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A Thousand Letters(13)
Author: Staci Hart

Life inside of war is no life at all. It shrinks your world down to a thirty-mile radius, and everyone in that radius is living the same hell. There's a comfort in that. But there's also fear, fear that you'll never live that normal life again.

My family was my only connection to that normal life, and even that at times had been thin.

I'd poured myself into the Army, volunteering for tour after tour because it was easier than facing the life I'd left behind. I knew my Army life. I knew how to exist there. I didn't know how to be a civilian anymore.

So, I didn't come home much. But my family and I were close despite the fact. We spoke daily in the form of text, calls, emails, video chats. They'd visited me too, everywhere but Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think they understood why, though no one mentioned it. Especially not me.

But here, in this room, I was eighteen again. I was in love with a girl, with the girl, the one who I'd have moved heaven and earth for. And as I looked around, that past seemed so far away, like a story of a person I used to know.

Her pictures were on my cork board over my desk. Her poems were in my nightstand. That was the window she used to climb in when she was supposed to be in her bed at home. A sweater she'd gotten me for Christmas years ago was in the drawer still, I knew, and the box in the top of the closet held boutonnieres and notes we'd left in each other's lockers.

She was everywhere.

But then I considered my life for the last seven years. Considered what I'd seen. Flashes of memories flickered through my mind — an IED hitting the truck in front of us, my men, my friends wounded. My friends dead. Gunfire and the smell of mortars. The stars at midnight outside of Kardashar. The heat of the desert. The sickness of war, which hadn't changed since the beginning of man.

I twisted the black bracelet on my wrist, the reminder of those I'd lost. As if I could ever forget.

I'd convinced myself it had been easier without her. She'd been spared the pain, the fear she would have endured as I endured war. It was a mercy she'd ended it. I'd had no idea when I left here what the truth of my situation would be, but still, selfishly, I wanted her. I wished she'd chosen me. I wished that when the war and the world broke me, that she was there to hold me, to remind me there was still good in the universe.

Truth was, I didn't know if there was good in the universe. And losing Elliot was just another point of proof.

The memory of the last time I saw her crashed into me, and I closed my eyes against the force.

As much of a snap decision it had been to propose, I knew with every atom in my body that it was right, that it was time. Our plan had been on paper since weeks after I'd met her, but as I packed my duffle bag for boot camp, that two-dimensional plan rose off the page, every detail in high relief.

I was leaving, and I didn't know if I'd come back.

My sisters had been crying almost every day over my departure, and Dad, though I knew he supported me, couldn't hide his anxiety. He tried, but I felt it in every word, behind every hug, in every moment. Sadie was the same age I'd been when I lost Mom, and I felt her pain, her fear, just as fresh as if it were my own.

I felt like it was a betrayal, an abandonment. And that left me utterly alone.

I was leaving everyone I loved.

But I didn't have to leave Elliot. I could take her with me in a small way. I would have her always, if she would marry me.

The plan had been to wait to marry until she'd graduated, when I came back from my first tour overseas, to Iraq, if I had to guess. I'd wondered, as my hands stilled over my bag, if I would make it back.

It wasn't the first time I'd considered it, but it was the first time I felt it. I imagined it, imagined them sending my body home, imagined Elliot standing over my grave, wondering what would have been, what could have been.

Something in me snapped.

If something happened to me, she would be the last to know. She would receive nothing, would have no means to take care of her. If something happened to me (I pictured it, saw the image of my broken body, the blood, the sand blowing over me), if it happened before I came back, I would never have had her at all, never called her my wife. Never placed the ring on her finger and told her I'd love her until my last breath. And that was the one thing, the only thing I wanted before I died.

I knew where Dad kept Gran's ring, and I swiped it in the dark, hurried to her house, climbed in her window, and I changed the rules. For us. For me.

And she said yes. She eased my mind, eased my fears. She said yes, and that made me the happiest man in the entire world.

The next day as I waited for her to come over so we could tell my family, the foyer seemed smaller than it usually was as I paced from end to end. My thoughts flew around my head — she was on her way. We were getting married. Married. She'd given me everything I wished for when she uttered that single word: Yes.

A knock sounded on the door, and I rushed to open it, knowing it was her, smiling the smile of a man whose dreams have come true. But the look on her face nearly brought me to my knees.

"What happened?" I asked, reaching for her.

Her chin quivered, face bending as she curled into my chest, crying. I held her against me with my hand cupping the back of her head, her silky dark hair between my fingers. We stood like that for a long moment, my heart sinking lower and lower until I was anchored to the spot.

When she pulled away, she swiped at her tears, avoiding my eyes. "I … I'm sorry."

"For what?" I asked, terrified, my voice quiet and still.

   
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