Maybe. He poured a little more Scotch and thought back.

He'd gone to Fort Dix, New Jersey, for his basic and advanced training, then to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and within a year was commissioned a second lieutenant. Not bad for a farm kid. They wrote, often at first, then less frequently, of course, and the letters were not good. She found her monogamy hard to defend or justify and let him know she was seeing other men. He understood. He didn't understand. He spent his pre-embarkation leave in Spencerville, not Columbus. They spoke on the phone. She was very busy with difficult classes. He was very anxious about going into a combat zone and really didn't care about her classes. He asked her if she was seeing anyone at the moment. She was, but it was not serious. After about ten minutes of this, he looked forward to combat. He said to her, "You've changed." She replied, "We've all changed, Keith. Look around you."

He said, "Well, I've got to go. Good luck in school."

"Thanks. Take care, Keith. Home safe."

"Yup."

"Bye."

"Bye."

But they couldn't hang up, and she said, "You understand, I'm making this easy for both of us."

"I understand. Thanks." He hung up.

They continued to write, neither of them able to comprehend that it was over.

Keith pushed the Scotch aside. The alcohol wasn't working, his hands were trembling, and his mind was not getting pleasantly numb. He read, "Well, welcome home, Keith, and good luck."

"Thank you, Annie."

He'd served as an infantry platoon leader, saw too many dead people lying on the ground, fresh blood running, or bloating in the hot sun. He had no frame of reference for this, except the stockyards in Maumee. Very nice villages and farms were blown to hell, and sandbags and barbed wire were all over the place, and he'd wept for the farmers and their families. He'd completed his tour and returned to Spencerville on leave.

Keith wiped the sweat off his lip and focused on the letter, read it from the beginning, then read, "I'm leaving tomorrow to drive Wendy to school. She's starting as a freshman at our old alma mater. Can't wait to see it again. Be gone a week or so." He nodded and took a deep breath.

He'd spent his thirty-day post-combat leave in Spencerville, and did mostly nothing but eat, drink, and take long rides. His mother suggested he drive to Columbus. Instead, he'd called. She was working on her doctorate by then. It was a very strained conversation, he recalled. He hadn't asked her about other men, because he'd come to accept that. He'd had other women. It didn't matter. But she'd changed in a more profound way in the last year. She'd become more politically active, and she had ambivalent feelings about a man in uniform and had given him a lecture on the war.

He was angry, she was cool; he'd barely controlled his anger, and she kept her tone frigid. He was about to hang up on her when she said, "I have to go," and he realized she was crying, or close to it. He offered to come see her, she said that would be all right. But he did not go to Columbus, and she did not come to Spencerville, nor did they meet halfway.

Keith read the final lines of her letter. "My Aunt Louise still lives out by you, and next time I'm that way, I'll stop and say hello. Take care. Annie."

He put the letter in his pocket, stood, and went out the back door. The hot wind had died down, and it was cooler now. There was some sun left on the western horizon, but in the east he could see stars.

Keith went out to where the corn began and walked between the tall rows, a few hundred yards to a small hill that was thought to be an Indian burial mound. The rise was gentle and tillable, but no one in his family had ever planted there, and the Mullers were asked to do the same. Rye grass grew tall on the hill, and a single birch had been planted or had taken root on its own near the top of the hill.

Keith stood beside the birch and looked out over the corn. He'd played here as a boy and come here to think as a young man.

Nor did they meet halfway. It was his pride, his ego, or whatever. He simply could not accept the fact that she'd been sexually involved with other men when they were supposed to be going together. But then again, he hadn't proposed marriage, perhaps because he didn't want to make her a young widow. It was the classic dilemma of wartime: to marry or not to marry? He couldn't recall exactly what had transpired between them regarding this subject, but he was certain she'd remember.

He sat at the base of the birch tree and looked out at the stars. In Washington, he could barely see the stars, but here in the country, the night sky was breathtaking, mind-boggling. He stared up at the universe, picking out the constellations he knew, and remembered doing this with her.

After his post-Vietnam leave, he had less than a year of service remaining, but he'd decided to stay in a while longer, and requested and was accepted to Army Intelligence School in Fort Holabird, Maryland. This was an interesting field, and he actually enjoyed the work. He received orders for a second tour in the never-ending war, but this time as an intelligence analyst. He'd been promoted to captain, the pay was all right, the duty not bad. Better than combat, better than Spencerville, better than returning to a nation going crazy. They stopped corresponding, but he heard she'd dropped out of the doctorate program and traveled to Europe, then returned to Spencerville for a cousin's wedding. It was then, at the wedding, according to a friend who had been there, that she'd met Cliff Baxter. Apparently, they had a good time at or after the wedding, because they married a few months later. This was what he'd heard, anyway, but by that time, it was a subject he no longer wanted to be informed about.

Keith took the letter out of his pocket but couldn't read it in the fading light. Nevertheless, he stared at it and recalled most of it. The sentences, the words, were innocuous, but as a product of everything that had come before, it was everything he wanted to hear. He knew what it took for her to write that letter, he knew there was an element of danger for her to put it in his mailbox and to say that she'd stop by. And the danger was not only physical in the form of Cliff Baxter but emotional as well. Neither of them needed another disappointment or a broken heart. But she'd decided to take a chance, to in fact take the lead, and he liked that.

Keith put the letter in his pocket and plucked at the grass around him.

After he heard she was married, he put her out of his mind. That lasted about a week, and against his better judgment, he wrote her a short note of congratulations, care of her parents. She wrote a shorter note thanking him for his good wishes and asked him not to write again, ever.

He had always thought, and perhaps she thought, that they'd somehow get together again. In truth, neither of them could have forgotten the other. For six years, they'd been friends, soulmates, and lovers, and had formed each other's lives and personalities, shared the pains and happiness of growing up, and never imagined a life apart. But the world had finally intruded, and her letter made it clear that, indeed, it was now over between them, forever. But he never believed that.

After he was stationed in Europe, some months after her wedding, she wrote again, apologizing for the tone of her last letter, and suggested that writing was okay, but to please write care of her sister Terry in the next county.

He waited until he returned to the States, then wrote from Washington, saying little, except that he was back and would be at the Pentagon for a year or so. Thus began a two-decade-long correspondence, a few letters a year, updates, the births of her children, changes of address, his transfer to the Defense Department, her local news from Spencerville, his postings all over the world.