The next day I returned to the rehab center with the letters.
Martha saw them and began crying before I even spoke.
“Who is Daniel?” I asked.
Her confession came through tears.
Before she met me, she had been engaged to Daniel. He was drafted to Vietnam in early 1966.
Shortly after he left, Martha discovered she was pregnant.
Then Daniel’s plane was shot down.
He was listed missing in action.
Everyone believed he was dead.
Two months later, she met me.
Seven months after our wedding, James was born.
I had always believed he was premature.
He wasn’t.
But the letters told the rest of the story.
Daniel had survived.
He’d spent years as a prisoner of war before finally returning home in 1972.
One letter from 1974 stopped my breath entirely.
“I found you, Martha. I’ve seen you with your husband and your family. You look happy. I won’t destroy what you’ve built. But I will always watch over our son.”
He had lived in the same town.
For decades.
Watching from the shadows.
I found his address in one of the letters.
When I drove there, the house stood empty.
The neighbor told me Daniel had died three days earlier.
A quiet funeral.
Hardly anyone attending.
A Vietnam veteran who mostly kept to himself.
When I returned home, Martha confessed one more thing.
Three weeks earlier, Daniel had contacted her.
He knew he was dying.
They met once at a diner.
He brought something for James.
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