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You had been doing better. Good even. The sorrow wasn’t all consuming like it had been in the summer. And while you still found tears coming to your eyes at the most mundane of things, you had it handled.
The grief was still there, but it was bearable.
Billy’s mother had even started to come around on you. She had been against the idea of you getting married so close to the start of the Walk, three weeks before, to be precise.
You had been with Billy for almost two years, and had talked about getting married before he got his letter. The letter simply moved things forward.
Billy wanted to make sure you knew how much he loved you. He also wanted to make sure that if he died soon after winning, as happened with about one third of winners of the Long Walk, that you would be taken care of. All of his winnings passing to you.
But he didn’t win, there would be nothing to pass to you. No winnings. No wish. No body to bury. Just the title of widow and a confusing anger at everything he’d hidden from you.
You had thought it impossible when he said it as he prepared to die, but his mother confirmed, Billy Stebbins was the son of the Major. Your husband was the son of the Major. The Major was your father-in-law.
It was a confusing revelation to sift through while also mourning a person you loved.
But you did sift through it.
And you were doing good.
Which was probably why you didn’t expect anything when late at night on February thirteenth you opened an unassuming envelope that was mixed in with a few bills. You opened it first because it was heavier than a simple letter should be, and there was something oddly shaped and hard inside.
You tilted the envelope upside down, the contents spilled onto the dining table with a metallic clink
Attached to a chain was a dog tag with the number 38 cut into the metal.
You stared at it for a long time, unwilling to reach out and touch it.
There were still small dots of brown all over the face of the smooth metal. Dried blood. Billy’s dried blood.
You blinked a few times and opened the rest of the mail, cleaning up the empty envelopes before moving back to the envelope the dog tag had come from. Inside was a single sheet of paper. Government letterhead, neatly typed with only a handful of sentences.
To the next-of-kin of Billy Stebbins, #38, The Long Walk 1979,
You will find enclosed the number provided to your Walker.
Take heart in knowing that his life was given in the service of something greater than himself.
Your sacrifice is noted and appreciated.
You resisted the urge to burn the letter, and you put it in a drawer reserved for junk. You would deal with it later.
That still left the great and terrible metal tag sitting on your table.
You stared at it for a long time before finally reaching out to touch it. You half expected it to be hot to the touch, or wet with sweat and snot and blood. But it was just cold and hard. Unyielding.
You picked it up by the chain, now that it was in your hands you could see the crusted blood in the tiny balls of the military bead chain. It was revolting. Still, this was something.
You had made peace with having only pictures and memories. You didn’t share many possessions before he left. But this was something. It had hung next to his heart for five days as he tried his hardest to come back to you.
In the end you put it in the same junk drawer. But eventually, with the benefit of time and a bit more healing, it found a new home on your nightstand. The chain draped over the corner of your wedding photo. The tag set so you could read the number clearly.
You might not have ended up with money, or the man you loved to hold in your arms, but you had all that was left of him. That had to count for something.