At first she thought she’d only take one envelope with her. She hadn’t been sure she could read more than one. She feared what? That she’d break down? Chuck a spaz? That was a Frankism. With Seri and Eve and Purdue, privacy was zero. Crew, though, they would get how she needed to sit in the bird alone after her wingman got hurt, even if it was sledding that socked him. But the hut girls knew she got no letters, had no boyfriend. They would, out of concern in Seri’s and Eve’s case, explore and push, and sooner or later word would circulate that Frank declared secret passion in stacks of love letters. Right now, the envelopes were in her ruck, a place of nil interest, under a blanket, under her bed. She’d have to buy a tackle box and lock, like Purdue’s. The covered-over byways of Purdue rose up—the story of press releases in the box suddenly sounding truly unlikely.

Your mind heated up fast. Mary’d had all kinds of ideas about what Frank might have written. Maybe an Afghan woman he’d been hooking up with had gotten pregnant, and he’d left directions to an isolated village. She pictured the perilous journey, the grateful woman, tearful in Mary’s arms when she learned Frank was injured, possibly—but then the tape burned in the reel, film snapped; he wasn’t dead. No matter how bad you wanted the dramatic tale, they were so hard to make plausible, even in your own head. The heroic sped ahead, just out of reach.

She looked at the other envelopes she’d grabbed. She was going to read them in order but couldn’t resist picking the most recent ones. He’d written it just before they’d gone sledding. It was a different envelope, probably from the base commissary. It was thicker than the other one; there were lots of sheets of paper. He’d reinforced the glue with tape.

There were at least a dozen pages, maybe more. As she unfolded them, she saw Internet addresses in minuscule print at the tops and bottoms. But where was his writing? With some effort, she flattened the pages out.

The first one was a map of the run they’d done that night. It looked as if it was from Google Earth, but it might have been DOD. There was North Waziristan. She looked closely at the circled star that was Khushali Torikhel. She went to the next page.