Two days after our wedding, my husband returned to Vietnam and vanished – 56 years later, I received flowers with a note: “Darling, you won’t believe why I had to disappear”

I woke up believing he might be standing at the door.

I wrote letters even when I no longer knew where to send them.

Then Warren’s closest friend, Calvin, came home.

He had served beside him.

I still remember Calvin sitting in my parents’ living room with his elbows on his knees. He barely looked at me.

“I saw the blast,” he finally said. “Marlene, I’m sorry. I don’t think Warren could have survived it.”

I asked him if he had seen Warren die.

Calvin looked down.

“No.”

“Then you don’t know.”