Mark smiled. “That sounds just like him.”
Maggie took another sip of her eggnog, still enjoying the taste. She made a note to keep it stocked in her refrigerator, assuming she’d be able to find it after the holidays. “It took a few more years of Christmas cards for me to believe that he was really committed to our plan. To us, I mean. Every year, I’d think to myself that this was the year the card wouldn’t come or that he’d tell me it was over. But I was wrong. In every Christmas card that arrived, he counted down the years until we could see each other again.”
“He never met anyone else?”
“I don’t think he was interested. And I really didn’t date much, either. In my last years of high school and community college, I was asked out here and there and occasionally I went, but I never had romantic interest in any of them. No one measured up to Bryce.”
“And he graduated from West Point?”
“In 2000,” she said. “Afterwards, like his dad, he went to work in military intelligence in Washington, D.C. I’d graduated from high school and finished taking classes at community college as well. Sometimes I think we should have followed his suggestion and reunited right after he graduated, instead of waiting until I was twenty-four. It all feels so arbitrary now,” she said, a melancholy look coming over her. “Things would have turned out differently for us.”
“What happened?”
“We both did what I’d recommended and became young adults. He worked at his job and I worked at mine. Photography was my whole world early on, not just because I was passionate about it but also because I wanted to be someone worthy of Bryce, not just someone he loved. Meanwhile, Bryce was making adult decisions about his life, too. Do you know that old army commercial? Where the song goes, ‘Be all that you can be…in the army’？”
“Vaguely.”
“Bryce had never given up on the idea of becoming a Green Beret, so he applied to SFAS. Aunt Linda wrote and told me about it. I guess Bryce’s parents had mentioned it to her and she knew I’d want to know.”
“What’s SFAS?”
“Special Forces Assessment and Selection. It’s at Fort Bragg, back in North Carolina. Long story short, Bryce was assessed with flying colors, eventually went through the training, and ended up being selected. All of that happened by the spring of 2002. Of course, by then, the military had made special forces a priority and wanted the highest-quality people they could find, so I’m not surprised Bryce made it.”
“Why was it a priority?”
“Nine Eleven. You’re probably too young to remember what a cataclysmic event that was, a turning point in America’s history. In Bryce’s Christmas card in 2002, he said that he couldn’t tell me where he was—which even to me was a tip-off that he was someplace dangerous—but that he was doing okay. He also said that he might not be able to make it to Ocracoke the following October, when I was to turn twenty-four. He said that if he wasn’t there, not to read anything into it—he’d find a way to let me know if he was still deployed and would arrange for an alternate time and place for us to finally meet.”
She fell silent, remembering. Then: “Strangely, I wasn’t all that disappointed. More than anything, I was amazed that after all those years, both of us still wanted to be together. Even now, it still seems implausible that our plan worked. I was proud of him and proud of myself, too. And of course, I was incredibly excited to see him again, no matter when that would be. But once again, it wasn’t in the cards. Fate had something else in store for us.”
Mark said nothing, waiting. Instead of speaking, Maggie faced the Christmas tree again, forcing herself not to dwell on what had happened next, a skill she’d mastered over the years. Instead, she stared at the lights, noting the shadows and tracking the movement of traffic outside the gallery door. When she was finally confident the memory had been fully locked away, she reached for her handbag to retrieve the envelope she’d stashed inside earlier, right before she’d left her apartment. Without a word, she handed it to Mark.
She didn’t watch as he no doubt studied the return address and realized he was holding a letter from her aunt Linda; nor did she watch as he lifted the seal on the envelope. Though she’d read the letter only once, she knew with utter clarity what Mark would see on the page.
Dear Maggie,
It’s late at night, rain is falling, and though I should have been asleep hours ago, I find myself at the table wondering whether I have the strength to tell you what I must. Part of me believes that I should talk to you in person, that maybe I should fly to Seattle and sit down with you at your parents’ house, but I’m afraid you’ll find out from other sources before I’ve had the chance to let you know what happened. Some of the information is already on the news, and that’s why I overnighted this letter. I want you to know that I’ve been praying for hours, both for you and for me.