The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

113: The Last Time

"What are you doing?"

Charlie didn't look up from her paper. "Writing."

"A novel?"

Charlie snorted as she finished writing a sentence and looked up at her mother. "A letter," she corrected.

"Ah," her mother acknowledged. "To who?"

Charlie turned her eyes heavenward. "Oh, the privacy of college. I miss it already."

Her mother was unfazed by the sarcasm. "Are you writing to Mabs?" she questioned. "You should invite her over for Christmas."

"I already did. She spends Christmas with her family, remember?"

"Oh, right."

Charlie went back to her letter, hoping that she'd successfully managed to dodge the question. When she heard the soft click of her bedroom door she allowed herself a smile of satisfaction, but then she heard her mother's soft steps crossing the room.

"So, are you writing to Mabs?" her mother persisted in her inquiry.

Charlie groaned. "Actually, I lied before. I'm writing an essay for school."

"Charlie."

"I'm writing to someone from the war," she finally confessed.

"Who?"

"Oh my goodness!" Charlie exclaimed. "Why do you need to know?"

"Is it a crime to take an interest in my daughter's life?"

"It is when it's private." Charlie turned to look at her mother and quirked a brow. "And when your daughter is twenty-three years old."

Her mother, undeterred, stared back at her, searching her face, seeking out what Charlie was hiding.

She hadn't ever told her mother about Floyd, not even when she'd come home and spent her days locked in her room writing letter after letter to him, desperate for him to write back. She'd mentioned his name, of course - it would have been impossible not to, what with how much time she'd spent with him during the war - but she'd left out any and all details of their romantic entanglement. She was glad she had when it had become clear that Floyd didn't have any intentions of replying to her correspondence.

Now, of course, she just could say she was writing to Floyd as a friend, but she didn't want to risk her mother reading the letter. Charlie had started writing it with the intention of keeping it short and sweet, checking in with him and making one final, futile attempt to reach him. But somehow, at some point, it had turned into something entirely different to the little note she'd planned in her head beforehand. At some point she'd started pouring her heart out about her life - how exciting it could be but also how lonely, how much she dreaded thinking of anything related to the war and yet missed it sorely sometimes, too. Her life was full of contradictions now that she couldn't seem to puzzle out, and she'd kept them bottled up for so long she'd come to accept them as normal. But it had always been so easy to talk to Floyd. Once upon a time he'd been the person who understood her best in the world. And writing to him, even though he wasn't there, even though he'd probably stopped reading her silly little letters, made her feel a little less alone with all of it. A little less lonely. She'd never been lonely when she was with him, after all, and this was as close as she could get these days.

Well, this and looking back at the photographs of the two of them in the photo album he'd gifted her for her twenty-first birthday, back in Austria. She took it with her everywhere in spite of the heartache it always inevitably caused. She'd looked at it before she'd started writing the letter, in fact, just to torture herself a little more with his distance.