A justice of the peace married us in eleven minutes.
I signed my name Nora Mercer.
I had been Nora Hale my whole life.
For eleven minutes I was the happiest woman alive.
Then the draft letter came.
Nine days after the wedding.
The Army sent him to the Serith Valley.
I drove him to the bus in my brother’s borrowed truck.
My brother Earl stood right there beside me.
Earl shook Walt’s hand.
Earl said, “I’ll look after her.”
He looked Walt dead in the eye when he said it.
I thought it was kindness.
I know better now.
Walt got on the bus.
He pressed his face to the glass.
He held up his tin ring.
I held up mine.
That was the last time I saw him young.
The letters came every week at first.
Then every two weeks.
Then the fighting got worse and they came when they could.
He wrote about the heat.
The mud.
The men he served with.
He never once wrote that he was scared.
I knew he was.
I wrote back every single night.
I told him about the garden.
About the dog.
About the life we’d have when he came home.
Then, past the fifth month, the letters stopped.
I waited.
I told myself the mail was slow.
I told myself a lot of things.
Six weeks of silence.
Then a letter came that wasn’t his.
A man named Russ Dolan wrote it.
He said he served in Walt’s unit.
He said their outpost was overrun in the night.
He said Walt went missing after.
Missing.
Not gone.
Missing.
I held on to that word like a rope.
For two years I held on to it.
I wrote to the Army.
I wrote to congressmen.
I wrote to anyone who might know anything.
Earl drove me to every meeting.
Earl sat with me in every waiting room.
Earl squeezed my shoulder and told me to be strong.
My brother.
My blo.od.
Then Russ Dolan came to town.
In person.
He sat at my kitchen table.
He turned his hat in his hands.
