The name he revealed next made me go pale.
“Evelyn.”
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
My older sister’s name hung between us like something neither of us wanted to touch.
“Evelyn?” I finally whispered.
Daniel nodded.
“I know how it sounds.”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t sound possible.”
He reached across the small table and took my hand.
“I wish it weren’t true.”
I pulled my hand back.
“My sister loved me. She would never have done something like that.”
Daniel looked down.
“She loved you. I never doubted that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He took a long breath.
“I came home in 1971.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“You came home?”
“Yes.”
“But your parents said—”
“I know what they said.”
I stared at him.
For more than half a century, I had believed Daniel had disappeared because of the war.
I had mourned someone who, in my mind, had never been given the chance to come home.
And now he was sitting across from me telling me that he had actually returned.
“How?”
Daniel explained that after being injured overseas, he had eventually been sent back to the United States.
His recovery took months.
When he was finally discharged, he had only one thought.
Finding me.
He returned to our hometown with the address he had memorized as a teenager.
But the town had changed.
So had the people.
And Daniel had changed too.
“I was different,” he said. “Older. Angry. Confused. But I still had your name in my head every day.”
He went to my family’s house.
Evelyn answered the door.
I closed my eyes.
“What did she tell you?”
Daniel’s voice became quiet.
“She told me you had moved on.”
My eyes opened.
“What?”
“She said you had gotten engaged.”
I stared at him.
“I wasn’t engaged.”
“I know that now.”
“She lied to you?”
Daniel nodded.
“She told me you didn’t want to hear from me. She said you’d built a new life and that contacting you would only cause problems.”
I stood up.
My hands were trembling.
“Why would she do that?”
Daniel didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.
He pulled out a small envelope.
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