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It had taken months, but George had—mostly—taped up her shattered heart and reentered the world.

She flew, attended club meetings, went shopping with Helen.

But every time she returned home, she went straight to the kitchen.

Maybe this would be the day she’d find Ivy there, sitting in her accustomed chair, flipping through a magazine and sipping a Coke.

“Hi, sweetie,” George would whisper to her phantom daughter.

It was like pressing a bruise. The pain just sweet enough that she wanted to touch it again and again, to keep the wound of Ivy’s absence from healing over.

Now Ruth was gone, too, and she had a second bruise to press.

She watched the news every night, hoping for a sight of a nurse.

She saw soldiers, tanks, jeeps, helicopters.

She saw explosions and bloody bandages and crutches, but she never saw Ruth.

And she never heard any reports of women dying in Vietnam.

She hoped that meant they kept the nurses well behind the lines. Safe.

Unlike poor Frank Jr. He’d tripped a Claymore mine along the Ben Cat River eight days after Ruth left for Cu Chi.

When George heard the news, she drove straight to the Bridlemile house and let herself in without knocking. She found Helen sitting still as a statue in the sunroom with a pad of paper in her hand. A pen lay on the floor.

“Helen, I’m so sorry.”

Helen accepted her hug and said, “Frank’s not here.”

“I’m not here for Frank. I’m here for you.”

Helen blinked and bent to pick up the pen. George lunged to grab it first and handed it to her. She glanced at the notepad. Helen was making a list that said things like, Casket, Notice for paper, Luncheon after service.

“Let me help, Helen. You need to rest.”

Helen ignored this and added another item to her list. George wanted to take the pen from her hand. She wanted to tell her it was okay to cry. To collapse. To go to bed and not get up for days. She wanted to tell her that after enough time passed, she, too, could tape up her splintered heart.

“When I lost Ivy,” George began, then stopped herself. Because it wasn’t the same. Ivy wasn’t dead. George knew that as certainly as she knew her own name.

Helen smiled bitterly. “But Ivy’s not lost anymore, is she?”

“What?” Her friend was just overcome with grief, thought George. She understood all too well how loss could addle a person.

Helen fished in the box at her side, the one labeled Personal Effects–Bridlemile, F . She pulled out a smudged airmail sheet and handed it to George.

Dear Folks, Things are fine here. Hot as heck still (sorry, Mother), and you never saw so many bugs.

But I eat my three squares and keep my boots dry, just like Dad says.

Ran into Ivy Rutledge at Cu Chi. She goes by Shaw now, but I didn’t see a wedding ring.

She’s a Donut Dolly, if you can believe it.

Not sure what I think about women being over here, but they are a sight for sore eyes. Hope this finds you well.

Your loving son,

Frank Jr.

“We assumed you’d heard it from Ruth.” Helen stressed the “we.” Frank had known this, and he hadn’t told her?

For how long? He’s just lost his son, George reminded herself, trying to douse the flame of anger that flared in her chest. “We assumed you had your reasons for keeping it to yourself, but maybe you didn’t know,” said Helen.

That “we” again. That victorious pinch in Helen’s expression.

And then the news sank in. Helen could have all the “we” she wanted. Frank Jr. had found Ivy!

George handed back the letter. “Well,” she said, “I’m just relieved to know she’s alive.” Words she immediately wanted to bite back, because Frank Jr. was dead, and Helen, having rallied to fire her single round of ammunition, slumped over on the wicker sofa and sobbed.

George wrote letter after letter to Ivy. She tore up each one, threw the pieces in the garbage. “I can’t send them,” she told Tom. “They all say the wrong thing.”

“Try a postcard,” said Tom. “That’s what I did.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Dear Ivy, I’m so relieved that you’re alive. I miss you and love you, Dad.’”

George hung up and went outside to find her mother. Adele rolled out from underneath a Buick sedan. “That Tom,” she said when George told her about his postcard. “He gets right to the heart of it, doesn’t he?” Then she rolled back beneath the car.

No, thought George. No, he didn’t. Not quite.

Adele had sent a letter too. Now it was only George who hadn’t written. She couldn’t write to Ruth either. The betrayal. Knowing where Ivy was and not telling. Keeping Ivy all to herself.

And neither Tom nor Adele getting to the heart of it, which was all the questions George needed answered: Why did Ivy go? Where did she go? How had she ended up in Vietnam? And when was she coming back?

As much as George needed the answers to these questions, she dreaded hearing them.

Because she suspected Ivy would say, “I left because of you. I went as far away as I could get. From you. And I am never, ever coming back.” Answers that threatened to splinter her heart all over again.

She couldn’t bring herself to put those questions in a letter.

And without them, what was the point of sending any letters at all?