For decades, I waited for news. I never married, although I built a fulfilling life as an English teacher. Every year on Thomas’s birthday, I visited a memorial for missing servicemen and placed a white rose there. I always brought our college photograph and told him about my life. I never stopped wondering whether he might somehow return.

Then, at the airport, his grandson Daniel told me the impossible truth. Thomas had survived, been captured, and eventually returned home in 1973. He had married a nurse named Margaret, raised two children, and lived for decades. Now elderly and seriously ill, he wanted to see me again. I couldn’t understand how he could have come home without contacting me.

Daniel drove me to his grandfather’s house. Thomas sat beside the window, his white hair thin and his hands trembling. When he said my name, I recognized his eyes immediately. But I remained standing. “You’ve been home for more than fifty years,” I said. “Why did you let me believe you were dead?”