Excerpt from Burning Bridges:
The brown mailing envelope lounged against the back door, appearing
deceptively like a friend passing the time. Sara Richards snatched
it up with one hand while fitting the key in the lock with the
other. A quick glance showed the addressee to be Mary Ellen Noland,
her mother. Tape held the flap end closed and her mother’s
scrawl crossed the other end. “Call me when you’ve read
this.”
Strange. She hung up her keys and dropped her purse on the table,
examining the return address. Department of the Navy. Her father
had been dead over ten years. What would the Navy be sending her
mother now?
She loosened the tape and pulled out a letter then spilled a
second envelope onto the table. The smaller pouch was addressed
to her, Sara, from the U.S. Postal Service and had been forwarded
to the Navy. Frowning, she skimmed the letter: Recently recovered
bags of mail…hidden in a storage shed in Virginia Beach since
1970…enclosed FPO letters sent to Sara Noland…forwarded
from Oceana NAS to the Department of Navy…sent in care of
Mrs. Mary Ellen Noland for Sara Noland…
Boneless, she dropped into a chair and stared at the USPS envelope.
1970. So long ago and yet like yesterday. Only one person would
have written her from overseas, and he hadn’t sent any letters.
In fact, he’d disappeared, forgetting she lived and leaving
her to face the disastrous following months alone.
Then he’d died.
No, these letters couldn’t be from Paul Steinert.
But who else?
Sara’s Siamese, Pi R Squared, rubbed his head against her
ankle and pled for food, but she ignored him. With surprisingly
steady hands, she opened the postal service pouch. Someone—her
mother?—had slit the end of this also, and then taped it
closed. Three smaller envelopes fell out. She’d seen his
handwriting only once but recognized it immediately. Her hand
flew to her mouth. Blood roared in her ears, blocking Squared’s
plaintive meow.
An image filled her mind. Not how he looked the first time she’d
seen him, but after they’d been meeting for several weeks.
The wind off the ocean ruffled his short blond hair and love filled
his eyes, eyes bluer than an autumn sky. That was Paul as she
dreamed him after he left and later, when she damned him for forgetting
her. When she heard he’d been killed in action and all during
those interminable months when she longed for one last chance
to hold him, she pictured him there, on the beach at Sandbridge.
For the first time in years, the pain of his death crashed over
her. Her grief now was nothing compared to the agony when she’d
first heard, when she’d wanted to die, too. Worn down over
the years, his memory was a dull ache, familiar, like a friend
she counted on to be there.
She picked up one of the small envelopes. On a back corner, he’d
noted it as number twenty-nine. Checking the other two, she saw
a twenty-eight and thirty. He’d written thirty letters? How
could that be? She hadn’t received even one. Thirty letters
couldn’t have been lost due to a foul up in the mail.
Mechanically, she dumped a packet of dry food in Squared’s
dish and then called her mother.
“I thought it would be you. Have you read the letters?”
“No. What happened, do you know?” Scattered on the
table, the three packets drew her gaze and she stared as though
trying to read their meaning through the sealed paper.
“Only what the Department of Navy letter said. Some bags
of mail were lost. I suppose if I weren’t still receiving
part of Dad’s retirement, they wouldn’t have found me.”
Sara closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. “I mean,
do you know what happened to the rest of the letters?”
“What?” There was no mistaking the naked fear in her
mother’s voice.
“The envelopes are numbered. I have twenty-eight through
thirty. What do you think happened to the others?” Tension
radiated through her shoulders and neck. Her mother was about
to say something she didn’t want to hear, she knew it.
“Sara, you have to understand, Dad and I only wanted what
was best for you. You were a child, a high school senior with
a wonderful future in front of you. You’d been accepted at
William and Mary. The last thing you needed was to get mixed up
with a sailor who would love you and leave you. Which, I might
add, is exactly what he did.”
Sara could barely suck air into her lungs. Her fingers whitened
with the hold she had on the phone cord. “What did you do,
Mother?”
