4. Another Soldier
Matthew had predicted this moment from the first days of the war.
"We still have a few years," Mary had suggested, rather desperately. "Perhaps it will be over soon enough."
"Perhaps."
She knew he didn't believe it.
Their son's recent birthday had been just like any other day, except that it wasn't like any other day at all: he was a man now—the army declared it so—and he was old enough to fight for his country, even though he had been too young just one day prior. How could one day make such a difference? But now here they were, preparing to send him off to a war that was most decidedly not over yet.
Mary has promised herself she won't cry, but she is blinking rapidly as she hugs him good-bye.
"We have something for you to take," Matthew says, and Mary looks at her husband in surprise. She has no clue what he means. Then he is placing a small toy dog in their son's outstretched hand, and her mind is flooded with images from the past: she is saying good-bye to a different solider in a different time, and she is unspeakably sorry she didn't take the chance to be with him when she had it, and she has still promised herself that she won't cry, but it is so very difficult—
"A...stuffed dog? You want me to take a toy dog with me?" She is brought to the present again, where their son clearly believes the army when it says he is a man now, and apparently also believes that men do not take toys with them to war.
"Your mother gave it to me before I went back to the front once," Matthew explains, "for luck. It was her lucky charm. I think you should take it. Perhaps it will be lucky for you, too. And it will remind you of home, which...helps," he finishes, haltingly. "Trust me."
Fear flickers across their young soldier's face for the first time, and while the army might see a man, all Mary can see is her little boy.
"And since your papa never returned it to me like I asked him to, now you must promise to bring it back. Without a scratch," she adds, and she is in two different decades at once, but the fear feels exactly the same in each.
...
She is selfishly glad that he didn't have a sweetheart before he left, because it means that he writes to his parents more often. His letters are terse, devoid of any real insight, sticking to topics like the food (it is terrible), or the weather (often terrible), or the people he meets (not usually terrible). His fellow soldiers like his good luck charm, he says, and like the story behind it even more. They hope it will protect them by extension.
He always says he is fine.
"What would you suppose that means, Matthew, when he only ever says he is 'fine'?" She is afraid that she knows exactly what it means.
"He is...mostly unhurt...physically," is the careful reply from her husband, who looks haunted more often than not these days, especially when he reads the papers.
"That's what I feared," she sighs, and he takes her hand in his.
The letters are always signed, "Love from your son and your silly tiny dog." It's the only true sign she sees of her boy's trademark humor and levity, and she clings to it.
...
When he comes home for good, he has a scar on his right cheek, a broken finger that didn't quite heal properly, and an air of maturity that makes him look every bit the man the army said he was. Somewhere behind her overwhelming relief, she is simultaneously proud and disappointed. And then—
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a familiar stuffed toy. "Look who's back to stay, Mama," he says, with a grin she remembers seeing on a little boy's face, "it's your son and your silly tiny dog."