. She did love him. Not just a romantic love, or the love of a platonic friendship, but a deep, abiding love that was not to be shaken. It had never been easy for her to say those words, and she could count the number of times she had said it, but she would say it to him.

She waited, but he didn't call again, and she fell back into the same routine of checking her inbox and waiting for the mail.

It was one of the first warm days of spring. She had taken a rare vacation day to blow off work. The morning news was on with the sound muted as usual, as she waited for the weather report.

She sat on the soda tying her shoes for a run when her eye caught something on the screen. It was a reporter standing in front of an airplane. She frowned. It looked familiar. It was the kind of plane Woody flew.

She fumbled for the remote and turned the sound up. The grim-faced reporter gestured to the plane behind him. "It was an American C-130 transport plane like this one. It was returning from a nighttime sortie in Northern Iraq when witnesses on the ground say it started to plummet before making a crash landing. Sources say that the injured crew members were taken to Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany. It is not known at this time whether there were any fatalities..."

No. Surely not. It wouldn't be Woody's plane, would it? Of all the C-130s in Iraq...

"No. No," she heard herself saying out loud. She flipped over to CNN. They were running the same story, but there were no more details.

She sat glued to the set for hours, numbly flipping back and forth between all the news channels, hoping for some word. It was afternoon when her phone rang, and she nearly jumped from her skin.

"Hello..." a voice began uneasily. "Could I speak with Jordan Cavanaugh, please?"

In an instant, she knew with heart-stopping fear that the call she dreaded had come. She felt as if a hole had opened up in the middle of her. "Speaking..."

"This is Mike Stahl. I'm a buddy of Woody's from the Guard. He gave me your number before he left just in case he..." He cleared his throat. "I don't even know if I should be telling you this..."

"What? What is it? Is it Woody? What's happened?"

"You've probably heard it on the news already. The C-130 that crashed?"

"Yes..." she said, and her mouth had gone dry. There hardly seemed a need for him to go on.

"It was one of ours. It was Woody's plane."