“Nothing. I’d be dead if it had. I just sat under a tree and cried all night. To this day I don’t know if he was testing my courage or my luck.”

Part of the story seemed missing. “He must have been out there with you. Watching you.”

“Maybe.” She angled her face to the wintry sky. “Sometimes I think he was, sometimes I don’t. You didn’t know him like I did. I hated him after that, for the longest time. Really and truly hated him. But you can only hate somebody for so long.” She breathed again—deeply, resignedly. “I hope that’s true for you, Peter. That someday you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “That’s all. I’ve said too much as it is. I’m just glad I had you as long as I did.”

He looked at her, her stricken face, and he knew.

The Colonel wasn’t the real secret. He was. He was the secret she had kept. That they had kept from each other, even from themselves.

He reached for her. “Alicia, listen—”

“Don’t do this. Don’t.” And yet she did not back away.

“Those three days, when I thought you’d die and I wouldn’t be there.” A fist-sized lump had formed in his throat. “I always thought I’d be there.”

“Peter, goddamnit.” She was trembling; he felt the weight of her struggle. “You can’t do this now. It’s too late, Peter. It’s too late.”

“I know.”

“Don’t say it. Please. You said you understood.”

He did; he understood. All that they were to each other seemed cradled within this simple fact. He felt no surprise or even regret but, rather, a deep and sudden gratitude and, with it, a force of clarity, filling him like a breath of winter air. He wondered what this feeling was and then he knew. He was giving her up.

She let him put his arms around her then, pulling her into the open flaps of his jacket. He held her, as she had held him, all those days ago in Vorhees’s tent. The same goodbye reversed. He felt her stiffen and then relax against him, becoming smaller in his embrace.

“You’re leaving,” she said.

“I need you to promise me something. Keep the others safe. Get them to Roswell.”

A faint but discernible nod against his chest. “What about you?”

How he loved her. And yet the words themselves could never be spoken. Holding her in his arms, he closed his eyes and tried to inscribe the feeling of her into his mind, into memory, so that he could take this with him.

“I think you’ve looked after me long enough, don’t you?” He pulled away to see her face a final time. “That’s all,” he said. “I just wanted to thank you.”