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Part 2: Laos
Daniel sat down in the seat beside me. Row 12. The empty plane around us.
He told me everything.
For decades, a military agency has searched for American service members still missing from Vietnam. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Two years ago, a farmer in Laos found pieces of aircraft metal in his rice field.
The agency sent a team. They excavated for three months.
They found Thomas’s plane. And Thomas.
He crashed in Laos. Not Vietnam. Forty miles off course. That’s why nobody ever found him.
DNA testing confirmed it three weeks ago. They matched it to Daniel’s grandfather. Thomas’s younger brother, Walter.
Daniel said, The agency returned his personal effects to my grandfather. Dog tags. A watch. And that box.
He said, The box was in his chest pocket. Right over his heart.
I held the ring. It was so small. Thin gold. A tiny diamond.
Daniel said, My grandfather didn’t know who Eleanor was. Thomas’s parents never mentioned you.
He said, So I started looking. I found Thomas’s college yearbook. You were in it. Literature club.
He said, I called the memorial. The caretaker said a woman named Eleanor visits every year on Thomas’s birthday. Always the same flight.
He said, I’m a captain for this airline. I asked to fly this route today.
I couldn’t speak. I just held the ring.
Daniel said, There’s going to be a funeral. At Arlington. In three weeks.
He said, My grandfather is eighty-one. He wants to meet you.
He hesitated. Then he said, But there’s something he needs to tell you first. He made me promise to let him say it himself.
That night, at my hotel, my phone rang. An old man’s voice. Shaky.
He said, This is Walter Reed. Thomas’s brother.
He said, Daniel gave you the ring.
I said, Yes.
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, Eleanor, I’m so sorry.
My mother had your letters. All of them.
Thomas wrote to you from Vietnam. Every week. She never mailed them.
Part 3: Fifty-Five Years
I didn’t sleep that night. I sat by the hotel window. And I let myself count.
Fifty-five years.
I was twenty-one when Thomas left. I’m seventy-six now.
I counted the letters I wrote to him. Twenty-six. One every week for six months. I sent them to his base.
I counted the letters I got back. Zero.
I thought the mail was slow. I thought he was too busy. Then I thought maybe he’d changed his mind.
Then the officers came. And I stopped wondering.
I counted the birthdays. Fifty-five trips to the memorial wall. Fifty-five white roses.
I counted the men who asked me to dinner. Four. Kind men. I said no to every one.
I counted the times I almost stopped going to the memorial. Never. Not once.
Then I counted Thomas’s mother.
Her name was Margaret. She didn’t like me. She said I was too bookish. Too poor. Not suitable.
She wanted Thomas to marry a girl from their church. A banker’s daughter.
When Thomas went missing, she didn’t call me. My parents found out from the newspaper.
She never invited me to any service. There was no funeral. No body.
Then I counted the letters Walter told me about.
Twenty-four. Thomas wrote me twenty-four letters from Vietnam.
His mother kept them in a hatbox in her closet. For forty years. Until she died.
Walter found them when he cleaned out her house. In 2009.
He said he read the first one. Then he closed the box. He didn’t know where I was.
He kept the hatbox in his attic for sixteen years.
Three weeks later, I flew to Washington. For the funeral at Arlington.
Daniel met me at the airport. He drove me to a small house in Virginia.
An old man was sitting on the porch. Holding a hatbox.
Part 4: Walter
Walter stood up when he saw me. Slowly. With a cane.
He looked like Thomas would have looked. If Thomas had gotten to be old.
He held the hatbox in both hands. He didn’t hand it to me.
He said, I need to tell you something first. Before you take these.
He said, I was sixteen when Thomas left. I adored him. I wanted to be him.
He said, My mother was angry that Thomas loved you. She said you’d take him away from us.
He said, When his letters came for you, she gave them to me. To throw away.
He said, I didn’t throw them away. I gave them back to her. I told her I couldn’t do it.
He said, She hid them herself. But I knew. And I never told you.
He said, After Thomas went missing, I was afraid. I thought if you knew about the letters, you’d hate our family forever.
Then his voice shook.
He said, I’m eighty-one. I’ve carried this for fifty-five years.
He said, Don’t hate my mother. She was grieving. She lost her son.
Then he said the thing he’d waited his whole life to say.
Please. If you’re going to hate someone, hate me. Not her. Not Thomas.
I felt that one land. It was meant to.
Because I had hated his mother. Quietly. For fifty-five years.
I took a slow breath.
Walter, I said quietly, I don’t hate you. You were sixteen.
He looked at me.
Your mother took twenty-four letters from me, I said. Twenty-four letters from the man I loved. While he was alive.
That was hers. Not yours.
Walter started to cry.
I’m not going to hate anyone, I said gently. I’ve spent fifty-five years waiting. I don’t want to spend whatever’s left being angry.
I just want to read his letters.
Walter held out the hatbox. His hands were shaking.
I took it. I opened the lid.
Twenty-four envelopes. Yellowed. Addressed in Thomas’s handwriting.
On top was a small square of paper. Not an envelope. Just a note.
In Walter’s handwriting. Young. Sixteen years old.
Eleanor, I tried to send these. I’m sorry. Thomas loved you more than anything.
I wrote it when I was sixteen, Walter whispered. I was going to put it in the mail.
I never had the courage.
Part 5: Arlington
I read Thomas’s letters that night in Walter’s guest room.
All twenty-four.
He wrote about the heat. The rain. The other pilots. The food.
He wrote about our future. A little house near a library. Three children. A dog named Chaucer.
In the twentieth letter, he wrote:
I bought a ring in Saigon. It’s small. It’s all I could afford. I’m carrying it in my pocket every flight. When I come home, I’m going to ask you properly.
I’ve already written the question on a piece of paper. Just in case I’m too nervous to say it.
In the last letter, dated two days before his plane went down, he wrote:
Eleanor, if something happens to me, don’t become a sad story. Promise me you’ll live.
I read that line until sunrise.
The funeral at Arlington was on a bright, cold morning.
An honor guard carried Thomas’s casket. A bugler played taps. Three rifle volleys.
Walter sat in the front row. Daniel beside him.
They asked me to sit with the family.
At the end of the service, the officer folded the flag. Thirteen folds. He walked toward Walter.
Walter shook his head. He pointed to me.
The officer knelt in front of me. He placed the folded flag in my hands.
He said, On behalf of a grateful nation.
I held the flag. And I cried for the first time in fifty-five years.
Afterward, Walter and I walked to Thomas’s headstone. Freshly carved.
I took the ring out of my pocket. The tiny gold ring from Saigon.
I unfolded the scrap of paper. For Eleanor. Yes?
I knelt down beside his grave. Slowly. My knees aren’t young anymore.
I slipped the ring onto my finger. It fit.
I said, quietly, Yes, Thomas. I would have said yes.
Then I took out a pen. I wrote one more word on the back of his note.
Live.
I promise.
I placed a single white rose on his headstone.
That spring, for the first time in fifty-five years, I said yes to a dinner invitation.
His name is Robert. He’s a retired librarian. He has a dog named Chaucer.
I wear Thomas’s ring on my right hand now.
Every time a plane flies overhead, I still blow it a kiss.
But now I keep walking.
