Tom buttoned his pajamas and climbed into his bed. It had been a long day—an eighteen-mile march with full gear, just as the weather was beginning to warm. Word came that they would be activated soon, so Captain Dick Winters—who had, at long last, replaced Sobel after a revolt among the troops that had garnered some demotions for those involved—had ramped up the drills. Tom’s legs and back ached decades before their time, and a cut in his left arm from crawling under barbed wire was worrying him. He’d seen a medic and taken penicillin for infection, but it was red and burned like the dickens. Still, he took Margaret’s letter from William and squinted as he perched on his side and held it up to the bedside light.

A smile spread across his face as she talked of Dottie and George and Gladys and Oliver. She’d written six pages and affixed extra postage stamps for the weight—but he was grateful for her loquaciousness (a word he’d learned and would slip into the next letter) because she brought color to her descriptions of her friends and made him feel like he was reading a radio drama script.

He felt his cheeks grow warm and hoped that it didn’t show. But William missed nothing.

“You’re hot under the collar for Margaret Beck, aren’t you?” asked William all of a sudden.

Tom jerked his head around.

“I am not. What a notion.”

“Are too. I can see you blushing even in this light.”

“I’m making an appointment for you to go to the eye doctor. Go to sleep.”

The crickets outside chirped and Tom listened to them before William spoke again.

“Want to know something? I sent her your picture.”

Tom sat up straight, his heart quickening. “You did what?”

“All right, all right,” said William, waving his hands in surrender. “Not just your picture. The one that the Browns took of the three of us. You, me, and John.”

Tom could no longer feel the pain in his arm. All of his attention had been pulled into this new turn in the conversation. He’d tried to bury any such thoughts that had arisen, convincing himself that it was the novelty of her letters that he liked. But he knew better than that—if he lived in the same town as Margaret Beck, he would want to take her out dancing. To see that smile in the photograph come alive as he held her in his arms. But these were not luxuries he could dwell on if he intended to further his career in the military.

William was spot-on with his observation.

“I almost told her that I was you and you were me, but in the end, I just left it blank. Do you want to know why?”

Tom was silent.