She flips through the Naval Academy yearbook. The Lucky Bag. Nineteen Forty. Looking for a face like his. Seeing hundreds. Young men. Handsome in their uniforms. Eyes full of light. Strong. Substantial. Their half smiles belying a confidence won only in the military. Her heart aches for all of them. It’s too painful to let it ache for him.

How many of these shining, gorgeous men died in the Second World War? How many of them were officers in Vietnam and now wake from nightmares with a start; just old men, shaking in their beds with flashbacks of whirring chopper blades and screaming children?

But in their book, in these small glimpses, they’re bright, talented, glorious young men, hands holding the world’s tail. Just waiting for the command to whip.

She looks for his last name. For his middle name. Saying silent prayers that her eyes would light upon a grandfather. An image that would give a better glimpse into who he is. Who he was. To her.

Her finger traces the outlines of the Chapel, the Rotunda, unchanged in the sixty years from their photograph to the burned images in her mind.

How many other young women breathed deep, hoping to say their vows under that Rotunda? How many actually did?

The pictures from that Ring Dance so long ago. Did she look as lovely as these innocent girls? Their chiffon dresses and pin-curls. Their programs identical to the one she keeps in a closeted shoebox. Dangling from their wrists, rings of men they might have loved. She still remembers the feel of his ring, hanging from her neck, cold on her chest. How silly she felt performing the rituals. Dipping the ring, walking under the arch. But how proud she was to put it on his finger. How tingly it made her. How she almost couldn’t stop the tears from coming, at the seemingly prophetic moment.

Dahlgren Hall. Strappy heels clicking on cold marble. His hand grabbing hers. A perfect fit. Sneaking out back to have a smoke. Risking demerits for a moment alone. A moment to kiss and stare into eyes full of an open future.

And had she already seen his future in his cursed family tree? Would she have lost him the way his mother lost his father? His grandmother lost his grandfather? Would she have comforted a young son, the one who surely would’ve followed his family’s path? Would she have stood alone on his commission day, no gloved hand to hold?

Her heart breaks for the woman she never was. The wife she’d never be.

She closes the yearbook, musty pages ruffling, whispering goodbye to those young men and their story-filled eyes. Goodbye to the eyes whose story she’d never hear again.