Disappointed, she turned the envelope back over and sighed when she looked again at the post date, hoping that she’d read it incorrectly.

Articles from Ernie Pyle and other journalists on the ground about the horrors of D-Day had sent her out of her mind with concern for William and Tom.

In a strange way, it had made her grateful that John had not lived to see it.

Pyle had described bodies and personal items and carcasses of vehicles strewn across sands that had once been the sites of frivolity but would forever be stained with the blood of heroes. Barbed wire and hidden ditches awaited the men, along with Germans embedded in concrete bunkers that were nearly impervious to naval fire. Land mines. Floating mines. Everywhere they looked, the men had been surrounded by an unprecedented campaign to kill them.

Some of the accounts had been more personal in nature. Tales of soldiers coming upon the bodies of the dead—friends and foes—and rummaging through their pockets for ammunition, canteens, grenades, food. Reduced to scavengers hunting for survival.

She shook it off. She’d read too much in the past few weeks, clinging to any new detail, especially accounts of the Airborne. Picturing William and Tom in every scenario and praying—she hoped not posthumously—for their safety.

She heard her mother calling from downstairs, urgency in her voice to hurry. Margaret looked in the mirror and adjusted the corsage attached to the right side of her chest. An orchid on a bed of baby’s breath with a small fern leaf behind it. She tucked some stray wisps of hair into the braid that formed a crown over her head, smiling at the variations of color that the summer sun had created.

Would William think her hair was beautiful when at last they met?

She dismissed the thought as soon as she had it.

He had never acknowledged her many pleas to tell him which one he was in that picture that Mr. Brown had taken months ago, nor did he rise to her admonishment that it was unfair for him to know what she looked like when he didn’t reciprocate. She’d receive the occasional “I’d tell you, but that’s top-secret information likely to be redacted.”

Or, “I’m the devilishly handsome one.” Which was really no help at all, because if he was actually the handsome one, would he really say that about himself? But could she be sure that he wouldn’t? It’s not as if they had spent any time together. The kind that allowed for getting to know one’s mannerisms and jests.

Not that it mattered what he looked like. He was no more than a friend to her, though one who had become quite dear.