When the train pulled into Boston, Posey's eyes were focused out of the window. It looked much the same as she remembered it, as familiar as, but also as cold as, London. Even through the train windows she could hear how loud the platform was, bustling with people hurrying off of trains and onto them, others waiting to board this one before it set off for the next station.
The moment the train had come to a stop John was up on his feet, pulling his suitcase out from the luggage rail and placing it on his seat before retrieving Posey's as well. She wondered whether things like that bothered him, having to do them one at a time where he'd once been able to do them simultaneously, but he didn't let any discontentedness show on his face. Perhaps he was simply used to it by now, all of the adjustments he had to make living life with one hand. Perhaps he had accepted that this was his life now and had come to terms with it. Posey wished she could do that, too.
Posey linked her arm through John's handless one and followed him off of the train, keeping her eyes peeled for Mrs. Daniels. Posey wasn't sure how she was going to react to seeing her again but she tried not to think about it lest it blur her concentration and send her retreating into her own head. She had a tendency to do that nowadays.
As it turned out, Posey needn't have worried about not spotting the familiar woman in the crowd, for even in her old age Mrs. Daniels had eyes like a hawk and she all but screeched Posey's name the second she laid eyes on her.
"Josephine!"
It had been a while since she'd heard anyone call her that. She didn't mind the name so much anymore, not when it was coming from Mrs. Daniels.
Posey whirled around and searched the crowd for the source of the voice, then broke into a smile when she found the elderly woman stood by the exit, strategically placed to ensure she wouldn't be missed.
"That's her over there," Posey said, nudging John with her elbow and pointing in Mrs. Daniels' direction.
John nodded and Posey thought she saw him smile, though the moment was fast and fleeting before he began using his suitcase and his shoulder to navigate his way through the lingering crowd.
"Hello, Mrs. Daniels," Posey greeted quietly once she was close, her smile drawing up the edges of her voice. She could see that Mrs. Daniels was teary but, for all that Posey found she wanted to cry, her eyes were dry and her chest empty of the familiar ache she'd expected to feel.
"How beautiful you are!" Mrs. Daniels exclaimed and drew Posey into a hug tighter than she seemed capable of. "And how much older you look!" She pulled back to hold Posey at arm's length and shook her head, smiling brightly. "Before so much a girl, now so much a woman! Goodness, I can't get over how stunning you are!"
"If I were you, Pose, I'd be wondering what that says about how you looked before," John commented wryly. When Posey turned she found him wearing a grin. "Hello," he went on, extending a hand for Mrs. Daniels to shake. "I'm John, Posey's brother."
"I can tell," Mrs. Daniels said, taking his proffered hand and using it to draw him into a hug. "You look exactly as Josephine did when she was a boy!" When both Posey and John protested at this observation the old woman laughed heartily, a troublemaker as she could be when she wanted to. "Oh, hush. The two of you could be twins. Now, shall we be off? Why chat in the cold when I have a perfectly warm house waiting to be filled up again?"
As they began the walk to Mrs. Daniels' house, Posey watched with a growing smile as John and Mrs. Daniels chatted quickly and animatedly to each other. Posey was relieved to find that her and John didn't appear to be any sort of a burden to her - in fact, she seemed delighted by their company. Posey didn't know much about Mrs. Daniels' life before the war but she knew she'd had a husband who had died just before America had joined it, and a grandson who had lived with them who had followed shortly after, having been stationed at Pearl Harbour. Posey thought that living in a house so empty after so many years of it being full must have been incredibly lonely.
When they reached the house John and Mrs. Daniels were thoroughly well-acquainted and Posey was pale. So much had changed since she'd last been here that she felt like a ghost haunting the place she'd died in, but the house was just the same; the flowers winding up around the front door were the same pretty pink, the front door a freshly painted white, and she supposed this was home now. Forever, maybe.
But it was good to be back. Something about this house felt safe. When Mrs. Daniels unlocked the front door she allowed Posey to go in first with John right behind her, then when she shut the door behind the three of them she produced two identical keys from her handbag.
"I got them cut as soon as I got your first letter," Mrs. Daniels explained, handing one of the keys to Posey and the other to John. "I don't want you to feel trapped here, so feel free to come and go as you please. Do stay safe if you're staying out late, though. Josephine will tell you first hand, Jonathan, how much I worry."
Posey was touched by the gesture but found she couldn't express it. Her own set of house keys. That was something she'd never had, not even when she'd still had a home back in London. All she could offer in return for such a wonderful gift was her thanks and a watery smile, just before Mrs. Daniels showed John to the room he'd be staying in and Posey headed off to hers.
Her room, much like the rest of the house, was exactly as she remembered it. It was a foreign concept to Posey that anything could be untouched by the war but here was proof that it could. All of the belongings she'd had to leave behind when she'd left for boot camp were exactly where she'd left them, all of her old clothes still in the wardrobe. They'd likely be too big for her now with how much weight she'd lost during the war, and probably a little bit young for her, too, but they were familiar and they were hers and that was more than enough of a comfort.
Posey set her suitcase down by the door and headed over to sit on the bed, the sheets bearing the pretty pink roses she'd always loved, almost impossibly soft under her hands. Without thinking she reached out a hand towards her pillow and paused when it was left to swipe through the air. Realising what it was she'd been reaching for, she burst into tears; the one thing that was missing from this cosy, familiar room was her bear, and she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to get him back.
Posey calmed herself down quickly and then sat and tried to breathe, in through her nose and out through her mouth until the world felt a little bit more stable again. Her eyes swept the room once more, seeking a distraction, and landed on a stack of letters on her dressing table.
Sniffling, Posey pushed herself to her feet and walked over, wiping her face dry of tears and smoothing her hair back into place. With gentle hands she picked up the first envelope and furrowed her eyebrows as she flipped it over, looking for clues as to who it was from. She didn't recognise the handwriting and there were no official stamps to indicate it was from someone official. Even stranger, it was addressed to Posey Wells, not Joseph or Josephine. She had no idea who it could be from.
Posey placed the letter back down and rifled through the others, finding the same handwriting on all of them, each envelope as plain and unremarkable as the one before it. There were five in total, each numbered from one to five in an ink separate to the one used to inscribe the address. Posey guessed Mrs. Daniels had written the numbers so she'd know which order they'd arrived in and she smiled at the thought; scarcely had there ever lived a more thoughtful person than that woman.
A knock at the door interrupted her reverie and Posey called out a soft, "Come in," turning just as Mrs. Daniels pushed it open.
"Your letters," Mrs. Daniels said by way of acknowledgement, smiling softly. "They've been arriving since October."
October. That was after the war had ended. Who had been writing to her then?
"Do you know who they're from?" Posey asked, looking back down at the one in her hands.
"I didn't read them, dear," came the reply, and Posey nodded. She'd expected as much.
"Josephine, dear, is there anything I can do for you?" Mrs. Daniels went on, stepping further into the room and closing the door softly behind her. "Is there anything at all I can do to make this easier?"
Posey placed the letter carefully back down and shook her head, running her fingertips along the edge of the dressing table and tracking the movement to avoid Mrs. Daniels' eyes. "I'm just overwhelmed, is all," she confessed quietly, and risked a quick glance up only to avert her gaze again. "I'll be okay in a day or two."
"I remember when you first came here," Mrs. Daniels said, a laugh breaking into her words and dancing atop them, "and how you sulked for weeks on end. I can't believe how grown up you look."
"I was fifteen back then," Posey replied with a small laugh of her own, finally meeting Mrs. Daniels' eyes in earnest. "Seventeen when I ran away to join the paratroopers." She laughed bitterly. "I'm twenty-one now but I don't feel it. I feel so much younger and so much older at the same time."
"Life'll do that to you sometimes," Mrs. Daniels acknowledged wisely. "You've been through so much I'm not surprised the world has weighed you down."
Posey wanted to laugh; the world hadn't weighed her down, the world had ruined her. She couldn't say it, though, couldn't admit it. So instead she forced a smile. "Do you still have that recipe for the cookies you used to make?"
The answer, of course, was yes, and so instead of dinner, which Posey found she couldn't quite stomach, she had cookies. The taste and the smell reminded her of the Christmas she'd spent here when she'd still been training at boot camp, the last time she'd been in Boston, and how she'd brought some back for Johnny and Gene, the only two people who had known her secret at the time. That felt like a lifetime ago now. It felt like a memory which belonged to someone else, a story she'd been told as opposed to experienced herself.
Trying to sleep was pointless with the ongoing barrage of mixed emotions, so Posey dragged the chair from her dressing table over to the window and stared out into the garden for a while, her eyes on the stars. Watching the stars reminded her of Bastogne, of sitting in that freezing cold foxhole with Bill and holding onto him tightly. How was it possible that the stars had been prettier in Belgium, where her world had been torn apart?
When she tired of that her gaze fell on the stack of letters still sitting unopened on the other side of the room. With a resigned sigh she retrieved them. Curiosity had gotten the better of her in the end; she didn't want to know what the letters said so much as who they were from. So, she found the letter labelled with the number one and peeled it open, then unfolded the paper inside and held it up to the window to use the light from the moon to read.
'Dear Wells,
'I've been meaning to write this letter for a while but I didn't know what to say. I still don't but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. I think you'd do it for me if our roles were reversed.
'I guess I should say who this is so you're not reading the whole thing wondering. It's Gene - Eugene Roe -' Here, he'd crossed out his nickname and written his full name above it. 'I got your address from the dog tag you gave me before you left. I don't know if you actually are in Boston but it's the only address I've got, so I hope you are.
'I'm back home in Louisiana and it's a whole lot different to how I remember but also mostly the same. I don't know how that's possible. I've been trying hard to deal with home being the same but feeling so different and I guess I thought you might be a good person to talk to about that.
'I don't know. I don't know if you'll ever even get this letter. I just hope wherever you are is somewhere you can be happy. And safe, of course. Can't forget safe.
'I don't know what else to say so I guess I'll stop writing now. I know this letter hasn't made a whole lot of sense - I've never had a way with words like you do - but you asked me to write to you so here it is. I hope you write back.
'Yours sincerely,
'Eugene Roe'
Posey let the letter rest in her lap, a link to the past she'd thought she'd isolated herself from. Now she realised it was inescapable.