Chapter 10: What He Didn't Write

Lena's POV

I shouldn't have said his name like that.

It came out low and rough, and the cellar's stone walls kept it a second longer than they should have.

Eli took one step inside and stopped.

"You said you couldn't sleep," he said.

"I can't."

"Can I help?"

I picked up the clipboard again so I didn't have to look at him.

"You can tell me why you never wrote."

The lantern hissed.

He didn't ask me what I meant, and that was how I knew.

"I asked you in the hospital in Landstuhl," I said. "I wrote my address on your cast. You said you would."

"I know."

"I wrote you four letters, Eli. I never heard a word. Then you were out of the Army, and I was out of the Army, and then I was a married woman."

I had never said that to anyone.

It had sat in me for six years.

"You got married two months after I shipped home," he said.

"That's not why."

"Isn't it?"

"I married Brent because he showed up, and you didn't."

His face did something I had not seen it do in a combat zone.

It cracked.

He turned, walked back out to his truck, and I thought, there it is, he's going.

He came back with a shoebox.

He put it on the shelf in front of me, between a jar of peaches and a case of rice.

"Open it," he said.

I lifted the lid.

The box was full of envelopes.

Dozens of them, in his square handwriting, with my old address on each one and a stamp in the corner.

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