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Andrew returns stateside in December, a full two months after he'd been shot. Quarter of an inch to the right and he'd been hit right in the forehead but some act of God must have sent an errant breeze or wavered the sniper's gun. He'd fallen back and lost consciousness when his head hit the rocks. By the time he regained any semblance of consciousness, he'd earned himself a hole drilled in the side of his head to evacuate the blood out of his brain and a ticket on the next homebound ship. The doctors told him he'd been lucky to survive his skull fracture and brain bleed given how long it took the corpsmen to find a surgeon.
He spends four days writing the letter. The blood had compressed the left side of his brain and they warned him that he might not be able to use the right side of his body as well as he had before. Months to recover, they'd said. But Andrew persisted, his penmanship shaky and resembling that of a child who had just started to learn how to write. He writes four drafts of the same letter, the same three desperate sentences (Lt. Jones, I have been injured and have been sent home to Boston. I would like to see you and catch up if you are open to the idea. I look forward to receiving your reply.) and picked the most legible one to send.
He'd heard the rattle of bullets. He'd seen Eddie's body carried off the field. He'd heard the hushed whispering, Hillbilly's dead.
But he'd been shot too. And somehow, he was still alive.
____
The letter doesn't make it out of Boston. The mailman accidentally drops it on Washington Street, somewhere in Chinatown where the slush kicked up by the passing cars and the constant snowfall covers it within minutes, cold water seeping into the thin paper envelope. The hopeful words that Andrew had laboriously penned in ink fuzz into obscurity. The address becomes unreadable. It won't be found again.
____
Andrew spends Christmas asleep in his room. He wakes up briefly sometime in the evening to the sounds of a piano drifting in through the door that has been cracked open just a bit. The chatter of the guests sound far away and he blinks slowly at the sliver of light coming in beneath the blinds.
"Andrew," his mother murmurs from the doorway. Her voice sounds distorted, slowed down. "Andrew, dear, your cousins would like to see you."
Andrew thinks sluggishly of the ugly scar at the side of his head that his hair hasn't grown over yet and may never will. He thinks of the cane he has to lean on heavily, the way that his voice is sometimes thick with words he can't remember what order to say. So instead he takes the cowardly way out and murmurs, "Tired."
She tiptoes into his room and puts the back of her hand against his forehead. It makes him feel like an invalid -- which, he supposes, he is.
"Feel better dear," she murmurs, dropping a kiss against his temple. She closes the door behind her. Andrew closes his eyes again and slips back into sleep.
_____
He dreams of Eddie all through winter. Sometimes in his fatigues with incessant rain coming down around them, sometimes in the unbearable heat, under the shade of a palm tree with his sunburnt shoulders peeling. Dreams of him from far away, dreams of the nights when they'd lie in the same bunk, listening to the shrill of the insects outside of their tent. Dreams of the curve of Eddie's eyelashes, the texture of his hair, his mouth in the dark.
Sometimes his addled mind would wake up and he'd expect to be back there, Eddie breathing quietly behind him. Sometimes he would wake up to the silence of his parents' old Beacon Hill victorian and feel an ache as he thought about the way that Eddie snored when he was bone tired, the perpetual scent of sweat and ocean water that clung to them, the faint sulfur of the jagged volcanic rocks that jutted up over the heart of the island. Was it wrong to miss the war? When it had killed so many of his men?
Him too, he had to remind himself. He always had to remind himself.
_____
After New Year's Day, he makes it his mission to go up and down the creaking stairs at least three times a day. The maid moves around him as he struggles to heave himself up the stairs, clinging pathetically to the railing in one hand and his cane in the other, right foot always a little unsteady wherever he plants it.
"Darling," his mother says when she sees him that afternoon, climbing for the second time. He refuses to acknowledge the pitying tone in her voice. He'd given up reading when the words kept slipping out of his mind the moment he read them. He's going to get stronger, physically if not mentally. She watches him fight his way up a few steps before silently leaving him to his own devices.
_____
By February he feels well enough to walk along the Charles. He shaves in the morning, and goes to the barber to get his hair cut in a way that hides the scar. His father hints that he should pick up some accounting so that he can come help with the inventory over at the textile mill out in Charleston. The numbers make his head swim but he manages to make his entire way through an old copy of The Odyssey he must have read back in high school.
By March, he is well enough to visit his cousin in Cambridge for an entire afternoon to marvel at her newborn daughter's tiny hands and feet. The winter gives way to warmth. There is no reply from Eddie.
It is not until late March that he truly remembers. Maybe it was just a mechanism of self-protection that it hadn't resurfaced until this late.
It'd been in the hours between Eddie's body being carried off the battlefield and the bullet grazing his own head. It had seemed so important at the time that he be the one to write the letter, pale paper with his own grimy fingerprints and the faint imprint of tears. He'd done it in the lull between gunfire, hunched over the letter and writing the words We regret to inform you that, even as he half expected Eddie to tap him on the shoulder to ask him what the hell he was doing in the middle of a fight.
So many things seemed important then. Everything feels small now.
_____
"I'd like to take the car," Andrew tells his father over breakfast at the beginning of April. The temperature is creeping up -- his mother's roses are beginning to bloom in the small garden his mother kept behind the house.
"Where are you taking it?" his father asks, not looking up from his newspaper.
"Maryland," he says, "DC maybe. To see some old friends." He doesn't know why he feels the need for the half lie.
"Wouldn't the train be easier, dear?" his mother asks. She pours him some more coffee as she speaks but Andrew doesn't miss the way that her eyes move briefly to the cane he's leaned up against the table.
"Let the boy do what he wants," his father says, shaking out his paper and looking up at Andrew. "How long were you planning to be gone?"
"A week, maybe," Andrew replies. A few days to get there. A day to find Eddie's hometown. A day to work up the courage to speak to Eddie's family. He'd visit Eddie's grave the same day. A few days to drive home. He swallows.
"Keys are in my desk," his father says, "You take however long you need."
_____
His mother insists on packing him a lunch. He packs a few changes of clothes, including an old suit that was too big on him now. He couldn't bring himself to pack his dress uniform -- couldn't bring himself to look at it. His father finds an old map of Massachusetts and leaves it in the glovebox for him. The cane is too big to hide under the seat and too inconvenient to place in the back so he settles for putting it in the passenger seat with a twinge of reluctance.
The roads thin out the father he drives from Boston. The woods swallow him up as he moves south towards Providence. He concentrates on the road ahead, thinking only about the shift of his foot against the gas pedal and watching for cars maneuvering around him. His reaction time has been dulled through a combination of being away for the Corps for so long and his brain injury. He can't gun it like he had in his youth, too invincible to get a speeding ticket.
Or the one time he and Eddie had been on leave and borrowed an old truck to drive out into the forests north of Melbourne. They'd driven the hillsides too fast, scared the wildlife. Eddie had laughed the whole time, sticking his head out the window and whooping at the kangaroos like some miscreant teenager. Drunk, maybe.
He fills up the gas tank in Providence. He doesn't look the cashier in the eye as he pays, doesn't want to see the way she comes to her own conclusions about the way his right hand still trembles. Everyone his age is still out there, fighting.
He makes it past the Connecticut state line before his vision blurs with tears and he finds himself crying in great heaving gulps, face wrenched and furiously trying to wipe at his eyes so he can at least pull over. Eddie wouldn't ever sit in the passenger seat again. He wouldn't reach out and take Andrew's hand like he had that day, smiling shyly and humming some country song Andrew knew only the melody of while they drove through the wilds of some distant continent. He was six feet under if not cremated and scattered into the Appalachian hills, no longer a wrist that Andrew could kiss, a quiet future to look forward to.
It takes nearly half an hour before he's calmed down enough that he feels like he can drive again. If nothing else, at least he is driving towards Eddie's final resting place.
If nothing else, he can finally say goodbye.
_____
He breaks down again when he enters Pennsylvania. Dry-eyed throughout the entire winter and here he was, crying twice on the same day. At the side of the road, Andrew climbs out of the car and stares at the brief flare of fireflies low in the woods, the setting sun throwing deep blues and purples at the edges of the sky.
Ain't got fireflies in Boston? Eddie had asked, half turned towards Andrew in the glow of the campfire. He'd been picking out a tune softly on his guitar now that most of the men had wandered away or gone to sleep on the still-warm sand of the beach. Eddie had smiled up at him, the shy smile that he'd always reserved for Andrew alone and he'd said, Gotta come visit me in West Virginia.
"Fuck," Andrew says, dragging his hands through his hair and feeling helpless in the face of his own grief, the idea of Eddie's absence all the more stark out here where there was nobody else, just him and the yawning void that should have been Eddie's presence next to him. "Fuck!" he shouts, slapping his hands on the cooling hood of his father's car. His shoulders hunch with a sob, feeling so keenly in some way that it must have been a fucking miracle that he'd come all these months without wanting to run into the ocean and letting the waves close in over his head.
_____
He arrives in Eddie's hometown in the early afternoon. It can barely be called a town: a one room town hall standing next to the general store and a sign proclaiming that the next gas station could be found two towns over, a good 30 mile drive away. There are a few houses and farms along the stretch of road for maybe a mile before the hills make it too rocky and uneven to grow crops. Andrew parks in the dusty dirt lot and has to spend a few moments collecting himself before getting out of the car.
"Hello sir," Andrew calls out to the man sitting in front of the general store. The man squints at him, and doesn't say anything but nods to acknowledge that Andrew had spoken to him.
"I'm looking for the Jones family," Andrew presses on, trying to make his stride confident even without the help of the cane. He sways, this traitorous body.
"What kinda business you got with them?" the man asks, outright hostile and now eying him with suspicion, "Ain't got anything better than to come harass some poor folk for money?"
Andrew looks down at himself -- the suit had clearly been a mistake and there was no hiding his Boston accent. "I'm not, sir," he says, looking back up, "I'm here because -- I served with one of their sons. I wanted to--" He has to swallow past the lump in his throat. "I wanted to pay my condolences."
The man's expression changes. He regards Andrew for another few moments before seeming to come to a conclusion and says, "Second right from this lot. Keep driving until you see a scarecrow on your left. Turn left there and the house should be down the road."
"Thank you, sir," Andrew says.
"Better not be lyin', boy," the man replies.
_____
He lets his car idle in front of the scarecrow for nearly five minutes, unable to make the turn. It'd make it final: he'd walk up to the front door and they'd tell him where Eddie had been buried and that would be the end. Maybe he'd come visit once every couple of years but it would mean the end of his last connection with Eddie, the last unfinished business that kept him tethered to some wild notion of being faithful now and forever.
He turns slowly. There is someone on the porch already when he approaches the house. They must have seen his car idling. A young girl, Andrew realizes as he gets closer, one of Eddie's sisters.
He climbs out of the car and turns towards her. "Hello there," he says, voice steady.
"Hello," she replies, looking at him curiously. "You're from out of state. That's not a West Virginia license plate."
His lips automatically form something like a smile that he doesn't feel at all. "I'm from Massachusetts."
Her head tilts back. "That's far away."
"Are your parents home?" Andrew asks. He approaches the porch, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.
She turns and opens the screen door. "Ma!" he hears her calling, already disappeared into the darkness of the house. A few moments later, a thin woman opens the screen door, wiping her hands on her apron as she does. She has the same way of regarding him that Eddie once did.
"Hello," she says warily, eyebrows furrowed as she looks him up and down.
"Mrs. Jones," he says, "My name is Andrew Haldane. I served with your son Eddie in the Marine Corps." It's strange, he realizes, that this is the first time he has said Eddie's name out loud in all this time.
Her face shifts into one of recognition. She smiles at him, coming down some of the stairs and holding her skirt up against the dust. "Pleasure to meet you, Captain. Eddie can't stop talking about you."
"Mrs. Jones, I am so sorry," Andrew says, "I came from Massachusetts to offer my condolences. I'm sorry I couldn't have come earlier."
The smile slips off her face and she sounds mildly bewildered. "Your condolences?"
Andrew swallows and he has to look down at the ground because he can't meet her eyes. "For what happened to Eddie."
"Oh," she says, "But he's fine now, just has a nasty scar from where they did the surgery. He wanted to go back, you know, re-enlist? But then his pa came down with the flu mighty bad and there was no one else to bring the sheep in for the winter."
Andrew can't process what she is saying to him. There is a fearful hope beating in his throat.
"Captain," she says, suddenly gentle. He feels her put a hand on his shoulder. "Did you think he was dead?"
_____
The second drive is infinitely more terrifying and Andrew finds himself flooring the gas pedal, willing the car to eat as much distance as fast as possible. "He found himself a little homestead in the woods," Eddie's ma had told him, "Comes for planting and harvesting but he says he's building his own home out there. Not even twenty miles from here."
The dust whips up behind him, pinecones and rocks crunching under his tires as he drives deeper into the woods. Eddie's ma had forced him to have some tea while she wrote directions on the back of an envelope. "I can tell you're in no state to memorize anything," she told him. He'd accepted the tea automatically and didn't even notice the curious stares of Eddie's younger siblings poking their heads around the kitchen door.
"Thank you ma'am," Andy had said, taking the written instructions with some reverence, all of his willpower spent on containing himself with the litany of he's alive, he's alive, he's alive, he's alive trembling through his entire being.
He makes a wrong turn twice, has to check the instructions and berate himself furiously before carving a wide arc and flinging up dirt with a squeal of the brakes. It barely registers past the rush of blood in his ears, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Before he knows it, he's driving down a street with a pale blue pickup truck parked off to the side, a makeshift pine mailbox with the numbers of the plot painted in black. Familiar handwriting. Andrew wants to cry.
He doesn't remember getting out of the car. All he remembers is walking through the path through the trees next to the mailbox leading to a small house and seeing a man standing on the half-finished porch with his hand shading his eyes. Andrew blinks away the tears, quickening his pace. The man slides off the edge of the porch and comes towards him, calling out in disbelief, "Skip?"
They meet somewhere in the middle, Andrew wordlessly wrapping himself around Eddie who clings back with just as much ferocity, laughing in delight. "Andy -- it's you, god it's really you." Andrew pushes his face into the crook of Eddie's shoulder, hiding his hot tears and letting Eddie's voice wash over him. "Andy. Andy."
"I thought--" Andrew says and chokes. He pulls Eddie even closer, takes a shuddering breath.
"Oh darling," Eddie says, soft. He strokes the back of Andrew's head, presses a kiss to the side of Andrew's head. "Andy," he says again, like he'll never get tired of the word. He takes a breath and says, "They told me you got shot and died of a brain bleed."
"I'm here," Andrew says against Eddie's neck, "Eddie, I'm here."
Eddie clutches him closer and Andrew can feel the tremble in his arms. He can feel the vibration of Eddie's voice when he says, "Andy." He keeps kissing the side of Andrew's head and saying again, "Andy."
_____
"It's not much," Eddie says, "Just two rooms. Maybe an expansion in the works."
Andrew hasn't been able to take his eyes off Eddie but he makes an effort to look around at the house now. Rough hewn wood, solid work. There are a few pots and pans hanging over the stove and a small table next to a chair over by the window. There's a bed in the other room made neatly with a faded quilt. There's a guitar hanging on the wall over the rustic headboard that matches the walls too well to be anything other than Eddie's personal handiwork.
"You must be starving, driving all that way," Eddie says, "Don't got much for dinner. Mostly just been living off canned soup and beans these days cause I ain't had time to hunt." He looks up at Andrew and Andrew can see the beginnings of a blush under his collar, self-conscious. "Hope that's okay."
"It's perfect," Andrew says sincerely.
"Make yourself at home," Eddie says, striking a match to light the stove. Andrew watches him, the stretch of his arm as he reaches for a stove, the way he moves fluidly from setting the pot on the stove to getting utensils out. The ripple of his shoulder until the thin cotton of his shirt as he works the can opener. Andrew wants to slide his palm along Eddie's back, wiry strength humming under warm skin. Eddie keeps looking back at him like he's scared Andrew will disappear in a puff of smoke if he doesn't keep an eye on him.
Andrew steps forward, stands next to the stove so that his leg is touching Eddie's and holds out his hand. Eddie hands him the wooden spoon wordlessly and lets Andrew stir while he cuts up some bread on a chopping block over the sink.
Before long, Eddie is humming. Andrew closes his eyes and breathes quietly. He can't remember the last time he'd felt this much at peace.
_____
There's no new news that Andrew can pass on to Eddie about the boys so he just listens while Eddie describes the new marriages and babies his sisters and brothers have added to the family. The fire in the stove slowly starts to burn low and Andrew feels his eyelids sagging from the hours of driving. Eddie gently pulls him to his feet and says, "Time for you to go to bed, I think."
Andrew lets Eddie maneuver him through the room of the bedroom and seat him on the bed. Eddie kneels to take Andrew's shoes off and Andrew can't help himself. He curls his hand around Eddie's jaw and Eddie stills.
"Always looking out for me," Andrew murmurs, eyes closing.
Eddie gives a huff of laughter and pulls off Andrew's second shoe. He lifts Andrew's legs into the bed and pulls the quilt up to his neck. It smells like Eddie.
Eddie lingers for a moment. He passes a hand over Andrew's head, smoothing back the hairs behind his ear. He whispers, "Good night Andy," and pulls his hand away.
Andrew forces his eyes open to see Eddie leave and about to the bedroom door after himself. "Where are you going?
"Floor's comfortable." Eddie tells him.
Andrew struggles up into a sit, spike of panic forcing him awake. "Eddie."
Eddie pauses, watching him from the doorway.
Andrew swallows, wishing he could study Eddie's face in better light than the dim moonlight that filtered through the windows. In the distant woods, an owl hoots.
"Please come to bed," he says, hating how small his voice sounds, how vulnerable he feels.
Eddie doesn't move for a moment. But then he steps back in and takes a seat at the edge of the bed next to Andrew.
"It's okay, Andy," Eddie says, "It doesn't have to mean anything you didn't want it to mean."
"What are you talking about?" Andrew asks, feeling very suddenly like they've been having different conversations this whole time.
"We're stateside," Eddie says steadily, "You're a college educated man with your whole life ahead of you. I'm not going to hold anything you said in war against you, Andy."
"That's--no," Andrew says, seizing Eddie's shoulder, "I meant it. I meant every single word I said."
Eddie looks at him, wide in the dark.
"I love you," Andrew says.
"I don't got much," Eddie says, "No great prospects or anything. Lotta hungry mouths to feed."
"I love you as you are," Andrew repeats and hopes that Eddie won't ruin him.
Eddie climbs onto the bed, pushes Andrew back against the headboard. "You're a damn fool, Skip," he murmurs, breath ghosting over Andrew's lips. Andrew laughs and Eddie kisses him, hands fisting in the hair at the back of his head. He laughs again breathlessly when Eddie pulls away to kiss at the side of his neck, lips pressing against his pulse point.
"Of course I love you," he says, the words a vibration through Andrew's skin.
_____
In the morning, Andrew wakes up to the smell of coffee and morning sunlight flooding in through the bedroom window. Eddie's left a cup for him on the stove. A sunbeam comes in through the kitchen window, dust sparkling in the light. The door is open, letting in the cool morning air and the sounds of Eddie work at the porch. Andrew steps into the doorway and watches Eddie hammer in a new post for the staircase.
"Sorry for waking you," Eddie says after he's done. He stands up and smiles at Andrew, the same private smile he'd used for Andrew all those months. Andrew wants to kiss him. "Do you want breakfast?"
"I can make some," Andrew says, "Just show me where the eggs and bacon are."
"Fancy city boy wants his fancy eggs and bacon," Eddie teases, pulling himself up onto the porch. Andy tries to bend over to help him up and nearly stumbles in the process. He has to catch himself on the wall. And he'd been doing so well.
"Are you okay?" Eddie asks, hand steady on Andrew's elbow.
Andrew laughs, embarrassed. "Still working on getting my right side back to normal."
Eddie smoothes his hand over Andrew's elbow, picks up his right hand and kisses the wrist. He does it with such casualness that Andrew can't help the surge of affection he feels. He can't help but to catch Eddie's hand in his.
"Eddie," he says. Eddie looks up at him. "Can I stay?" he asks, "I want to help you build this home."
Eddie's face breaks into a grin. "Sure Skip," he says, and his smile gets softer, "Wouldn't be much of a home without you in it."