There was something else that Stephen Collick had said, what was it? Millie cast her mind back to the scene. Ah, yes, something or other…offer to compensate for the pain and sadness his family had unwittingly initiated twelve years earlier. That was it. His family had initiated… Had Charles not been open with her? Had his enlistment been triggered by something other than patriotism? Had he been involved in some secret hanky-panky that he had not trusted her enough to confide? Were there things she been blind to all these years?
His medals…they had never really spoken about them, had they? He had said they were what everyone in the RFC received, and they had just lain in that box. He never looked at them and she had never thought to. His sickness and his care were all that she had ever concerned herself with. When people called him a hero, she assumed it was because he flew aeroplanes and because he lost a leg. How blinkered had she been all these years?
She drew a deep breath. Well, what did any of it matter now? Charles was dead. After all those years of misery and pain, he would feel pain no more, thanks be to the Lord.
She sat quietly for a few minutes, then the resentment hidden within her welled up once more and tears ran down her cheeks.
“But I do!” she screamed to the empty room.
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