“Of course. But why do you say that?”

“Oh, these men and their memories. It’s really not over for so many of them yet, is it?”

Chapter Sixty-Four: Harry

Chapter Sixty-Four

Harry

Calvaire du Quercy, October 1921

IT IS NOT FROM HER?”

“No. It’s Rachel’s writing. It’s from a friend.” Harry is familiar with the handwriting of several women now, their loops and leans and the way they set down the lines onto an envelope. There are still no envelopes from Edie, though.

“Read it, if you wish,” says Gabriel. “I will make the coffee.”

He sits at the table and opens Rachel’s envelope. It is the second that he has received from her this month. She has gone to David’s grave. She had been to that same cemetery before, her letter tells Harry. She doesn’t know how she could have missed him, how she could have walked so close by and not known that he was there. She will return to England now, she says. She will pull up the shutters and restart her sewing machine, make a business and a purpose for herself. Harry is not quite sure what emotion he hears between Rachel’s lines. She tries to sound determined, but it is tinged with something else. He suspects she is not experiencing the sense of relief that she had told herself she would. What has hit her is not quite the emotion that she was braced for. He thinks about her profile on the boat reciting poems and wonders what lines will come to mind as she reverses her journey. He thinks again about the mystery of the empty photograph.

“Your friend is well?” Gabriel asks and puts the coffeepot down on the table.

“I think so. I hope so.”

“This is the tall woman? The Amazonian?”

“No.” Harry laughs. “That’s Cassie. Her letters are full of wagging fingers. She writes to tell me that I have to write to Edie.”

He does not need Cassie’s encouragement; though his letters remain unanswered, he carries on writing. It is as if, in describing the details of his days, and committing these acts and images to her eyes, he tests that what he sees is true. He hasn’t told her about the photographer, though. He hasn’t told Gabriel all of it either. He’s not quite sure how to put it into words yet, and suddenly doesn’t feel like he can trust his own eyes or his mind.

“Does she realize how many letters you have written to Edie?”

“Possibly not.”