“I… I think I might come to love him in time, but it’s…” Wendy hesitates; the words refuse to come easily. She understands Ned, at least in part. It is her own piece of the puzzle Wendy now struggles to understand.

On their wedding night, instead of coming to her as a husband, Ned had silently handed Wendy a bundle of letters. The edges of some had been burned, the paper frail and flaking and smelling of ash.

“I barely managed to save them,” he’d told her. She’d looked at him, questioning, but he’d only said, “You should know, and understand who it is you’ve married.”

He’d moved toward the window, leaving her to sit on their marriage bed with the letters in her lap. She’d felt a moment of relief, uncertain how things would be between them once they were wed, uncertain she wanted him as a husband when she’d barely begun to know him as a friend. Her own emotions had been a complicated knot settled in her stomach, where Ned’s had been stark on his face—sorrow and pain, hope and the willingness to trust braided together into one.

She lifted the first letter, unfolding it with care. She’d read, and Ned had watched her, pacing occasionally, and occasionally still, restless fear shivering beneath his skin. The letters were written by Ned, from the trenches in Verdun, addressed to someone named Henry. As the letters named shared memories, Wendy came to understand Henry had been a school friend of Ned’s. And reading on, in wonder, she had learned how time had transformed Henry and Ned into something else, something far more than friends.

Periodically, Wendy had looked up to see Ned almost mouthing silently, as if reading along with her words etched on his heart.

“My father tried to burn them,” Ned said as she set the last letter down.

The reading had left Wendy feeling wrung out. It had already been late when they’d entered the bedroom and now, beyond the windows, dawn had already begun to blush the edges of the sky. She’d read the whole night through.

“Were they never sent?” Wendy’s heart had ached, thinking of Ned—a man she barely knew then—so lost in love. She could scarcely imagine how it must have been for him, love twisted into a source of shame, forced to bury his secret, never allowed to simply be.

“They were sent. Henry wrote letters in return.” Ned’s voice had broken then, not his accustomed stutter, but something more raw and wounded. He hadn’t looked at her but out at the rising sun. “Those letters, his letters, I burned myself. To keep them safe. Henry… passed away recently. Complications from pneumonia. His sister returned these letters to me. I don’t know if she ever read them, but my father found the package and…”

Ned shrugged, an inelegant and pained motion, bringing his shoulders up in bony defense against the world. But when he’d spoken Henry’s name, when he’d told Wendy the truth of him, Ned hadn’t stuttered at all.