John asked you to write William because he hadn’t received any letters from home. And it was so kind of you to do so. Just before William was going to write you back, he injured his right hand and couldn’t grip a pen. So I played secretary to his dictation.

He liked my handwriting better anyway.

Eventually, through an administrative snafu, dozens of letters from his family arrived at the same time and it was the happiest I’d ever seen him. By then, his hand had mostly healed and it took up all of his scarce free time to write them all back.

But there was still the question of your letters. Neither of us wanted them to go unanswered. You delighted us all with your big words and your optimistic outlook and, with the gaps filled in by John’s tales of his sister, I felt like I’d really gotten to know you.

I kept writing and he would occasionally contribute some thoughts, but as time went on, the letters were mostly mine.

Until they were entirely mine.

My favorite moments have been the ones in which I was writing to you.

The flowers, at least, were always my own. And I delighted in knowing that, if you liked them, it was my gift you were enjoying.

At William’s behest, though, I continued to sign his name. And, thinking that he might want to take them over one day, I agreed.

As for the rest—once we’d lost him—I have no excuse other than to say that in my grief, I could not bring myself to write to you as the stranger I was and impart that news.

And, I couldn’t bear the thought of telling you about another loss so soon after John’s death.

You’d become a lifeline to me. Everything I was experiencing, I thought of in relation to how I would tell you about it. Every letter you sent brought me peace when there was none surrounding us.

But I don’t want to go another day without telling you. It is important to me to live a life of honor.

I hope you will find room in that generous heart of yours to forgive me. I offer only explanation, not excuse.

Love, Tom

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

February 1945

Margaret marched over to the telephone booth on the corner and plunked in a nickel. She dialed the rotary until she’d entered the party line in Gladys’s brownstone.

It sounded fifteen times before someone picked up the extension, to which she insisted that they knock on Gladys’s basement door and tell her there was a call for her.

It was then that she realized it was Saturday morning and she’d probably woken half the building. But it was too late to take it back now.