For some reason, that nearly made me laugh.
“I’m still angry.”
“I know.”
“Don’t say that.”
He nodded.
“Sorry.”
“I don’t forgive you.”
“I understand.”
“Not completely.”
“Yes.”Rings
I pulled out the gold ring.
Walter stared at it.
“But I read everything.”
His eyes filled.
“And you answered the question I’ve had for fifty-five years.”
He waited.
“Thomas wasn’t alone.”
“No.”
“He remembered me.”
“Yes.”
“He loved me.”
“Until the end.”
I swallowed.
“You were the one he trusted with that.”
Walter’s face crumpled.
“I failed.”
“Yes.”
He looked down.
“But you carried him too.”
Walter started crying.
I held out the gold ring.
“Put it on.”
He stared at me.
“What?”
“Beside the copper one.”
His hands started shaking.
“Margaret.”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
That made him laugh through tears.
I held out my left hand.
It took him three attempts.
His fingers trembled too badly.
Finally, the gold band slid onto my finger beside the crooked copper wire.
We both stared at it.
The perfect ring beside the imperfect one.Metals & Mining
Fifty-five years apart.
Walter covered his face.
I reached out and touched his arm.
That was all.
No grand forgiveness.
No declaration that everything was suddenly all right.
Some things deserve more time than that.
Walter and I started having coffee together after that.
Mostly on my porch.
Sometimes his.
There was never romance between us.
People occasionally assumed there was.
At our age, two widowed or unmarried people sitting together apparently still creates gossip.
I found that funny.
Walter and I had something else.
A strange friendship built around a boy neither of us ever stopped carrying.
He told me stories about Thomas I had never heard.
How he snored.
How terrible he was at cards.
How he kept one photograph of me folded inside his shirt pocket.
How he once traded half his dinner for paper so he could write me.
I gave Walter things too.
Stories of Thomas before the war.
Before uniforms.
Before fear.
The boy behind the football field.
The teenager who once climbed onto my parents’ roof because I told him I didn’t believe he could.
The boy who couldn’t dance but insisted he could.
In those final months, Walter and I slowly gave each other back the versions of Thomas that the other had never known.
Sometimes we spoke about him.
