When The Silence Broke © Elsa Wolf Barnes

Forty years had passed since they’d split under unusual circumstances. The phone call Catlyn had received just yesterday felt ghostly. The voice on the other end of the line was his—except that didn’t make sense. Jody was dead. Or so she thought.

After the call, Catlyn rifled through a box of mementos and found his death notice. It clearly stated the service location and the burial ground. She hadn’t gone to either. By then, she’d lived too far away to get there in time. And truth be told, she hadn’t believed her presence would help anyone. All she’d done was write a conciliatory letter to his father, noting that Jody’s military service and the surrounding events had been the cause. She felt it necessary to say so, since the letter Jody had left behind implied his father’s failures—and a breakup with another girl—were the main reasons. She knew otherwise.

But knowing didn’t grant her peace. There were pieces of that time she still couldn’t look at directly—stray memories she’d trained herself to ignore. The way Jody had gone quiet in crowds. His sudden disappearances for days at a time. The night he’d cried on her shoulder without saying a word, then kissed her like she was the only anchor he had left.

A response from his father never came. At the time, that silence only added to Catlyn’s distress. They had split nearly three years before. The only reason she even knew about his death by suicide was a voice message left on her answering machine from Claudia.

Catlyn had built a new life since then—a husband, children, and a comfortable home in the suburbs. That chapter had closed, too. She’d lost him suddenly in a road accident five years before. No long goodbyes, no time to prepare. The grief felt easier to explain, but no easier to carry. She’d mourned him with casseroles, sympathy cards, and lonely nights. Jody, she’d mourned in secret.

The reasons for their failed relationship had never been fully explained. The end came after a series of events that felt senseless even at the time. Those forty years hovered in her mind and spun out of control. She had boxed up the memories in order to move forward with her life—except on the anniversary of his death. Each year, she’d reflect on the loss and wonder why he’d done it. Claudia had said he was bipolar, but in all the time they were together, Catlyn only glimpsed the possibility after he returned from combat.

But after the recent call, she hadn’t slept well. The night swirled with dreams that twisted reality into a series of half-truths—troubles that could almost be real, but weren’t. Soon, she might be facing a man she’d once loved and lost all those years ago. Or was that eerie voice on the phone only a dream? If it wasn’t, was she meeting him at the coffee shop? They wouldn’t know each other anymore. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find there. Or maybe just the answer to a question that had haunted her for most of her life. What would be the purpose? Closure? Rekindling?

The coffee shop was only a fifteen-minute drive. She’d already showered and dressed, as if on autopilot. Now, she stood at the kitchen sink, the coffee untouched in her hand, her eyes fixed on the oak tree outside. The leaves trembled in the wind, like something afraid. The call had come from a number without a caller ID. No name. Just that voice—Jody’s voice, aged and distant but unmistakable. The disbelief hadn’t faded—if anything; it had increased.

By noon, she might be sitting across from a man she had mourned every year for four decades. She could barely remember the contours of his face now, only the way it felt to be near him—like holding on to something unstable and electric. They wouldn’t recognize each other. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the man who had called her wasn’t Jody at all. Or maybe he was. She couldn’t decide which version of the truth frightened her more.

Catlyn arrived ten minutes early and chose a seat by the window facing the street. The shop hadn’t changed. The same warped wood tables, uneven floor tiles, and chalkboard menu with its exaggerated sideways cursive. She ordered tea, though she wouldn’t drink it. Her hands felt cold, and she grasped the cup to absorb its warmth.

Time moved in swirls as she waited. The clink of cups, the hiss of the espresso machine, and the murmur of casual conversation formed a backdrop that didn’t match her state of mind. She glanced at the door each time it opened, unsure what she was hoping for. A stranger who would put the past to rest, or something impossible.

Then he walked in. Or someone who looked like him.

The man hesitated at the threshold, scanning the room as if deciding whether he belonged. His hair was salt-and-pepper grey, trimmed short. His shoulders broader, his face leaner, more worn. He didn’t look exactly like the Jody she remembered, but the shape of his hands, the way he adjusted the collar of his coat, the stillness in his expression…struck her like an old chord plucked from nowhere.

He saw her. A flicker of a smile crossed his face. Recognition? Doubt? He walked over to the table.

“Hi,” he said, standing there as if waiting for permission to exist.

“Jody?” she asked.

He nodded, slowly. “Yes.”

They stared at each other for a beat too long. She gestured toward the empty chair.

He sat, folding his hands on the table.

After an interminably long pause, she said, “I thought you were dead.”

“I was.” His voice carried no irony.

Her breath caught. Not from his words exactly, but because they sounded like something Jody would say. Something he had said after a combat mission when he was thinner, angrier, and less sure of the world.

“Part of me didn’t make it back.”

“You left a letter. Claudia called me. There was a death notice.”

He nodded again, but this time the expression tightened, as if remembering the hurt he’d felt and inflicted.

“I needed to disappear.”

She let the words sit between them. Her fingers tightened around the warm ceramic of her teacup. Quietly she said, “I was devastated.”

“I know,” he said just as quietly.

“Why now?”

He stared past her out the shop window. “Several months ago, I heard your name. I was at a veteran’s event in Boston. Someone mentioned you’d written a book. I started thinking—maybe it was time. Maybe it wasn’t too late to say, I’m sorry. Or—to say something.”

“You could have sent a letter or reached out years ago.” She didn’t know what to feel. Anger? Relief? Her body felt unmoored.

He ran his fingers through his hair. “I was afraid you wouldn’t read it.”

She studied him for a long moment, unsure where the fantasy ended and the truth began. “Where were you all this time?”

He hesitated. “My work…it became something I couldn’t talk about. Not to family, to friends, to you—it was classified. I went deeper into it than I expected. After a while, it became easier—safer—for everyone to think I was gone.”

Catlyn blinked hard. “So, they faked your death?”

“After what happened with my parents, with you…there wasn’t much left to hold me in place.”

They fell into silence again, not the kind that asks to be filled, but the kind that settles like dust over years of neglect.

Outside, a bicycle zipped past the window. The moment felt surreal. Like an unattainable blink in time.

Catlyn looked at him and the one question she’d wanted to ask for decades came out along with a tear. “Why me, Jody? Why me?”

He looked down, his jaw twitched, and then he met her eyes.

“Because—Catlyn, you were the last person who knew who I was—before I became someone I didn’t recognize.”

She studied him again. Not the soldier. Not the young man. He had changed, but his voice and the look in his eyes hadn’t. When he’d said her name, a flicker of emotions, feelings still remaining, passed between them. For forty years, she had imagined what she’d say. Now, she couldn’t remember any of the words. Now that he’d come back. Now that she’d shown up. What would come next? Only time would tell.