His kids went to good schools.
His grandkids tore through my house on Sundays.
And he’d pat my hand and say, “What would you do without me, Nora?”
What would I do without him.
I’m getting to the knock.
I’m getting to tonight.
One cold evening I was making tea.
The kettle was just starting to sing.
Then someone knocked on my door.
I opened it.
And my heart stopped.
Walt.
Gray.
Bent.
Carved all over with wrinkles.
But him.
Those eyes.
He held out his hand.
In his palm sat a thin tin ring from a dead coin machine a lifetime away.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, soft as the day he left.
“I never stopped. Some nights the only thing that kept me walking was the thought of this door.”
I couldn’t speak.
He told me the valley didn’t keep him from me.
A person did.
Someone of my own blo.od.
And that’s when the headlights hit the porch.
And the teacup slipped out of my hand.
And broke.
So now you’re caught up.
Now you know what I knew, standing in my hall, bolt thrown, rain coming down.
A car idling in my driveway.
And my de.ad husband alive against my wall.
“Start talking,” I said. “Fast.”
Walt nodded.
He kept one eye on the door.
“I was captured,” he said. “Not ki.lled. Taken.”
“The ridge got overrun. I got hit in the leg. I went down in the dark.”
“When I woke up I was a prisoner.”
“Four years, Nora. In a camp I can’t even find on a map.”
Four years.
While I wore bl.ack.
While I signed papers.
“How did you live?” I asked.
“I don’t honestly know,” he said.
“Men around me didn’t. I thought about you. That’s the truth. I thought about this door.”
He said when he came home it was 1977.
Thin as wire.
Half his hearing gone.
A limp he’d carry the rest of his life.
But alive.
Alive and coming home to his wife.
“I got off the bus in Marlow Bend,” he said.
“I walked to your parents’ house. I was going to surprise you.”
