Nancy, my dearest,

I dreamt last night that I lived in a tiny house on the moon, and you with me. Everything in our house was black, the whole house in black and white, all except your hair.

It's easier for me to tell you about the moon than my life right now.

I keep thinking that nothing at all has changed, that nothing is different, that you remain as you were the last time I saw you, with a bright red scratch across the inside of your arm, in that white dress. I had a little cousin, he was three when I left for here, and I still see him as he was the last time we were all together.

I only wish I was somewhere near Tommy, so that I could make sure he has received your news, but he is not on the moon with us, Nancy. In our tiny house you make every food I've missed since I came over here. I say the moon because I can see it now, and you can see it too, and I almost would not have you share my blood today.

I saw the face of the boy I killed today.

Other men don't blink, and I know one day it's supposed to become that easy for me, but I almost dread it. I felt sick and scared, and in that moment I missed everything, Hannah's chocolate cake and your ridiculous little terrier and the smell of your hair. I missed my mother. When I go to sleep tonight, I know I will just see his face, over and over, and smell hot metal and blood. I've seen men who went through training with me, who slept through the night like snoring rocks, wake up screaming here. I don't want to be one of them, I don't, I don't.

But if I have learned anything here, it is that I am no different from anyone else, no better, and in some cases definitely worse. They can't feel, and somehow that's better, and I lose a little more of it every day, until I see your handwriting on an envelope. The world you describe is as distant as the moon to me, and it's the only thing that keeps me sane and whole.

Everything I see reminds me of you. A blasted oak in the middle of a barren field, a brook so quiet that I nearly run into it before I see it, the upturned faces of the sorrowful Virgin Marys in the towns full of sullen dirty faces. I remember our time together in cases and mysteries, in times you were in danger or following another string of intangible clues. Then I remember going to church with you one Sunday and holding your gloves while you laughed at something George said, and memorizing the exact shade of your lips before I had to force myself to turn away, before you could see me blush. I remember your fingertips on the smooth beads of your pearls and how your eyelashes looked against your cheek when you mouthed the prayers, and I asked forgiveness a thousand times, and I would a thousand more. I remember those things in the flash of a moment when everyone around me is screaming, the guns hot and heavy in our arms, and the sphere of my universe has become a single field and the long agony of death and dying.

I remember you and I know that something so perfect could not be over, could not be lost to my life, and knowing that gives me hope. But then I wake up on the moon and know that for a few more days, a few more days, I will have to wait just a bit longer before I will ever breathe again.

Maybe it is a sin to hope like this, to feel this way, but I don't know how my hands will ever be clean again, I don't know if I could ever undo what happened today, what has happened every single day since I left you.

I saw despair in my father's eyes, the day we both knew I would be leaving for this. Only now do I understand it. Only now do I realize how important it is, to make sure that despair never touches you.

Write to me on the moon, and forgive me, my angel, because only once you do can I even begin to hope for any other.

I love you. I love you so much, and I live for your letters, so send me another soon, so that I can have another few minutes of air before I begin to drown again here, alone on the moon.

With every moment that brings me closer to you, with every beat of my heart, I remain,

Always and ever yours,

Ned

--

Ned, my love,

She has named him Thomas William Grey, and George and I waited in the outer room with Bess's parents like expectant fathers ourselves, pacing, watching the nurses flutter in and out of the room. When we went in, after, she was holding a tiny red-faced baby, and she looked exhausted and weak and happy.

There at the end, and even now, I would take down Bess's letters to Tommy and then write my own letters to you, and I would find myself at a loss, my hand aching and already stained black with ink. Bess has been saying the most indelicate things, and I blush when I write them, but compared to all her news, the news of their son, I feel I have nothing to tell you, other than: I love you, and I have passed another day living only in the hope that soon I will receive the blessed news that you are coming home soon. Other men... other men come home. You have to come home. This has to end.

But I will think of other happier things to tell you.

Bess shan't move in for a while, and I begin to doubt that she ever will. Hannah came by this morning before I went to the hospital to see Bess and the baby again, and so now we have another tablecloth and some cuttings from Hannah's garden. The sounds are still unfamiliar at night, and I woke last night in the pitch black wishing I could do as I did when I was a child, go to Hannah's room in my dressing gown and tug at the quilt until she woke and made me hot milk and sat up with me until I could sleep again. I remember once when I was very small, having a bad dream and going to my father's bed, and I know Mother must have been there because I remember lying between them, but I remember nothing else; and Dad must find it so lonely in that room now, as I do sitting here. We could paper this entire place in posters for war bonds, empty ration books, the newspapers I scour every morning over my coffee.

I wish I could grow small again, small as Bess's new baby, and I would know none of this. George makes it through all this, and she sends her own letters, but she has not yet told me who receives them. Maybe she and I have not spent enough nights between the black shrouds of the heavy curtains, in the dark, holding hands and praying for this all to end. Maybe she will tell me one night when I am sick to death of counting my ration coupons and remembering buttery mashed potatoes and weeks that I never worried about running out of gas.

George and I are making a quilt for Bess's baby. We sew so slowly that the poor child's toes will peek out from beneath it when we're finished, but George is so tired when she comes home from work, and Dad has promised that he will pay the rent and the groceries for as long as I want, but here, in the city... Ned, there are trucks driving down the street, asking people to apply for work, and I'm here. I can't sit all day alone in this apartment wishing you were here; that will not bring you home any faster.

Jackson was drafted; did I forget to tell you? He has left and now Dad must find a new assistant, and he joked that maybe he should take me, but I think he says so only because he's afraid of me being in the city. He comes to see me as often as he can but the trains are so crowded, the buses, and my roadster stays still in the garage for want of gasoline.

I wish you were here. I ache for want of you when I wake in the mornings, and I can go back to River Heights so seldom, to Mapleton even less, though your parents have made me swear and promise that George and I will be down to see them for Sunday dinner. Would that I could ask for a night in your bed in return... oh, Ned, I would sleep curled up on the floor before your door, I would give up nearly anything were I to walk into that room and see you there instead of only the trophies I know your mother still dusts, your empty bed, your scarred desk.

I saw what you carved there. Maybe your parents would not recognize my middle name, maybe you thought you would disguise it by not tracing a heart around it, but I felt the grooves under my fingers and thought of you, and the tears come hard now but sometimes they still do, and I feel myself beginning to forget what life was like before this, even while I wish it back with every fiber of my being, even while I would go through all of this a thousand times over if only you were here to share it with me. Your absence, your absence alone makes this my misery. In the loss of you I find the loss of nearly anything else incomparable. But I have not lost you; we have the moon, that black-and-white house on the moon, where I will see you tonight and kiss your forehead and take a quiet account of all your wounds and link my fingers through yours and whisper into your ear that I forgive you.

I will forgive you anything, Ned. Anything. The only thing I won't forgive you for is if you never come back to me.

And here, Ned, it is all I can do to not follow Bess's example, and turn this into something lurid and terrible that you would cringe to read. For I still dream of you. Even while awake sometimes I dream of you, that I have caught a glimpse of your face on these deserted streets, in the brown eyes of another man, the curve of his shoulders or his smile. But you fade, before I can touch you, and I have to keep myself from crying. Every day I think that this must get easier. Every day it never does.

You are my only. You are the heart of my heart, Ned, and I want nothing more than to have you in my arms, to be whole again, to make you whole again. If I can make it through this terrible time, so can you; for as long as you live I will live here too, in this other half of our life, watching the mothers on the sidewalk with their baby carriages and knowing Bess will soon join them, and wondering...

I love you, I love you; a thousand times, a million times. I will sleep tonight and find you there and hold you until I must again return to this, until you must again return to where you are. I wish I knew. I wish I could touch a map and close my eyes and will myself there. My will is so strong, now. It only fails when I beg it to bring us together, to help me find my way back to you, asleep or awake, for even the briefest second.

I will find you on the moon, tonight. Wait for me there.

I love you and I remain always, in this tiny apartment on this busy street, wherever you are, wherever you sleep, wherever you dream, my love, my only.

Nancy

--

Nancy, my darling,

God help me, God help me for this. That you would forgive me for all but my not returning to you. Do you understand yet, do you see yet, that there is no other reason, that I wouldn't forgive myself were I to never see your smile again. I dream of nothing else, here on the moon.

And you forgive me...

I would open my veins, I would walk to the end of the earth to end this, to be with you again. I want to see this place. I want you to show me around, in an apron, and I will love every inch of it, and I will never let you leave my side. On the moon everything is made of dust, all I love is made of dust but you, dust and torn quilts stained red with innocent blood, the blood of my friends and the men I've killed, the boys... my love, all but you, and I bury my face in your apron and your waist is so small in my arms, and when I begin to slip I can feel your kiss cool on my forehead and I remember why it is that I'm here.

Sometimes when I'm asleep and it's so dark, I think for a second that I'm the only one left alive.

They say I think too much, but I can do nothing else; in every spare second I have I write you and my parents because it's easier than being here. Maybe I've never really been here. I don't drink, I don't kiss the girls with their hollow eyes and their open hands. I clean my gun until it shines and I try to think of anything to say to you that won't leave you feeling the same choking emptiness I feel right now. You are hours away from me and maybe right now you are trying to fall asleep in a tiny bedroom I've never seen. Trying to will yourself to the moon. We live on the bright side, and all I can breathe is your breath, but we never cry here.

I don't cry. I want you but I don't cry. I feel an enormous terrible emptiness in my gut when I go through these motions, when I do these things, while I do what it takes to live, and I want to be with you, but I want you unbent by the force of this. The closest I have ever come... knowing you forgive me, that Bess is finally a mother, that I have been away from you for so long.

I wish I could hear your voice. But I ask myself what I'd say... I think I would tell you that I love you and then I would listen to you breathe, because that in itself is such a miracle, the biggest of them all. That you live and breathe and somewhere you love me in spite of all this, in spite of everything I've done. I could fill that time with no truer words. There is no other truth in this life. In spite of all this I love, I love you, without ceasing, without pause. No fear or doubt.

I was such a fool for not telling you this before I left. Such a coward. I just couldn't bear the thought that you would turn to me with those blue eyes and ruin me... and knowing, now, that you never would. If I had known. I have to hear you say it.

I can hear the night breathe around me and I want to sleep, if only to see you. To run my fingers through your hair, and touch your cheek, and hear you whisper my name. I hear your voice every time the wind blows, every time I close my eyes. I can feel your arm linked through mine when I feel so tired I could faint. You are so strong, my love...

I wish so much that I could be in the city, with you, tonight, that I could hear you laughing. That I could hear you whisper my name, feel your breath against my ear. When I close my eyes I almost can.

We can't live on the moon forever, but for a while, for tonight, it will have to be enough.

Never stop loving me. I know I will never stop loving you.

I remain ever and faithfully, always, yours.

Ned

--

Ned...

Never say that again. Never say you are a coward again. You're a hero for what you've done, for what you are doing. That you, a man, so very handsome, so strong, could be afraid of me... you need never have been afraid of me, need never be afraid of me. I love you, my darling, I love you so much, so very much, and it burns in my heart, the power of it overwhelms me. I thought I would never feel this way. No matter what...

I let my fear of this, of us, of admitting this to myself and to you... oh Ned. I'm so sorry for who I was, for what I was to you. For not letting myself love you sooner. How sad, that I can love you so deeply now when you are so very far away from me.

I took a job waitressing, at a diner just a block down from George's. Our shifts are almost the same, and they aren't far; we walk there and back. Maybe when you bury your face in my apron you smell the grease from the hamburger sandwiches... although, my dear Mr. Nickerson, that image does make me think of Bess and her letters, and blush at that. She writes to her husband, the father of her child, and I... I will have to put out this candle soon, and my feet ache so. George and I soaked our feet in warm water baths, side by side on the couch, and laughed at each other. With her tips she bought us a chocolate bar, and we split it after dinner. Almost like a party again.

George misses Bess so much, and I do too, even though we make the trip to see her nearly every other day, and her eyes when she looks at her son... it nearly broke my heart. There is no fear in that look, no doubt, no shame or pain or reservation. She loves him. He is her life. Bess, I know, would be sad if Tommy died, so sad, but she has her son now. She has her love in her arms.

I want you in my arms. I have no one else in my life whom I love, the way I love you. I serve the men coffee and nearly every one looks at my hand, looking for a ring to mark me, and they ask me whether I have someone over there... over where you are. I tell them yes and they leave me tips anyway, because we all have someone over there, now.

With you here, tonight, I would sleep; or maybe when you return I will never sleep again, I will just stay with my hands on your cheeks, searching your eyes, unable to believe that everything is finally all right again. I want to know your heartbeat again. I feel so tired, and I hate this distance between us.

I don't want to have to sleep to see you again, but if it's the only way... on the moon, the airless moon.

Every time the bell on the door rings at the diner I try not to look, even though my heart skips a beat, at the thought that it could be you, that you could be coming back to me.

I love you. I can hear the sirens and I have to put out the candle. But if there's any way, any way at all you can feel this, you can feel what I do through that mark on our arms... know that you are the best, strongest, purest, most honest man I have ever known, the bravest, and the only one I will ever love. I will wait, I will live on dreams if that's what it takes, in this shadow of what we were and what we can be. I will dream you, and I will love you, curled tight in my bed, alone, waiting for only you.

I love you. I love you, my darling, my only, and with all of me, with all my strength I wish you safe and I wish you back to me, fast as light, fast as a breath, fast as a heartbeat. I will love you and remain,

always and ever yours,

Nancy