Dearest Milton James by N.R. Walker

Chapter Eighteen

Raymond Dunn,or Ray, as he told us, showed us through to his living room, still carrying his little dog under his arm. “Can I get you both anything to drink?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” I replied.

“No thank you,” Julian said.

We sat on the double seater. Ray took the single. The room was full of expensive furniture, gorgeous decorative art pieces, and paintings on the walls. Photographs too. They were pieces from all over the world, as far as I could tell. He’d very clearly lived a full life.

Penelope sat perched on Ray’s knee, and while she was cute, I had no delusions about her ability to kill me and dispose of my remains.

Julian took the letters out of his satchel, and still with the twine tied around them, he handed them over to Ray like he was handing over the Holy Grail.

Ray held them and let out a laugh. He got a little teary. “Oh my god.” He laughed again. “I can’t believe it.” He pulled the twine and opened the first letter. Then he looked up at us and put his hand to his mouth. “I cannot believe they survived all this time. How? How are they still intact? You said they sat in your office for forty years? How did you ever trace them to me?”

Julian nodded. “Because they had no deliverable address or returnable address, they found their way to the Dead Letter Office. They were lost for a time, we believe. They were found down the back of a pigeon hole or a cabinet where they must have spent twenty years. Then the Dead Letter Office moved to a new warehouse, and when everything was stripped out, they were found. Someone had the good sense to keep them aside and not have them thrown to archives or destroyed.” Julian shrugged. “They’d been in my office for as long as anyone knows. I was told people had tried to find their home but had no luck.”

Ray was reading the letters and nodding. He was still teary-eyed but happy, amazed even. “Oh my god, I remember this. I wrote about Deidre being annoying,” he laughed, but then he turned sad. “My little sister. She died in 1992.”

Oh no.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

He smiled gratefully. “No, it’s fine. I’d forgotten about this. She followed us around all day. We went swimming. It was a forgotten memory, so thank you.”

He skimmed over another page, shaking his head in wonder. “How did you know it was me?”

“Well,” I began, “we pieced together all the clues. There was a mention of the hardware store owner, and most archived business registrations are online now. Honestly, without the internet, we’d have gotten nowhere. But finding the hardware store registration gave us Northbury as the town.” I smiled at him. “The other people in our team all did their bit. Cherry found the town. Denise found out about the radio show called Dearest Milton James. Theo sourced out the high school yearbooks for Northbury High and we found a few Raymonds, given we didn’t really know what year you graduated, so it was a process of elimination. And Paul followed the leads on the mentions of Duntroon.”

And there it was. The mention of Duntroon, of the army, of the war.

Julian spoke next. “We could find four men from the Milldale council area who were enlisted through conscription. But at the end of the day, we had no right to find that person. We could find you, the author of the letters, yes. But given you’d used an alias for the man you wrote to, we decided to honour that and keep his identity a secret too.”

I slid my hand over Julian’s and squeezed, giving him a smile. “Julian decided that, and he was right.”

Ray looked at us then, realising that, yes, I was holding Julian’s hand. He nodded and went back to his letters. “I really appreciate that.”

I had to know . . .

“Mr Dunn, is he . . . ? Is the man you wrote to . . . did you ever see him again?”

“Malachi,” Julian cautioned.

“Sorry,” I added quickly. “I just . . . I know it’s not my business, but these letters just mean so much. They’re just beautiful, and my little romantic heart just has to know. Did you go to university? Or did you take the job at the council with your aunt? Did you see him again?”

Ray laughed again, holding a letter to his chest. “Oh, you remind me of me. Well, a much younger me, that is. Yes, I went to university. I became an English teacher, and I taught high school English and drama for over forty-five years. Loved even the worst day.” He sighed. “I’ve been retired now for seven years.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “I’m so happy to hear that.”

“And Steve,” he said wistfully. “Seems like a lifetime ago. I guess it was . . .”

Steve?

Steve wasn’t one of the two names we had.

But there was a Steven. The army guy whose record had no details. It had all been redacted, apparently.

“His name was Steve?” I asked. “Steven?”

Ray tilted his head, then he laughed. “Not was, is. Steve’s still alive. Well, I think he is. He left to get some milk and he’s not home yet. But the frigates have been going up and down the coast this week and he’s probably watching them. You see, he spent forty-eight years in the army. And you can take a man out of the military but you can’t take the military out of the man.” He sighed, smiling fondly. “Of course the military knew about us, but they just pretended they didn’t. It was probably because he knew too much by then, they could never fire him.”

“Wait . . . he left to get milk?” I asked. “You . . . you and Steve . . . the man you wrote to in these letters . . . you live with him?”

Ray was positively gleeful. “Oh yes. We’ve been together since 1972. Married in 1992. We had a civil ceremony in Denmark. Not that it meant much back here in Australia, but it was real for us. We had our second wedding here in 2018.”

I could have honestly cried.

Damn tears.

“I’m not going to cry,” I said, and Julian laughed and let go of my hand to rub my back. “I’m sorry, I thought for sure something bad had happened. The letters stopped after he went to Duntroon, so of course my mind thought something terrible. I’m so relieved.”

Ray laughed. “He left for Duntroon, and I left for university not long after. When we knew he wasn’t leaving the country, we wrote to each other, keeping our letters very coded, as you could imagine. He went straight into administration, thankfully. And within a year he was moved to Holsworthy and into defence intelligence.”

Well, that would explain why everything was redacted.

Ray smiled at some far-off memory. “Holsworthy was much closer to my university. He would come visit every chance he got.” Penelope jumped down and ran to the door, barking excitedly now. “Steve’s home now,” Raymond said.

We heard the door open and a deep voice murmuring to, I assumed, the dog. And in walked a tall man, thick-set, his dark grey hair short and neat, a strong jaw and heavy eyebrows. He had a bottle of milk in one hand, Penelope in his other arm. He might have been seventy-something years old but he looked like he could snap me with one harsh word.

Julian and I both stood, and Ray joined us. “Steve, my love, come in. I want you to meet this lovely couple from the letter office.”

Couple?

He thought we were a couple.

I didn’t correct him, and neither did Julian.

Steve eyed us like we were in an interrogation room. “Oh stop, you’re scaring them,” Ray said with a laugh. He introduced us by name, and we shook his hand, and yes, his grip was like a raptor talon.

I didn’t know whether to cry or salute him.

Ray then exchanged the milk and Penelope for the pile of letters. “Here are the letters I told you about.” Raymond had Steve sit in the chair and smiled at us. “I still cannot believe they had them after all these years.”

Julian and I sat back down, more straight-backed than before. I was relieved Mr Military had the same effect on Julian that he had on me.

Steve watched us for a scrutinising second, maybe looking at how close we were sitting, probably trying to determine if we were a couple and, by association, how much he would divulge of his personal life in front of strangers. After he came to some mental conclusion, he looked at the envelope first. “Dearest Milton James.” He shook his head. “Haven’t heard that name in a long time.” Then he opened the first letter. “Your handwriting hasn’t changed, love.”

And my heart just melted a little bit.

Ray sat on the armrest and kept his hand on Steve’s shoulder. He read over two letters, skimmed a third, then folded it neatly and put it back in the envelope. He didn’t open the fourth.

Julian patted my knee. “We should get going. Thank you for being so welcoming. I’m so pleased we could finally deliver the letters to their rightful owner. It’s been an honour, actually, to finally meet you both.”

He stood up and I followed suit. I could have probably stayed and listened to their love story all day, but it was pretty obvious that Steve was a little emotional.

We owed it to them both to be able to read these letters in private.

“Thank you, both,” I said. “For being the happy ever after these letters deserve. I’ll remember them forever.”

“Aww.” Ray stood up and gave me a quick hug. I wasn’t expecting it but it was sweet. He pulled away and looked at us both. “You remind me of a certain young couple in these letters.” Then he pointed his thumb at Steve. “He used to call me his little Ray of sunshine, you know.”

Steve frowned at him. “I still call you that.”

Ray rolled his eyes, and I nudged Julian. “I’m the ray of sunshine, by the way.”

Julian tried not to smile. “We know.”

I grinned at Ray. “Thank you.”

He put his hand on my forearm. “No, thank you.”

We said our final goodbyes and I walked down the steps, along the path and out the gate, all without crying. But then I got halfway to the car and the tears came.

Julian saw, and with a frown, he pulled me in for a hug. “You okay?”

I nodded against him. “Happy tears. I’m so happy.”

Which was so obvious, given I was sobbing in his arms.

“A perfect ending, right?”

I nodded again. “So perfect. They’ve been together for fifty years. I thought for sure he was going to say he’d died, but nope, he was getting milk and looking at ships on the ocean.”

It was so freaking adorable, I cried harder.

Julian laughed and rubbed my back, kissing the side of my head. “Did you want to get some fish and chips while we’re on the Northern Beaches? We can sit and watch the ships on the ocean.”

I pulled back and wiped at my face. “That would be perfect. Sorry for crying.”

He lifted my chin and kissed me sweetly. “Don’t ever apologise for having a heart, Malachi.”