“Why?”
His fingers tightened around the cap.
“Because I knew Thomas.”
Everything inside me stopped.
I stared at him.
“What did you say?”
“I knew Thomas.”
“No.”
“I served with him.”
My hand found the doorframe.
Walter continued.
“We were in the same unit.”
I shook my head.
“That’s not possible.”
“It is.”
“You’ve lived across the street from me for twenty-eight years.”
“I know.”
“And you’re telling me you knew Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“Personally?”
“Yes.”Electronic Components
I felt dizzy.
“How personally?”
Walter looked at me.
“He talked about you every night.”
I stopped breathing.
“The girl behind the football field.”
My knees weakened.
I stepped aside.
Walter entered.
We sat at the kitchen table.
The gold ring remained on the counter between us.
I stared at him.
“Say that again.”
“What?”
“He talked about me?”
“All the time.”
“How?”
Walter smiled faintly.
“He said you laughed too loudly.”
I covered my mouth.
Thomas used to say that.
“He said you hated tomatoes.”
I started crying.
“He said you wanted a house with yellow curtains.”
I could barely speak.
“I was eighteen.”
“He remembered.”
For fifty-five years, I had wondered whether Thomas carried me with him the way I carried him.
Now an old man across my kitchen table was telling me he had.
Then anger arrived.
Hard.
Fast.
“You lived across from me.”Anatomy
Walter looked down.
“Yes.”
“For twenty-eight years.”
“Yes.”
“You knew who I was?”
“From the first day.”
I stood.
“And you said nothing?”
His face tightened.
“I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t?”
“No.”
“You could wave from your porch.”
“Yes.”
“You could shovel my driveway.”
His eyes lifted.
I froze.
“You did that?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
“Oh my God.”
Walter looked away.
“You mowed my yard too.”
“Sometimes.”
“You fixed the loose porch step.”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
“All these years.”
He reached inside his coat.
“There’s something else.”
He pulled out an envelope.
Old.
Yellowed.
Water-stained along one edge.Rings
My name was written across the front.
Margaret.
The handwriting made my entire body go cold.
I knew it.
I had six letters upstairs written in that same hand.
The same slant.
The same ridiculous curl on the T.
The same way he wrote the M in my name.
I whispered:
“Thomas.”
Walter laid the envelope on the table.
“He wrote it the night before.”
My eyes snapped toward him.
