Harry had written to her from a place called Happy Valley, she remembers. He had told her that Francis had taken it badly. He didn’t seem to be himself, Harry said, like something had snapped in his head. She had heard the distress in Harry’s letters, his sense of panic, how he was appealing to her. He wanted her to write to her husband. He wanted her help to make Francis right. She wished now that Harry was here helping her. Had he not heard the panic in her voice?

There are two thousand men in this cemetery, the gardener has told her. So many. The crosses are neat, standing tidily in line, the flower beds around them well tended. These men are cared for. They are not forgotten. They have columbines, campanulas, and pansies. As the gardener tells her about their work here, she hears both pride and apology in his voice. It is the sheer number of crosses that makes her shake her head.

She had thought about looking for Francis in the first weeks and months of peace and possibility, but it was always a grave that she pictured herself searching for, it was always a place like this. She hadn’t really ever lingered on the alternative possibility. So many of the men in this cemetery have no names; their crosses bear the words A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR or KNOWN UNTO GOD. Francis could have been any one of these men until that photograph arrived. Was that known unto God all along too?

It is all kind and colorful in this square of English garden, but beyond the boundaries the colors change and the trees tell a different story. The woods on the skyline are tattered, tree trunks torn and blackened, and ragged boughs stretch like beseeching arms. In here it smells of grass clippings and tea roses; out there she knows that it will smell of smoke.

She follows the gardener along the line. It is impossible not to look at the words on the crosses, but the names of the men make her cry. There are so many Manchester men in this flower garden, young men full of ambitions and plans and hope, she imagines, like Will and Harry and Francis. Tokens have been left on some of the crosses to show that they are remembered. There are wreaths of greenery and rings of brass laurel and oak leaves.

“It’s funny that you should be here to see this lad,” the gardener says, turning back toward her. “He’s had two visitors in one week now. There was a chap looking for him just a couple of days ago.”

“A man?”

“His brother.”

“Francis?”