“I thought about contacting you,” he said.
“When?”
He struggled to speak.
“When I returned home.”
“And what stopped you?”
He looked toward the window.
For a long time, he said nothing.
Finally, he began to explain.
When he returned from the war, he had been physically exhausted and emotionally devastated. He had spent years trying to survive, and he said that coming home had not immediately brought him peace.
He had heard that I believed him dead. At first, he told himself he would contact me once he had recovered.
Then he learned that I had begun building a life without him.
He imagined me moving on, marrying someone else, and having children. He became afraid that contacting me would reopen wounds I had already begun to heal.
So he waited.
And the longer he waited, the harder it became to tell the truth.
He met Margaret, the nurse who helped him recover. She was patient with him, and eventually they married.
