Chapter 1

The phone signal cut through the dark kitchen, making the air of the quiet room shiver. August was coming to an end, darkness fell faster each night, enveloping the coast in a velvety smooth black blanket. It felt like an embrace, a warm and kind one, and Margaret didn't want to chase it away by turning on too many lamps. Not yet, not when the inky blackness was still friendly and soft.
The shrill signal of the phone was not friendly and soft, though. It made her jump and almost drop the glass of water in her hand. With fingertips still tingling from the sudden adrenaline rush, she put the glass down on the counter, turned around, and looked up at the old clock on the wall, its arms barely visible in the darkness. Ten thirty-five. No reason for anyone to call that late, no good news ever came at ten thirty-five on a Friday night.
There was an emergency, she was certain of it, someone needed help. One of the elders of Crabapple Cove, maybe, who would much rather call 'a real doctor' than an ambulance. Or an accident, the last of the summer guests still hadn't left town, and way too many of them seemed to think that nighttime boat trips were a great idea, not realizing how easy it was to misjudge distances at night, or how easy it was for an oar to slip out of your hand after that last nightcap.
Or maybe it was just Mrs. Fletcher going into false and very dramatic labor. Again. She had diagnosed herself with a high-risk pregnancy and had thought she'd been in labor three times already at seven months pregnant. Or was it four times now? All of the Pierces, none of them specialists in the area as they had pointed out many, many times, had found themselves drowned in questions and theories about the wondrous creature growing in the mysterious place that was Mrs. Fletcher's womb. Only earlier that week, Margaret had found herself cornered in the cereal aisle down at the supermarket and dragged into a very long and complicated conversation about whether or not fetuses could have nightmares.
Yes, it was probably only another false labor-alarm.

Margaret crossed the floor, and as her hand reached for the phone, she felt a tiny, but so very familiar flutter. Deep inside of her, a tiny creature blinked into existence. A small butterfly of hope batted its wings, stirring a familiar old longing. A creature that woke up every time the phone rang. Every time Margaret made her way down to the mailbox. Every time she heard a car approaching.
Her father. Maybe it really was him this time. Maybe something had changed, would be different from now on. Maybe what had gone wrong and gotten lost between them all those years ago could be fixed, could be glued back together.
Margaret paused for just a second, allowing the tiny, hopeful creature to spread its wings just a little bit more before she grabbed the receiver and held it up to her ear.

"Pierce residence."

Hawkeye rolled his eyes at her every time he heard her answer the phone like that. According to him 'residence' sounded like they should have at least two butlers, a live-in-maid, and the ghost of a woman scorned haunting the wine cellar. The wine cellar they didn't have. A residence wasn't the name for a creaky old house where the salt from the ocean ate away at the paint, the shutters kept flapping in the wind, and a rather persistent family of mice moved into the cupboard under the sink every fall. But Margaret persisted. A forever home was a residence, peeling paint, flapping shutters, and cute but unwelcome mice or not.

For a couple of seconds, all she heard was static, and it made the waves of hope deep inside spread a little faster, but the voice that then filled her ear was not her father's, but a woman's.

"Margaret? Is that you, dear?"

"Yes?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, this old phone is terrible, I didn't hear you there at first. And I'm so very sorry for calling at this hour, I hope I'm not disturbing you. I didn't even realize how late it was until it was ringing already. This is Mildred. Mildred Potter. I… I was… I'm calling to tell you that…"

A pause. Margaret held her breath, felt herself grow cold. Freeze. It was like everything inside of her stopped, the blood in her veins, her heart stopped between two beats, her cells stood shivering while she clutched the phone to her ear, unable to put it down, unable to let it fall from her hand. She didn't want to hear anything more; she wanted to just drop the phone and go back to the living room. Back to Hawkeye and the dogs, back to the sound of the ocean coming in through the porch door they had left open a crack.
There was absolutely no reason for Mildred Potter to be calling at that hour unless something had changed. Something. Someone.
Margaret didn't want to know what words that would come next, she would be happy to just listen to the vast nothingness of a phone connection reaching across the country. From a house all the way over in Missouri, to Margaret's own kitchen in Maine, where nothing was wrong, not yet.
For a few, frozen moments, nothing had changed, no words that would cause a shift, a rupture in the fabric of existence, had been spoken.

Then Mildred Potter, the woman who for such a long time only had been a perfectly coiffed image in a frame on her husband's desk, cleared her throat and spoke.

"I'm calling to tell you that my Sherman passed away today."

Margaret pulled her shoulders up high, as if she wanted to protect herself from the words. She exhaled slowly, and everything inside of her started up again with a painful jolt. With it came a reel of pictures, fast and sharp, painful too in their vibrance. Colonel Potter's stern face breaking up into a smile. His eyes that shined with a warm glow and his voice that always got softer when he talked about his Mildred back home. Margaret could hear it inside of her, as clearly as if he had been standing right beside her. She saw him looking down from Sophie's back when he told her to 'climb on board, Houlihan', and she could feel the soft fabric of his shirt under her fingers as she held on to him, his mere presence there in front of her on the horse making her whole body relax.
She could see his slow, careful wave, as he and Mildred stood out on the porch, getting smaller and smaller as Hawkeye and Margaret were driving away. She had been hanging out of the car window waving back at them, like a little kid, and only when they were out of sight completely, she had stopped waving and sat back down. Had it really been two years since their trip to Hannibal? It felt like last week.

"Margaret? Are you there, dear?"

Margaret drew in air and forced herself back to the present.

"Yes, yes, I'm here. I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry."

"Oh, I know. I know. I shouldn't be calling this late, but it's just..."

Mildred's voice broke, and Margaret could feel her pain all the way from Missouri. Like a silent howl over the raspy phone line.

"It's just that," Mildred continued, "he was talking about you today, about the two of you. He was so very tired, didn't want to get up for lunch. So we had crackers and jam in bed, and we just talked. About old times, when he got his first horse, when we bought the house, when Evelyn was little. About all of you, all the things you were up to back then. And he talked about you and Hawkeye, that Christmas card you sent, with the dogs. That made him laugh so much. And he talked about when you came to visit, how much we laughed then too. And how proud he was of the two of you. And he really was, Margaret, I want you to know that. So very proud. Then he got tired and wanted to take a nap, and when I came to check on him, he was… The Doctor says…"

Her voice broke in a sob, and Margaret – ever so gratefully – stepped into the role of nurse. The protective mask, the safe armor.

"Mrs. Potter? Mildred? Are you okay? Is there anyone there with you?"

"Oh, yes, I'm fine. Evelyn is here, and Corey. And the Wilshire's from down the road. Alma brought an apple pie, but just between you and me, her pies don't taste much of anything, so I tried to avoid having a piece, but she would not take no for an answer. That woman fears sugar like others fear snakes, it seems, even though I've tried to tell her that sugar carries flavor, over and over I have told her."

Mildred made a sound that Margaret was sure was supposed to be a laugh, but it sounded like a small animal getting in the way of a lawnmower.

"I should be getting back to them now, I guess," Mildred continued. "It was silly of me to call, but I was just getting a sweater from upstairs, and I thought about how Sherman talked about you today, and… You were so very special to him, and I think he would have wanted you to know."

The mask of the nurse fell away, and left was only Margaret. A bag of bones with skin that felt raw, breath caught high up in her throat, the almost painful prickle of tears filling her cranium, and a voice that was only a whisper.

"And he is to us. Both of you are."

Is. Not was. For as long as Margaret walked this earth, Colonel Potter would be important to her. Be with her, right there, over her shoulder. The love she had for him wouldn't end, it would just change form.

"Oh, here comes Corey now," Mildred continued, "I think he has been sent to look for me. I really should be getting back downstairs before the whole search party comes along. I'll call again when I know more. I'll let you go now. Give my best to that handsome husband of yours."

Margaret clutched the phone in her hand and pressed it close to her ear. She didn't want to let Mildred go. She wanted to comfort her, or be comforted maybe, find the right words, the ones that would help, somehow. If she hung up the phone, it would all be real. She would have to leave her dark kitchen and step out into the world and live in the after. She would have to talk, speak the words that now sat in her throat like shards of glass.
She suddenly remembered an old fairy tale her grandmother had told her a long time ago, about a creature who lost its power when you spoke its name. This was the same thing but in reverse. Saying the words out loud would give them power, give them body and strength. They would seep into the world and change it forever.
Stupid, magic thinking. It was already true, the world had changed and there was no going back.
Margaret squeezed her eyes shut and tried to make the child who believed in fairy tales go away. Tried to find the woman again, the nurse who had been there when so many young men went to the other side, had heard so many last breaths. Had felt the sudden absence in the room.

"I will. Thank you so much for calling, for letting us know. If there's anything we can do, anything at all, we're here."

"Thank you. We'll talk again soon. Bye now."

"Goodbye. Take care."

The call ended, but Margaret stood frozen in place again, the receiver pressed against her ear, listening to the nothingness. She had to force her arm to hang up, her hand to let go, and when she did, it was like something left her, the strings holding her up were cut off, and she slumped over, putting her hand against the wall for support.

Nine years had passed since Korea, but she could still hear the low rumble of Colonel Potter's voice telling her not to forget to have a happy life, on that last day in camp when all of them had scattered for the winds. Two years ago, during what turned out to be their last goodbye, he had told her how glad hewas that she had remembered.
Back in -58, a blood clot close to his beautiful, caring heart, had wreaked havoc on his body, but it hadn't taken away the warmth in his voice. The sparkle in his eyes. The blood clot had destroyed, changed, but it hadn't ruined completely.
Radar had been the one who called with the news that Colonel Potter was in the hospital. His voice so young all over again, tense and out of breath. Once again, it was the youngest of them delivering the hardest news.
Time was a thief, and it had stolen away so many of the golden years Colonel Potter and Mildred were supposed to have together. Mrs. Potter's Mr. Potter, his greatest assignment. But he had recovered, better than anyone expected. Against the odds, he had fought and cursed and fought some more, every inch of him the stubborn, ornery patient he had once proclaimed himself to be. 'The doctors here know nothing; they say I shouldn't be able to do anything anymore. Those kill-joys can flap their mouths all they want, borrowed time is still time, no one's taking that from me', he had declared, his voice a bit shaky, but there was no mistaking the pride in it, the fighting spirit. He had fought it off back then, but had only been able to make it so far before something cruel and unrelenting caught up with him. And they had all known how frail he was, how greedy death could be, and how precious borrowed time truly was.

Margaret straightened her back and took another deep breath. Held it. The kitchen was quiet once again, the darkness even deeper now. There was a vase with anemones on the table, the last of the season. She had picked them the day before, when there still was a Colonel Potter in this world.
There was a whooshing in her ears, like white noise from the TV. No, it sounded like the ocean. Like what you hear when you hold a big seashell up to your ear. Nothing was the same, and yet the waves would keep washing up on the shore, each one slowly wearing down the rocks.
She exhaled and pulled her cardigan closer around her. Shook her head and tried to silence the small voice inside of her. The hoarse, whispering one, barely a fluttering of words against her skull. The forbidden voice that kept asking questions she didn't want to hear, the one wondering if she would have felt differently if it had been her father. Would it have been a relief, finally a sense of resolution, if it had been the man whose blood she shared that was gone?

"I'm sorry, Dad, I love you," she whispered to the darkness, and it was almost completely true.

After all these years, all the major things in her life were still so often put in relation to her father, and she wished she could just let go. Pry her hands off the hope of healing, the childish hope for a great redemption arc, but her heart was just so stubborn. Like her father. Like Colonel Potter.
'Jumpin' Jompers, Margaret, when will you start calling med Sherm?' She could hear his voice again, clear as day. She had tried, she really had, but her tongue simply refused to form the word, that part of her so stubborn too. Set in its ways.

Margaret started to move, her muscles cold and unwilling, and headed back towards the living room. Slowly. Everything felt strange, slightly askew, like there was a mist hovering just at the corner of her eye. Like she had slipped into a parallel universe, just half a step away from her own, and couldn't quite put her finger on how things were different, just knew that they were. She didn't feel like talking. She just wanted to go upstairs, crawl into bed and hide. Nothing bad can happen when you hide under a blanket, everyone knows that. There, in the soft warmth, she wouldn't have to think, wouldn't have to plan. Not think about asking for time off from work, plan what to wear to the funeral of a person who had started off as a superior officer but had ended up as family. The most important kind of family, the kind you choose. The kind of family you open your heart to completely, knowing full well that life might force you apart, and that your heart might one day be broken. The kind of family you're bound to, bound to by the jigsaw pieces of broken young men on a cold operating table. Bound to by cold and heat, by wind and rain. Bound to by sprinting through mud together, by sitting shoulder to shoulder around a table in the mess tent, too tired to talk, too nauseous to eat, too scared to move away. It wasn't even possible to comprehend that one of the people around that table was gone now, just an empty space where his shoulder once rested against hers.

Margaret walked through the hallway on silent feet and heard soft jazz coming from the record player. She stopped in the doorway, just stood in silence for a little while, and watched her husband on the couch. His head was turned away from her, his eyes somewhere outside. On a clear night, you could see the ocean from where he was sitting, the moon lighting up a shimmering path. But there was no moon out tonight, of course there wasn't.
He turned and met her eyes. A small smile crossed his face, like it so often did when she walked into a room. Like he was truly happy to see her, like she had made his day better by simply appearing. When they weren't fighting, of course. When there wasn't a cloud between them, one that erased every sweet, kind thing about him that she loved, replacing it with misery and a fog that seemed too dense to ever find the way out of. But the fog always cleared, and it wasn't even so thick anymore, and when it lifted, there was always his smile again.
Margaret tried to smile back, but her mouth didn't cooperate, and his smile melted away.

"What? What's wrong?" He sat up straight and before she could do more than shake her head, he was on his feet, crossing the room with long steps. He grabbed her upper arms and bent his neck to meet her eyes. She blinked and did nothing to stop the tears. Her voice was tiny and strained when she spoke.

"Colonel Potter. He passed away."

Hawkeye squeezed her arms tighter, and something in his eyes shifted. For a second, Margaret got scared. Could he handle this, maybe she should have waited to tell him. Told him some other time, in the morning, maybe, after breakfast, when he wasn't tired from a long week at work, when his walls weren't thin.
It wasn't a rational fear. In the nine years that had passed since Korea, since his breakdown, he had encountered death many times, they both had. How could they not in their line of work? But still. Still, there was a part of her that was never sure that the darkness in his eyes from back then wouldn't come back. A part of her always expected it to, expected the wild thing, expected the wolf. But no darkness rose up in him, only tears.

"What are you… Did it happen now? Oh no."

He pulled her close and wrapped his arms tight around her. Margaret hugged him back as hard as she could, her cheek pressed against his sweater. She breathed in and felt the scent of smoke that still lingered on the threads, a memory from the bonfire down at the beach last weekend. Underneath was the scent of salt and wind, the one that always followed him. He always smelled like a breeze from the ocean.
The song on the record player ended and another one began while they stood there in silence, so close together. 'How High the Moon'. Cheery, up-tempo. Good for dancing, for laughing and spinning in the O-club, around and around until the world lost its contours. It should have been something somber. 'Cry me a river', maybe. Mozart's 'Requiem'. 'Sentimental Journey'.
No, happy up-tempo was fitting, Colonel Potter was a happy man, with a taste for westerns and show tunes, he would have liked it.

Hawkeye pulled back, kissed Margaret's forehead, and met her eyes again.

"Are you okay?"

She shrugged because what could she say? She wasn't okay. There was an absence now, a huge, howling emptiness, and it wasn't okay, and yet it had to be. The sun would rise in the morning, the wind would blow, and how high the moon hung over a house in Missouri where Mr. Potter's Mrs. Potter now lived alone.

"That man loved you, you know," Hawkeye said.

"He loved you too."

"Well, we are two very loveable people."

She gave him a small smile, and swallowed hard, shook her head while brushing his hair out of his eyes. It was getting so long, he looked wild. He looked like he did back then.

"No, we're really not," she said.

"No, we're not. But he managed to do it anyway. Do you know what happened?"

"No, Mildred didn't say. He was happy, though, she said that he was happy. And then he just… went somewhere else."

Margaret took a deep breath and felt how tight her chest was, it almost hurt forcing air into her lungs. Then she heard a small whine and felt a scratch on her calf. She looked down and saw Lily looking up at her. The dog whined again and took a couple of small, nervous steps. The cocker spaniel always seemed to be in perfect tune with Margaret's moods, and nothing made her more unhappy than when she sensed something wrong.

"Oh, sweetie, don't worry." Margaret bent down and picked the dog up. "I'm just sad, it's gonna be okay."

Lily bumped her nose against Margaret's chin, and Margaret gave her a kiss on the head, then leaned her cheek against Lily's silky fur and looked up at Hawkeye again.

"Mildred said that he talked about us today, before he…" She swallowed, and the words she couldn't say out loud were sharp as broken glass in her throat. "He talked about the Christmas card."

She looked over at the mantelpiece where the picture they had used for the holiday greeting stood on display. When they took down all of the other Christmas decorations after New Year, neither of them had wanted to put it away.
It was taken out on the porch, the day after the first big snowfall of the season, and it captured them perfectly. Lenny was working hard on pulling a Santa hat off Hawkeye's head, with all of his labrador determination, while Hawkeye held on to it and laughed, his face more teeth than features. Margaret was giving Daniel, master photographer, some kind of instruction, she was pointing at something out of the picture, and her mouth looked like it was forming an 'F'. Seamus, the Irish Setter, sat stiffly with a big, green bow tie attached to his collar, staring into space while having an apparent existential Christmas-crisis. Only Lily, prim and proper as always, sat on Margaret's lap, looking straight into the camera with the loveliest of dog smiles on her face, the pretty red bow Margaret had carefully attached to the fur right above her ear looking fresh and crisp. The picture was joyous and full of life, and it warmed Margaret's heart every time she looked at it. They had made copies, turned them into Christmas cards, and sent them all over the country, to friends and family near and far. Not to Al Houlihan, though, Margaret had sent him one from the store. A nice one, with a big Christmas tree in front of a fireplace. 'Merry Christmas, Dad, I hope you are doing well. Love Margaret'. Just Margaret. She had agonized over the greeting for days, like she always did.
She had tried so hard, for such a long time she had tried to make amends, to reach out. Certain her father would come around she had called, told him about her life, her job, everything she got to experience. She had tried her best to explain how the impossible man in the raggedy bathrobe had somehow become something more to her than she could ever have expected, something beautiful and important, but her words fell flat, her father's part of the conversations reduced mostly to hums and huffs. She had made sure to describe everything as vividly as she could, to make him feel like a part of her life, but the silence on the other end had felt like a dagger through her core, each and every time.
'Maybe it isn't up to you to fix things you didn't break', Daniel had said to her after one of those calls, and after a while, she really had stopped trying. Her father knew that she was safe. That she was happy. And maybe that was enough. Maybe one day he would like to get a real Christmas card, one filled with laughter and chaos, a 'Love from Margaret and Hawkeye'. No, 'Margaret and Benjamin', her father didn't care for nicknames.
Maybe one day.

"That picture is a thing of beauty," Hawkeye said, him too looking at it in its silver frame. "One for the covers."

Margaret leaned against him, Lily growing a bit heavy in her arms, and let her eyes glide over to another picture on the mantelpiece. The 'Fort Dix'-one, from the reunion. While all of them had been elbow-deep in wounded, their loved ones had danced, talked, and hugged back in the States. Her parents had been there, for their daughter's sake they had buried the hatchet between them and showed up as a unit. Mildred had danced with Daniel. Margaret looked at the decade younger version of herself, leaning in against Colonel Potter, looking tense through her smile, so anxious to let her parents see the best version of her, so aware that Pierce was posing in his tuxedo and stupid hat at the end of the other row. A lifetime ago. So much of the woman under the Fort Dix-sign had been reshaped. Peeled away. But her love for the people in the picture remained, even though she could never admit it when they were all still around her. And now, one of them was gone. The dear, sweet man who had been proud of her, proud of the work she did back then, and of the woman she became afterward. The woman who took silly Christmas pictures and loved without fear. No, loved through the fear. Even though it hurt. It hurt like hell.

"You did look nice, though," she mumbled into Hawkeye's chest.

"What?"

She leaned back and looked up at him.

"Nothing. I love you."

"And I love you". He gave her a kiss and wiped away her tears with his thumb. "Let's sit for a while."

"Lenny, no!" both of them exclaimed in chorus when they turned towards the couch. The dog looked up at them from the corner of his eye, his snout still deep down into the popcorn bowl, his front paws up on the table where no paws were supposed to go. He lifted his head up and gave them his best, goofy grin. A piece of popcorn was caught under his upper lip, it stuck out a bit and made him look like a bunny. He looked ridiculous, and despite everything, despite that the lump in her throat was still hot and painful, Margaret started to laugh. Thank God for the dogs, even at the worst of times, their furry, friendly presence was a comfort. They were like Flopsy, the stuffed bunny from her childhood, coming to life. Lenny was apparently even starting to look like him. Seamus sat with his back straight in the corner of the couch, his head tilted to the side, probably hoping that his brother would share his loot.
Hawkeye chuckled too, and Lily looked up at both her humans with big eyes, the look of a tired sister, deeply ashamed of her moron of a brother. Margaret imagined that she herself had had a similar look in her eyes many times back in Korea, when she had expected Colonel Potter to once again straighten up those insufferable Swamp Rats.
Now, all she wanted to do was to rest her head against the chest of that juvenile delinquent she had once known and listen to the sound of his heart beating. Strike Lily's soft ears, while Lenny munched on contraband popcorn, and Seamus snored.
She wanted to close her eyes and see Colonel Potter's warm smile, hear the low rumble of his voice telling her to have a happy life. Let the reel of pictures in her head continue to play, and let herself float away in a river of memories. Spend time with the man lost, herself surrounded by all the things she had gained, just because she had listened to his advice, and remembered to be happy.

Author's Note:

This story started out with me wanting to write a reunion. But since it's MASH, and the show tends to break our hearts, it took a darker turn.
We see the characters want so much on the show, and it's often taken away from them, whether it's eating ribs in peace and quiet, spend your birthday the way you want, go home, or bigger matters of life and death. So this seemed fitting.
This story references events in Dear Helen and Moving Near the Edge at Night, but you don't have to read them to understand this story. You are more than welcome to, though.
I have never set foot in America, especially not in 1962. I googled a lot of details, but I have to ask for some suspension of disbelief for anything that's not accurate. English is not my first language, so I also apologize for any grammatical errors.
This is a slow, melancholy story, with lots of thoughts and memories, but it's also filled with hope and love. I hope someone out there will enjoy it.