A Candle on the Window Sill (A Soldier’s Peace)

The snow fell in quiet waves outside the modest farmhouse near Winchester, Virginia. Its blanket muffled the sharpness of December, shrouding the land as if to obscure the memory of the war that had so recently swept across it. Inside, the warm glow of the fireplace softened the worn edges of the home, though the corners still bore the ghostly chill of loss. 

John Abernathy sat alone at the kitchen table, running his thumb along the rim of an empty coffee cup. He stared at the window, where a single candle burned on the sill, its wax pooling slowly at its base. It had been a year since he had learned of his son’s death—not just any death, but a battlefield one. And not just a battlefield one, but at the hands of a boy in gray.

That soldier now sat across the table from him. 

James Talbot, scarcely older than Abernathy's son would have been, balanced uneasily on the edge of his chair. His lanky frame folded into an awkward stillness, his gray wool jacket frayed and patched in a few places, though it fit oddly over his thin form. His hat rested on the floor by his feet, next to a modest bundle tied together with twine—his worldly belongings, from what Abernathy could guess. Talbot's face was pale but taut, lines too old for his years etched deeply around his mouth and eyes. 

Neither man spoke. Their breaths, visible in the chilly room, mingled in the silence between them.

John broke the stillness. "I’ve asked myself a hundred times if it was a mistake, writing that letter to you."

Talbot swallowed. "Then why did you?" 

John stared into his coffee cup as though its emptiness might answer the question. "Because anger can only burn so long before it leaves you cold. I had no one left to be angry with anymore. My wife, Clara... she couldn’t bear the grief of losing William, not after she nursed him back to health so many times from childhood sicknesses. And my boy... he wouldn’t have wanted me to live like this, either." 

John’s eyes flickered up to James, sharp but weary. "I found your name among his things. He died clutching something you wrote—words scrawled on a scrap of paper. He’d had it pressed to his chest, like it meant something. Something I couldn’t give him." 

James paled further. His voice faltered as he asked, "What... what did it say?" 

John reached into his pocket and unfolded a crumpled scrap of paper. He held it out across the table. 

James hesitated but took the paper with trembling hands. His own handwriting stared back at him, hurried and smudged from the desperate scrawling of that long-ago day. 

"I'm sorry for this, brother. Please believe I wish it weren't you. Be at peace. We all must." 

The words, barely legible, hung in the air as James stared at them. He had written them without thinking, pressing the paper into the hands of the boy in blue when the cannon fire subsided and the field belonged to silence. 

James gripped the note tightly. "He was a fine soldier." 

John sighed. "He was just a boy. A fine one, yes, but so young." 

James nodded stiffly. His throat was dry, but he managed to say, "He... he fought bravely. Didn’t cry, didn’t beg. Even in the end, he... he looked at me like he was... forgiving me." His voice cracked on the last word, and he quickly cleared his throat. 

"That’s why I wrote it," James added. "I didn’t want him to think I was any less than... sorry."

The two men sat in the weight of the memory until John stood abruptly and moved to the hearth. He stirred the fire, his movements sharp and deliberate, as if trying to burn off his unease. 

"Eat," he said, gesturing toward the simple meal set out on the table: bread, a wedge of cheese, some cold roast pork. "No sense in the both of us starving tonight. It’s Christmas Eve, after all." 

James hesitated again but finally reached for a piece of bread. "I don’t understand why I’m here," he said quietly, breaking the loaf into small, careful bites. 

John turned back to him, his gaze fixed like a cold wind. "Because I’d rather be angry with you over my son’s empty chair than let the silence kill me instead." 

James flinched. "I’m sorry," he said, barely louder than a whisper. "For everything." 

John’s shoulders sagged. "I don’t want your apology, son. What’s done is done. I invited you because..." He faltered, struggling to voice the thought. "Because I thought maybe, if I could look at you—if I could sit at a table with you—I’d find something left of him. In your story. In your guilt. Maybe somewhere in there, there’d still be my boy." 

James met his gaze, though tears welled in his eyes. "And what did you find?" 

John was silent for a moment, then shook his head. "Not yet. I don’t know. But the night is young."

As the hours passed, the awkwardness began to soften. Though they both bore the weight of grief, the companionship—however strange—seemed to bring a shared measure of solace. They shared stories: John talked of William’s quick wit, his love of books and endless curiosity; James talked of his own family back in Georgia, a struggling farm that felt more like a memory now, having sacrificed two brothers and most of its means for a cause that no longer breathed.

When the night grew late, John stood and placed another log on the fire. His hands lingered over the mantel, where a portrait of William rested. His voice was low and steady when he finally spoke again.

"I suppose my boy thought the war would make him a man," he said. "I guess it did. Just not the way either of us expected." 

James looked down at the floor. "It made me older, too," he admitted. "But it didn’t make me better." 

John turned to face him. "You still have the chance to figure out how to live with it. He didn’t. So don’t waste what he gave you—understand?" 

James nodded solemnly. 

The candle on the sill flickered as a gust of wind brushed past the house, casting shadows that danced on the walls like fleeting memories. 

When the morning came, James stood at the threshold, his hat in his hands. "Thank you," he said. 

John nodded but didn’t smile. "Take care of yourself, James Talbot. And if you ever pass through this way again..." He trailed off. 

James nodded and stepped out into the snowy dawn, his figure disappearing into the whiteness like a phantom. 

Inside, John returned to the fireplace, staring once more at his son’s portrait. He reached out to touch its frame gently, his fingers brushing the wood as though he might feel William’s presence in its grain. 

"You’d have liked him," he murmured. "At least... I think you would’ve."

And though the loss still lingered, it felt, for the first time in months, that the edges of the wound might begin to mend.