For fifty-five years, Eleanor mourned a man who had never come home from war. She never married, leaving a white rose at his memorial every birthday, until a voice from the cockpit spoke her name.
Now, a stranger holding their college photograph was about to reveal why her lifetime of waiting rested on a devastating and deliberately hidden trut… Continues…
Eleanor and Thomas fell in love in college before Vietnam took him away. When his aircraft disappeared, she was left without a body to bury or an answer she could trust.
She became a teacher and carried her grief into old age. Then Daniel, Thomas’s grandson, found her and arranged a meeting. Thomas had survived, returned in 1973, married his nurse, and raised a family. He had told his parents Eleanor knew he was alive and wanted no contact.
The separation she had blamed on war had been sustained by his deception.
Seriously ill, Thomas asked for another chance. Eleanor still recognized the young man she had loved, but affection could not erase the decades he had withheld from her.
She offered forgiveness without promising to return. After one more visit to the memorial, her sister asked what she wanted next. Eleanor wanted to see the ocean. At last, she was choosing something for herself.
