Thank you for everything,
Ben
Amie slowly released the letter, its edges dampened by her sweating hands.
Ben was the person writing, all this time. Ben was the one she had consoled and turned to herself for consolation.
Ben had a short string.
P.S.—In the interest of living well and chasing the things I want, I’d like to see you again. No more secrets.
Amie felt feverish and light-headed, blinking back the tears that had gathered as she read. She needed time to think, to untangle everything. Her last class had finished for the day, so she left school early and caught the first bus she saw.
Amie settled into a seat, trying to stay calm, but a wave of nausea shivered through her body. She shut her eyes for the rest of the route, the bus stuttering slowly through traffic, until it arrived at her stop, and she raced out of her seat and up the stairs of her building, grateful to be back in her apartment.
Amie had saved all of Ben’s letters, before she knew they were his, and she pulled every page out of the drawer in her dresser, rereading each one in turn. She sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, staring at the sheets of loose-leaf fanned across the carpet. Each page decorated with Ben’s neat handwriting, always etched in dark blue ink.
Was it possible she had recognized something in Ben, something from these letters?
Perhaps that was why she had been so eager, so forward, in their time together. Why she had instantly felt the warmth of familiarity, which usually took so much longer to kindle. She had even pressed to go back to his apartment after just a few days, much faster than her typical pace.
Was this why Ben had wanted to wait, that night? So he could tell her the truth beforehand?
Amie knew that she was drawn to Ben. She had been drawn to him even when he was just a nameless shadow behind his words. But he only had fourteen years left. He had written that number once, and Amie never forgot it.
She needed to speak with Ben, but she wasn’t ready yet. Her stomach was in knots, her organs warring with each other. She wanted to scream, and she wanted to cry, and she wished that “B” were still an anonymous voice whom she could write to, now, for help.
Looking at all the letters spread across the floor, Amie saw the original note that Ben had written to her. Except he hadn’t really written to her, not that first time. He had simply sent a message into the universe, and she had chosen to respond.
Why had she responded, all those months ago? She couldn’t explain it, then or now. Something had simply pulled her in, never letting go.
She stared at that first letter, then picked up her phone and found the number for the World War II Museum.
“Hi, my name is Amie Wilson, and I’m a teacher in New York, and, um, I was hoping to get some more information about a certain letter in your collection?”
“Sure, is this for a lesson?” the receptionist asked.
Amie hated to lie, but she didn’t know how to tell the truth.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m doing a unit on women during the war.”
When she was connected to a curator, Amie described the letter. “It’s the one where a soldier asks his mother to tell Gertrude, ‘No matter what happens, I still feel the same.’ And I’d love to know what ever happened to them.”
“Yes, that’s a beautiful one,” the curator said in her soft Southern lilt. “Let me check something quickly. Do you mind if I put you on hold?”
So Amie waited a minute, and then another, unsure what she even wanted to hear. She simply felt like she couldn’t make any decisions about her own life until she knew what had happened to Gertrude’s.
“Hello, are you still there?” the curator asked. “I found the letter and . . . unfortunately, the soldier who wrote the message, Simon Starr, never came home. He was killed in France, in 1945. Gertrude Halpern was the woman he was betrothed to at the time, and she lived in Pennsylvania until she was eighty-six. It looks like she never married.”
Amie exhaled.
“I have similar backgrounds on a dozen other letters,” the curator said. “Would you like me to send some over to you to share with your students?”
Amie politely accepted, reciting her email address by rote, but her mind was elsewhere now, wondering if she should tell Ben the truth about Gertrude and her soldier.
After a sleepless night, Amie knew that she couldn’t process everything on her own. She needed her sister’s help. Amie had already texted Nina, back when she and Maura were away, gushing about the man she had met in their apartment, whom she hadn’t stopped thinking about since.