One spring afternoon, my telephone rang while I was brushing dust from my hands after another trip to the attic.
“You’ve been up there again, haven’t you?” Margaret asked.
My older sister always knew.
“It’s spring. I air the dress out.”
“Eleanor.”
Her voice softened.
“It has been fifty-five years.”
I closed my eyes.
“Waiting for him was admirable once. But you’re seventy-three now. You’re not eighteen.”
“I’m fine, Margaret.”
“You have spent your whole life waiting for a boy who is not coming back.”
She sighed.
“Mother said the same thing before she passed. So did Samuel’s mother.”
I looked toward the attic stairs.
Samuel’s mother had never particularly approved of me.
Not when we were young.
Not when there was still a future to argue about.
“I remember what everyone said.”
“Then remember it.”
Margaret’s voice became firmer.
“That house is too quiet. Come live near me at Cedar Hill. I’m the only family you have left.”
Margaret still lived in our parents’ old house at Cedar Hill.
She inherited it after Father died.
“I like my quiet.”
“Suit yourself.”
She gave the familiar sigh she had been giving me since we were girls.
“I only call because I worry.”
“I know.”
We said goodbye.
I set the phone down.
Then I thought about all the years I had spent searching in the only ways available to me.
I once mailed a letter to Samuel’s parents.
It came back unopened after their house had changed owners.
Every year, I contacted the veterans’ office.
Every year, the answer remained the same.
Missing.
No updated information.
No confirmation of death.
Nothing.
I asked Margaret dozens of times whether anyone had ever come to Cedar Hill looking for me.
“Not a soul,” she always said.
“Who would after all this time?”
That afternoon, I made tea.
I never drank it.
People called my faithfulness stubbornness.
To me, it was the last true thing I still possessed.
“You kept your promise,” I whispered into the empty kitchen.
“That has to count for something.”
The tea went cold.
Evening settled over Bellmere.
Then someone knocked on my front door.
