She leaned her dark head against the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling. “He went missing shortly after the first gas attack at Ypres. I was suddenly neither wife nor widow. And I blamed myself for not caring, for not loving him in the way he loved me. I kept telling myself that he knew, that somehow he’d realized why I had married him, and he’d lost his talisman, so to speak. I couldn’t bear the guilt, and so I thought, I’ll find him and save him. And so I trained as a nurse, and I worked very hard, I did my best, from mopping ward floors to keeping my nerve in the operating theater, and soon I was shipped to France. But I went for selfish reasons, I see that now. I never found Mark among the unidentified wounded. I could find no one who had seen him die. It was as if he were in a limbo of some sort, and no one had the key.”

It was hard to listen to her confession. Rutledge had wondered, time and again, but never asked. He realized now that he hadn’t really wanted to know. Her marriage was in the past, let it rest there. But he said nothing.