I vowed to marry the boy I loved before he departed for Vietnam
so I stored my prom dress in the attic. He knocked on my home fifty-five years after the Army reported him lost.
We eventually tied the knot, but what he revealed on our wedding nite caused me to permanently doubt my own family.
The antique piano in the living room wasn’t the oldest item in my home.
or the hand-stitched quilt my granny made.
Inside a garment bag in the attic was a plain ivory prom dress.
I ascended the small attic steps each spring.
I opened the bag and exposed it to the light.
I unfolded the skirt like you would a sleeping kid.
In the attic, a basic ivory prom dress is hanging in a clothes bag.
I wore that outfit to my senior prom with Daniel in 1969.
I had been in love with this boy since we were fifteen.
We fit together in a subtle way that individuals look for all their lives.
He was drafted to Vietnam two weeks after graduating.
We drove to the hilltop view of our town the nite before he went, and we chatted till daybreak.
He touched the sleeve of the dress I had brought to show him just before dawn.
Daniel and I went to our senior prom wearing the dress.
“Don’t let anyone else see you walk down the aisle in this,” he grinned. “Save it for me.”
“I will,” I said.
His parents were then informed by the military that he had been reported missing in combat.
Years turned into decades.
Friends got married, had kids, and eventually became grandparents.
I never stopped honoring my commitments.
His parents were informed by the military that he had been reported missing in combat.
I thot I had already experienced the most difficult aspect of being in love.
I was unaware that the harshest reality was still to come.
I was cleaning my hands of attic dust one afternoon when my phone rang.
“You’ve been up there again, haven’t you,” Margaret remarked.
My older sister was constantly aware of it.
“It’s spring. I air it out.”
I still had to face the harshest reality.
Her voice softened into sympathy as she said, “It’s been fifty-five years.” “Waiting for him was
admirable once, but it’s time to let the ghost go. You’re seventy-three, not eighteen.”
“I’m fine, Margaret.”
“You’ve spent your whole life waiting on a boy who isn’t coming back. Mother said the same thing before she passed. So did Daniel’s mother, God rest her.”
I shut my eyes.
“Waiting for him was admirable once, but it’s time to let the ghost go.”
Back when there was a “back then” to talk about, Daniel’s mother had never really liked me.
“I remember what everyone said,” I said to her.
“Then remember it,” Margaret insisted. “That house of yours is too quiet. Come live near me. I’m the only family you’ve got left.”
She continued to reside in our parents’ former home, which she had inherited upon Father’s passing.
“I remember what everyone said,”
“I like my quiet,” I declared.
“Suit yourself. You always did.”
She let out the same sigh that she had been giving me since we were young.
“I only call because I worry,” she concluded.
“I know you do.”
I put the phone down after we said our goodbyes.
“I only call because I worry,”
I remembered the letter I had sent to Daniel’s parents.
After their house changed ownership, it returned unopened.
The VA clerk who informed me that his status had not changed year after year came to mind.
I recalled asking Margaret twelve times if anyone had ever stopped by our old street in search of me.
“Not a soul,” she repeated every time. “Who would, after all this time?”
I had mailed Daniel’s parents a letter once.
I made a cup of tea downstairs, sat at the kitchen table, and didn’t drink it.
My loyalty was referred to as stubbornness.
It was the last genuine possession I had.
I muttered, “You kept your promise,” to the empty room. “That has to count for something.”
The tea became chilly.
As usual, evening arrived slowly, gray, and by itself.
“You kept your promise,”
I heard it as I reached to switch on the porch light.
The front door was knocked on.
Not a neighbor’s or a delivery man’s crisp rap.
Take your time.
Not sure.
As if the guy on the other end had practiced it a hundred times and was still unprepared.
The front door was knocked on.
I stood motionless in my hallway.
I cried out, “Who is it?”
There was simply a second knock and no response.
Before my thoughts could catch up, my hand reached the doorknob.
Something old and buried started to stir in my chest.
The years vanished as soon as I opened the door.
“Who is it?”
The man on my porch had shaking hands and silver hair.
However, the eyes were the identical ones I had committed to memory when I was fifteen.
“I’ve been trying to find my way back to you,” Daniel muttered.
My legs almost gave out.
Instead of reaching for the doorframe, I discovered his hand.
“You’re real,” I said. “Tell me you’re real.”
“I’ve been trying to find my way back to you,”
“I’m real, Ellen. I’m here.”
I believed that discovering Daniel would provide the answers to all the questions I had been carrying about for fifty-five years.
Rather, it produced a question I never would have thot to ask.
I took him inside.
We sat on the couch till the outer sky darkened.
“They told your parents you were missing,” I said. “I waited. I never stopped waiting.”
“I’m real, Ellen. I’m here.”
“So did I. I was a prisoner for years,” he replied. “When they finally let me come home, both my parents
were already gone.”
“Gone?”
“My father’s heart, while I was still over there. My mother a year after that.”
He examined his hands.
“The house was sold,” he added. “Strangers living in it. No one knew where you were.”
“I was a prisoner for years,”
I put my fingers to my mouth.
Attempting to squeeze fifty-five wasted years into one nite, we conversed till dawn.
Neither of us could complete some anecdotes without pausing to dab at tears.
Some silences conveyed even more information in some way.
Daniel took both of my hands before he left the following morning.
“We’ve already lost enough time,” he declared.
We conversed until dawn.
Despite my tears, I grinned.
“Then let’s not lose another day.”
In front of a few neighbors and the two women from my church who had never once advised me to quit up, we were married in my living room three weeks later.
I thot our tale was now complete.
Daniel was aware that it was just getting started.
“Then let’s not lose another day.”
I didn’t wear the dress from 1969.
My heart and body were no longer eighteen.
However, I kept it as a silent witness by hanging it on the closet door so I could see it.
Daniel sat next to me that evening and removed the wedding ring from his finger after the last visitor had left and the house had fallen silent.
After giving it a lengthy look, he slid it back on.
I didn’t wear the dress from 1969.
Quietly, “There’s something I should have told you before we married,” he added.
“Daniel, you’re frightening me.”
He took a lengthy, trembling breath and said, “I wasn’t kept from you by the war.” “I came home long before today. Someone made sure we would never find each other.”
My heart started to race.
“What are you saying?”
“There’s something I should have told you before we married,”
Daniel averted his gaze for a considerable amount of time, as tho the recollection was still painful.
“When I finally came home, I never stopped looking for you.”
He took a deep breath.
“And I found someone who made certain I never would. I went to the one place left,” he said. “Your parents’ house. I thot they’d know.”
I felt a chill go thru me.
“I never stopped looking for you.”
“Who answered the door?”
Daniel paused.
“Margaret,” he said. “Your sister.”
I stopped questioning whether Daniel still loved me for the first time that evening.
I began to question if I had ever met my own sister.
“What did she tell you?”
“Who answered the door?”
“That you’d married another man. That you had a family of your own now, and it wouldn’t be right for me to come around.”
“That’s a lie,” I exhaled. “I never married anyone. There was never anyone but you.”
His voice broke as he said, “I know that now.” “But I didn’t then. I believed her.”
I couldn’t stay motionless, so I stood and then sat again.
“You believed her, and you left?”
“But I didn’t then. I believed her.”
“No,” he blurted out. “I couldn’t. I told her I still wanted to see you, just once. She refused to give me
your address. Wouldn’t give me a phone number. Nothing.”
“How many times?”
His eyes were tearful as he glanced up at me and said, “I went back for years, Ellen.” “Every time I could, I stood on that porch and asked her to help me reach you. Every single time she turned me
away.”
I was unable to talk.
“I went back for years, Ellen.”
Beneath me, the room appeared to tilt.
At last, I said, “How did you find me at all?”
“A neighbor,” he said. “An old woman who lived beside your parents. She’d heard me pleading with
Margaret thru the years. One day she followed me to my car and pressed a piece of paper into my hand. Your address. She said the truth belonged to both of us.”
The elderly lady next to my parents’ home.
“How did you find me at all?”
When I was a girl, she was a teenager living with her parents.
After her parents passed away, she returned there.
“Mrs. Halloran,” I muttered.
“That was her name.”
I put both hands over my face.
I asked, “Why would Margaret do that?” “Why would my own sister keep us apart?”
I put both hands over my face.
“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times.”
“She looked me in the eye,” I remarked. “Over and over. She let me grow old alone.”
He held my hand and said, “Ellen.” “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I’m sorry I believed her at all.”
I pinched his fingers and said, “Don’t.” “You’re here. That’s all I can hold onto right now.”
That nite, I didn’t sleep.
I turned Daniel’s confession over till dawn tinged the ceiling gray, yet it remained in the shadows between us.
Daniel’s admission remained in the shadows between us.
Margaret.
My sister.
I learned how to braid my hair from them.
Disbelief had cooled into something more difficult by morning.
I lie staring at nothing, allowing painful memories to resurface.
Beside me, Daniel stirred and grabbed the water off the nightstand.
Disbelief had turned into something more difficult.
“You didn’t sleep,” he remarked.
“I need to hear her say it,” I said. “I need to stand in front of Margaret and hear it come out of her
mouth.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve been sure of the wrong things for fifty-five years,” I replied. “I’m sure of this.”
That afternoon, we took a car to the old family home.
“I need to hear her say it,”
I carried the ivory dress and placed it across the back seat, still zipped in its garment bag.
I didn’t say why.
Daniel didn’t inquire.
Like a witness we were finally presenting in court, it trailed after us.
At last, we came to a stop outside the old house.
I spent more time than I intended sitting in the parked automobile.
At last, we came to a stop outside the old house.
“We can go home,” Daniel said softly.
“No.” I reached for the door doorknob. “She turned you away on this porch. She’s going to answer for
it on this porch.”
Together, we ascended the stairs.
My heart was heavy and slow, not fluttering like a girl’s, but steady like a woman who had been waiting too long.
Just out of sight of the entrance, I remained one step behind Daniel.
“She’s going to answer for it.”
Before she saw me, I wanted to hear her.
Daniel lifted his shaking hand and rapped.
Steps.
The lock.
Margaret was standing there as the door opened inward.
When she saw Daniel’s face, her own color faded.
Before she saw me, I wanted to hear her.
“You,” she murmured.
“Hello, Margaret,” he murmured softly.
Her jaw clenched.
“I don’t know what you want,” she replied, “but I’ve told you before. My sister married. She moved on. There’s nothing here for you.”
I heard the exact untruth that had taken fifty years from us for an unbelievable moment.
Daniel asked, “Is that so?”
“There’s nothing here for you.”
“It’s the truth. You have to let her go.”
Brittle and practiced, her voice rose.
Every time she had sent him back down these steps into the darkness, I could hear it.
“Please,” she insisted. “Don’t make this harder. She wouldn’t want to see you.”
My feet were moved by that word.
I moved out of his shadow and into the doorway’s light.
“It’s the truth. You have to let her go.”
“Then ask me yourself, Margaret,” I replied.
She parted her lips.
There was no sound.
As tho the house itself had tipped beneath her, her hand reached up to the doorframe.
“Ellen,” she muttered.
My voice remained steady as I said, “You told him I was married.” “You told him that on this porch, and then you told it to him again and again for years. Didn’t you.”
There was no sound.
Her gaze darted from me to Daniel and back again.
She was looking for the exit that had always been there.
I stood in it this time.
I said, “We’re coming inside,” and crossed the threshold of my birthplace. “Because you are going to look at me, and you are going to tell me why.”
I was aware that she had lied.
What had ever been worth fifty-five years was still beyond my comprehension.
“Because you are going to look at me, and you are going to tell me why.”
Margaret retreated from me when we entered the parlor of our childhood house, the space where we
used to play as girls.
The color had never returned to her face.
I followed her in and said, “Why?” “Fifty-five years. Why?”
“I was protecting you,” she stumbled out. “He might not have come back whole. I couldn’t lose you to him.”
“That’s the lie you told yourself first,” I replied. “But not the whole truth.”
“I was protecting you,”
Margaret slid onto the antique chair that belonged to her father.
Her hands shuddered more than Daniel’s.
“I read the will when Father died,” she said. “The estate split by which of us had children. I had a family. You didn’t.”
“So the more Daniel stayed lost, the more you inherited.”
“You would have been fine,” she sobbed. “I told myself you’d be fine, Ellen.”
Her hands shuddered more than Daniel’s.
“You told yourself I’d thank you,” I muttered.
There was silence in the room.
Daniel remained motionless in the doorway, his soft eyes moist.
“You can keep the house,” I said to her. “Keep the money. Keep every dish in that china cabinet.”
I grasped Daniel’s hand.
“What you cannot give back is the fifty-five years. And I’m done letting you keep those too.”
“You told yourself I’d thank you,”
I left.
Margaret didn’t go along.
I finally got the ivory dress out of the attic that evening and hung it in my bedroom wardrobe.
Then, as the sun began to set, I sat down on the porch with Daniel.
He folded his fingers into mine and asked, “Any regrets?”
“Only the years,” I said. “Never the promise.”
“Any regrets?”
He gave me the fifteen-year-old smile I had learned by heart.
It was a warm evening.
The hours that lie ahead, no matter how few, are now fully ours.
