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“What happened to him?”
Adrian’s eyes dropped.
“He got weaker.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
“What happened to him?”
“So answer me.”
Adrian tightened his grip on James’s duffel.
“James knew there was a good chance one of us might get home without the other. He made me promise something.”
I waited.
“He said if I came back and he didn’t, I should tell you he died in the attack.”
“He made me promise something.”
I stared at him.
“He asked you to lie to me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Adrian’s voice softened.
“He didn’t want you imagining what was happening to him.”
I took a step backward.
“He asked you to lie to me?”
“He said you had two days of marriage. He didn’t want those two days replaced by fear. He kept saying you didn’t need to know about the injuries or where we were or how scared he was.”
My eyes burned, but I refused to look away.
“He didn’t want those two days replaced by fear.”
“So he decided what I could handle.”
Adrian said nothing.
“He decided I was better off believing he disappeared in one second.”
“Mary, he was 23.”
“So was I.”
That stopped him.
I looked again at the crooked paper rose.
James had folded it while he was alive.
“Mary, he was 23.”
After the explosion.
After the day I’d spent 56 years believing everything had ended.
My husband had survived long enough to make me a flower.
And then he’d asked another man to erase those weeks from my life.
“Did he talk about me?” I asked.
My husband had survived long enough to make me a flower.
Adrian gave a tired, painful smile.
“Constantly.”
“What did he say?”
Adrian glanced toward the duffel.
“That story takes longer.”
I looked at him.
“Then start walking.”
***
We went outside.
The veterans’ center was only a few blocks away.
Adrian carried James’s duffel. I carried the roses.
“That story takes longer.”
Halfway there, I stopped.
“One question.”
Adrian turned.
“Did James ever change his mind?”
He didn’t ask what I meant.
And he didn’t answer.
His eyes shifted toward the pavement.
I knew immediately.
“Adrian?”
He pressed his lips together.
“Did James ever tell you not to lie to me?” I asked.
“One question.”
A bus hissed to a stop behind us.
Adrian remained perfectly still.
Then he whispered, “Yes.”
Everything just stood still for a second.
“When?”
“Near the end.”
My hand closed around the paper flower.
“What did he say?”
Adrian looked older than he had five minutes earlier.
“Near the end.”
“He said, ‘Tell her I was here.'”
I waited.
Adrian’s voice broke.
“Then later, he told me, ‘Tell her all of it.'”
I stared at the man who had carried those words home.
The man who had looked me in the face anyway and told me James had probably died in the explosion.