When she thinks of Will he is still a boy with a blond fringe, winking at her across the tabletop, over his mother’s baked custards and trifles and steamed puddings, and her voice saying the words of grace. It hardly seems to make sense that Will could have been in this place of leveled woods and flattened churches, and that his brothers could have left him here.

Francis had written to her afterward, and told her how he felt responsible, how he should have been there to look after Will, how Will was only there because of him. Reading those words, she could almost feel his guilt. His frustration. His desolation. How fiercely and desperately angry he was with himself. She had barely known how to reply to that letter. What was she supposed to say in response? She sometimes wonders, if she had found the right words, could she have helped him and changed what came after? But, even now, she hardly knows what the right words might have been.

It’s my fault. She can picture his handwriting still. All of this is down to me. Will would never even have been here, Harry neither, if it wasn’t for me.

Francis’s letters had changed after that; his voice changed key, and she knew then that he had resolved to stop telling her things. His letters became more formulaic, lighter, inconsequential, like he’d decided only to show her the parts that he thought she ought to see. She knew that he had stopped sharing, that he was censoring himself. And didn’t that imply that she’d already failed him in some way? That he thought she wasn’t up to the task? He had let her talk after her mother died, let her pour all that upset out, and how grateful for that she had been; she realizes now that Francis had held all of his grief inside, that he hadn’t been able to let it out.

She leans back against the window and looks around this sorry hotel room. None of the pieces of furniture match and the bedspread has been patched. The walls look to have been newly papered, but with the telltale undulations beneath the blowsy roses, she’s not altogether sure that the paste and paper aren’t just holding the whole thing together.