The First Letter

Dear Evelyn,

You were right. There's nothing else to do.

I've been in France three weeks now and I've written you four letters and torn up three of them because they sounded either too cheerful or too honest and I couldn't decide which was worse. This one I'm keeping because I've decided you're the kind of person who can handle honest.

It's cold here in a way that isn't like Ohio cold. Ohio cold is clean — it's wind off the lake and frost on your boots. This cold is wet and old and it goes into your bones and sits there. The other men complain about it and I don't because complaining seems like it uses up something I might need later.

I think about the church hall. I think about you saying peonies were enough to know me by. I've been trying to work out what I know about you: you arrived late but you weren't nervous about it, which means you were used to arriving late on purpose. You deflected every question about your work with a smile that was pleasant enough to make the deflection invisible. You didn't ask me anything about my assignment and I noticed that — most civilians ask, not because they actually want to know, but because they feel they should.

What do you do, Evelyn? Not the Foreign Office line. I'm not asking for the real answer. I'm asking what it costs you to not be able to say.

Write back if you want. Don't if you'd rather not.

— Thomas

P.S. I told one of the fellows about the peonies and he said I'd made it up to impress a girl. I told him it was true and he said that was worse.