The Letter

by Marie Tillman

  “Look at those two—how cute.” I pointed toward two sandy-haired boys filling up buckets with sand.

  Pat smiled as the boys started arguing over who should fill the buckets.

  “I guess I kind of took it for granted growing up that we could drive over here whenever we wanted,” Pat said. “It’d be nice to move back here someday, or at least get a little beach house for the off-season.” We’d had this conversation before. Having lived away from home for so long, we both felt a distinct pull to someday get back to the Bay Area.

  It was January, but the weather was mild and the sun warmed us as we sat perched on the rocks. As we got up to leave, I noticed a small red box sitting on the rock behind me. I reached down to pick it up.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, open it.”

  Inside was a beautiful diamond solitaire.

  I looked up at him, surprised and speechless.

  He took the ring out of the box and slipped it on the ring finger of my left hand. We had never discussed rings, or what I would want, but it was perfect. A simple round diamond.

  “Is it too big?” he asked.

  I wiggled my finger. “No, it fits perfectly.”

  “No, I meant the diamond. Is it too big?”

  I looked up from my finger, a smirk on my face. Only Pat would be concerned that the diamond was too big. “No, it’s perfect,” I assured him.

  After so many years together, it wasn’t a complete surprise, but I was still taken aback. It had been a low-key, lazy day, and while we’d had a million small exchanges over the years that had somehow made it clear we’d spend our lives together, I wasn’t expecting a proposal. But it was a perfect moment. And I had never been happier.

  Chapter Three

  Three years after Pat’s proposal on the beach, I found myself staring at my engagement ring, unsure of what to do. I’d slipped it on each day for years, and its weight had become comfortably familiar, the ritual of sliding it on my finger as habitual as brushing my teeth. I looked down at it for a long time, unable to decide whether to wear it and my wedding ring that day. Would people be looking for it?

  It had been only three weeks since I’d left my office with the chaplain, and this was my first day back at work. I had decided in advance to treat the day, a Thursday, just like any other day. I would get up early, drive to the gym by my office before most people got out of bed, avoiding gridlock on the road, get to my desk early, and clear through my in-box. So far, it had been muscle memory in action. The alarm went off; I got up, pulled on sweats, and grabbed the bag of clothes I had packed the night before. I drove up I-5 through the morning darkness in silence. Listening to music was something I wasn’t close to ready for, and I didn’t want to listen to the news. The noise of the news had taken on new meaning after Pat’s death and I needed quiet. I parked at my gym, barely exercised, then showered. I put on black slacks and a black sweater. Then came the part of my morning ritual when I usually slipped on my rings, and I stopped short. Should I wear them? I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t sure if people would look at my hand, but I knew people would be looking at me. I grew up in a suburb small enough that if someone experienced something bad—a divorce, a death, anything like that—everyone knew about it. If you happened to run into the person at the supermarket or coffee shop, you’d feel awkward knowing her business without having heard it from her. You might try to be discreet, but of course you would scan her for evidence of her misfortune. “There’s that poor woman whose husband was killed. What a pity. And she’s only twenty-seven.”

  What would people see when they scanned me? I was thinner, definitely, than the last time they’d seen me. Probably a little paler. I chose black because I felt like I needed to be completely covered and in black all the time, like wearing pinks and yellows would suggest I was somehow all better. Still, I rarely wore color anyway, and the black felt right. But my jewelry—what to do about that? I decided to wear the rings.

  I didn’t need to go to work yet and in fact wasn’t expected back until the next week. I’d returned to Washington on Tuesday and had planned to spend the rest of the week alone, a state I’d rarely been in since Pat had died. It was natural for me to be alone, and I’d often craved that time in the weeks I’d been surrounded by family, surrounded by friends, surrounded by press cameras. I’m a loner by nature; I like my space to process the world around me, and it had taken so much effort to be seen so much I wanted to retreat for a few days. Still, when I was alone at home on Wednesday, it had been so quiet, and there didn’t seem to be enough room in the house for me and all I had to think through. I needed a place to be. I’d called Jessica and told her I was coming back to work the next day. When she asked if I was sure, I knew I was.

  The office had an open floor plan, and we all worked at desks grouped together, facing one another, with separators between them that were only about a foot tall. The idea was that the office would foster interaction and conversation, which it did. But it was also very exposed. There was no door to close, nowhere really to hide if I was having a tough moment. I walked into the empty room, grateful I’d beaten everyone there. My tidy desk was clear, save for a manila envelope marked “Condolences.” Jessica had gone through my emails during my absence and printed out everything I might want to read later so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed. My in-box would be a safe zone. But what about my clients? Would anyone assume I’d been on vacation and ask where I’d been? What would I say?

  One by one, my colleagues trickled in and set about their business. They said “hey” to me, as they usually would, but not much more. I couldn’t stand the look in their eyes when we made contact, the pity-filled glances from those who dared to lock gazes. But mostly, people were afraid of the raw pain so thinly veiled, and avoided contact.

  Jessica finally came in, and she plopped down beside me. She looked at me hesitantly for a second, then said, “Let’s go downstairs,” signaling our usual morning routine. I grabbed my purse and we made our way down to the coffee shop at the bottom of our building for the coffee and conversation that had started our mornings together for over a year. Jess filled me in on the office gossip, intentionally talking over the very large elephant in the space between us. And I was grateful. I didn’t want to talk about the past few weeks.

  * * *

  The days immediately following Pat’s death had been a flurry of action and a flurry of nothing. My parents and Christine stayed with me in our little house while we waited for Pat to be flown to Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware, from Afghanistan. Kevin would be flying back with his remains. Friends and family started gathering in San Jose, where we planned to have the public memorial, but there was no sense for me to go there yet, since I’d be flying to Dover as soon as the plane from Afghanistan was expected.

  Pat’s death had set off a media storm. Though he’d been a football star at ASU and then had grown to be a valuable player for the Arizona Cardinals, outside Arizona he’d still flown under the press radar. But when word got out that he had chosen to leave the NFL for the military, every media outlet wanted to talk to him. Though he chose not to grant any interviews, stories about his decision nevertheless glutted the press for a while. Still, that was nothing compared to the apparent interest in his death. Interview requests clogged our phone lines, and news cameras lined the street in front of our house. In full retreat, my family drew the curtains. Overstuffed gift baskets arrived from national morning talk shows, baskets filled with things like bathrobes and slippers, food, elaborate flower bouquets, and notes indicating interest in doing an interview. My home now had the sickly smell of too many flowers, which made me think of a morgue. In sharp contrast to the ostentatious bouquets, the simple tulips I’d bought to cheer myself up when Kevin and Pat had left for Afghanistan still sat in small bunches throughout the house.

  My family and I sat around and stared at one another, not feeling like doing anything, but desperate for something to do. My mother busied herself
making green tea, cutting up fresh fruit, and trying to get us to eat. She tends to clean when she’s nervous, so my house, though crowded, was spotless. My dad paced a lot, the phone glued to his ear, his voice quiet and tired. Christine would come into my room to escape, and like kids, we sat on my bed staring at each other in disbelief. There were so many details I had to manage, and things I had to plan, that Pat was getting lost in the noise. Christine cut through all that. She just wanted to talk about him. She loved him so much herself; he had been in our family for over a decade. She didn’t want to tell stories about him—there would be plenty of that at the memorial, and we weren’t ready for it yet—but she wanted at least to say his name and reflect on the basic fact that he was gone. She became my refuge, the place where I could go just to talk through the chaos and feel connected to something stable. Because at that point, it wasn’t real to me yet. It was easy to handle details and pretend he was just stuck on deployment somewhere, without believing the magnitude of the truth. Christine helped me face the reality. In our adulthood, our relationship had evolved into more than just the closeness created by a shared past. Some friends are like family; she was family and she was my best friend.

  There was nothing else to do over the next couple of days but prepare to leave, so my sister started helping me pack. “What are you wearing to the memorial?” she asked while investigating my closet. I didn’t really have anything. It was strange discussing this practical matter of what to wear. Pat was gone and I didn’t care about a funeral dress, but I needed to get something. My parents, Christine, and I drove up to Seattle in search of an appropriate dress.

  The second we got to the Nordstrom downtown, I knew it was a mistake. Stepping out from the protected space of our house was surreal. Inside those four walls, the world had stopped. Everything in my life had changed the instant Pat was shot, but outside, the world remained the same. Now, in this large department store, the other shoppers moved frantically around, grabbing at things on the racks, while I moved in slow motion. Other people’s lives went on as if nothing had happened. The energy of it made me instantly nauseous.

  Our family walked numbly through the busy downtown streets to the Banana Republic. My sister helped me grab a handful of black dresses to try on. I hated all of them but quickly settled on a simple black cotton sleeveless dress with a thin white ribbon around the waist. My mom, feeling uncertain what to contribute, said she was concerned about how little we’d been eating the past several days, and suggested we try to have a meal. We went back to the Nordstrom Café for lunch. It was a place I used to go for lunch all the time, but I now sat in the familiar dining room in a daze.

  Our zombie-like existence went on for a couple more days, and then Pat’s body was finally flown from Bagram, the base of US military operations in Afghanistan, to Germany, and from there to the military morgue in Dover. I wanted to get to Pat and Kevin as soon as possible and had asked to fly to Dover. The Army couldn’t arrange this, but a television producer who I’d become friendly with over the years had heard about my desire to get to Dover and called on her considerable resources to help me find a solution. A kind man who owned a plane was a friend of hers, and he offered to fly me there. It was the first of many gestures of kindness from complete strangers who felt affected by Pat’s death. My family dropped me off at a small airfield and I boarded the tiny plane. I’d never been on a private plane before, but I barely noticed my surroundings. When we touched down in Dover, a group of soldiers was waiting to pick me up and take me to the hotel, where I’d finally face something I had been both dreading and eagerly awaiting: seeing Kevin.

  * * *

  Kevin and Pat had always been uncommonly close. Dannie had often joked that Pat loved Kevin so much he married a female look-alike. Kevin and I had large blue eyes in common, a trait that made Pat—who had comparatively small, darker eyes—jealous. Kevin was constantly sketching and leaving around little cartoons and doodles and would always give his characters big blue eyes. In a way, their relationship was a lot like mine and Christine’s. With my sister, there was never jealousy. She was bossy when we were kids, but I was easygoing and happy to do whatever she wanted me to, so it all worked out. It was the same with Pat and Kevin. All throughout their childhood, Pat looked out for Kevin, and Kevin worshipped his older brother. They had been rambunctious playmates when they were little and sounding boards for each other when they got older, and they always had each other’s backs. Though both were great athletes, they never had a rivalry. When Kevin accepted a baseball scholarship to ASU, Pat was ecstatic to have him there. I’d go visit Pat for the weekend when both brothers were at ASU, and we’d spend most of our time at the baseball diamond, watching Kevin play a triple-header. Their closeness didn’t really ever bother me. Perhaps because I had a sister I was close with, I just got it. And I loved Pat’s loyalty to and support of Kevin. It was an attractive quality—sweet and completely true to Pat’s nature.

  When Pat decided to enlist, there was little question that Kevin would, too. And when Pat and I moved to Fort Lewis, there was no question that Kevin would live with us. Their closeness was one reason; the other was that if he hadn’t lived with us, Kevin would have had to live in the barracks, and neither Pat nor I would have felt comfortable with that. The kids who lived there were eighteen, and Kevin was definitely older in every sense of the word. Pat was granted a housing allowance, because we were married, but Kevin wasn’t, since he was single. So when I scouted houses in University Place, I looked for a home for our family of three.

  From the moment we moved in, the three of us became disconnected from our previous lives. We were focused on being part of something that was bigger than us, this greater cause. Pat and Kevin went to Fort Lewis every day, but they had little in common with the younger guys serving with them. I was commuting to Seattle and felt out of step with that world, too. If a friend asked, “Hey, Marie, do you guys want to meet for happy hour Friday?” I’d think things like “Sure, Pat and Kevin will be back from their tour in Iraq by then, why not?” Caught between two crowds that felt foreign, we found it was easier to live in a country of our own.

  When Kevin and Pat weren’t away, we fell into a routine. We made our own little book club, determining to read the same thing and talk about it. I’d make dinner and we would sit out on the porch or around the coffee table and discuss whatever interested us at the time. Pat was always finding new topics to explore and loved to challenge those around him to do the same.

  One of our last books was John Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, a true account of a fundamentalist sect of the Mormon Church. The three of us were sitting around, talking about religion, when Pat decided it would be a good idea to get his Mormon cousin on the phone and get his perspective. Kevin and I sat in the background, amused but not surprised, as Pat called Brandon in Utah. Most people shy away from conversations about religion or politics, but Pat sought them out. He was genuinely interested in understanding his cousin’s beliefs, and he encouraged him to pick up Krakauer’s book. He wanted him to read it so they could discuss it.

  On Sunday mornings, the three of us went to a diner in Tacoma called the Hob Nob, which was popular with students from the University of Puget Sound. We’d sit and read the paper, talk, eat omelets, and drink coffee out of thick mugs. Whenever we could, we’d take short road trips, visiting places like the faux-Bavarian town of Leavenworth, where we drank beer all day, then stopped at a river on the way home so Kevin and Pat could dive in. We made a family holiday card, the three of us in front of a Christmas tree and a menorah. We all wore cheesy Christmas sweaters, including our cats. When Pat and I went away alone—just once, to Banff in Canada—we felt a little guilty about leaving Kevin behind and shopped for a souvenir sweatshirt to bring back to him. There were definitely times that I wanted Pat to myself, but I loved Kevin—both because he was so impossibly sweet and because I loved a man who loved him so much.

  Military life was difficult, and Kevin and Pat j
ust wanted to get away from it at the end of the day. And while Pat had me, Kevin was single. So I tried to be there for him, too, making his favorite dinners and taking care of him any way I could. And he took care of me, too. Before one of their long stretches away from me, Kevin bought me a goofy-looking metal cat with huge feet for the yard. “This is Rusty Big-Toes,” he said. “He’ll protect you while we’re gone.” Kevin often sent letters to me when they were deployed, telling me to stay strong and that they would hurry home.

  * * *

  When I got to the hotel in Dover, Kevin was waiting for me in the lobby. He looked pale and exhausted, and I knew he saw the same when he looked at me. We hugged for a long moment, but we didn’t say much then, or at all that night. I stayed up until morning with Kevin in his room. Neither of us wanted to sleep, although Kevin did nod off at some points. Neither of us wanted to be alone. We turned on the TV and let SportsCenter or something like it fill the room with background noise, but neither of us was really watching it. There was comfort in just being together. Before seeing each other, we had spoken, briefly, on the night Pat died. After calling my parents, I asked for him first when the Army came to tell me of Pat’s death. When I was finally able to talk to him late that first horrible night, his voice cracked on the other end of the line as he confirmed what I had been told. Pat was gone, killed in an enemy ambush. He kept apologizing, feeling somehow responsible for not keeping his brother safe. What happened wasn’t his fault, and my heart broke at the anguish in his voice as he said he was sorry over and over again.