Have you thought any more about my lost days? You would be one of very few. All England had protests in the streets, but who in power ever cared about workers losing eleven days’ pay, or about young soldiers called back early from their leave?

A lord or a duke will summon a soldier back to battle on a whim.

What did my superiors care that I’d begun learning Hotteterre’s prelude in D on my flute—three minutes of pure and unassuming beauty? Even my failed attempts brought small birds to the door if I left it open. Starlings paid no mind to mistakes in my tune and I only wish now that I had learned from them how to bless and forgive.

Can it be that my wailing has tormented the angels, causing them to relent? Have they noticed that my eleven lost days included September the thirteenth, the day I would eventually die on Quebec’s plains? Has Michael, the Archangel of War, taken pity on me? —how else has it come about, this feeling that, with your assistance, I might stumble out of my fog and become the man I might have been were it not for all that vanished with my stolen days of 1752?

All I want, Mrs. Waugh, is for you to understand my plight, and perhaps, if you can, relay it to others. I am staying in my friend’s little tent at Parc du Mont-Royal, just up the hill from the gazebo in whose railing you may, if you wish to arrange a meeting, slip me a note, or from whose platform, if you desired, you might witness me try find the ordinary joy of life that has so far eluded this soldier who remains,

Sincerely yours,

General James Wolfe

How Sophie would ridicule this letter. After years of working on my case, she has started advising me to “suck it up” whenever I mention my lost leave. Reminds me I don’t believe in religion so can claim no help from angels. Part of me wishes I’d met Mrs. Waugh, not Sophie, on the beach a decade ago, frying corn dogs in a van, although I can’t imagine cuddling with her in a tent.