We made love that night, sharing a small bed at her sister’s apartment in Alexandria after a big reunion dinner at a nearby favorite restaurant with bottles of the house red. Her body was just as I imagined, tall and lean and her large breasts hung down from her delicate shoulders. I explored her lushness with my kisses, moonlight streaming through the open blinds, as she squirmed on the small bed. Subdued moans came from her, soft as a cat’s purr, a sensuous, breathless acknowledgment of the pleasure she took from my caresses. The next morning I woke to find Melissa awake in the semi-darkness staring at me, her long blonde hair disarrayed as the bed sheets. A sleepy smile came to my face. We kissed.

We took the Metro train that runs around DC and, as time was getting short, decided to go to Arlington first, to make sure we wouldn’t miss it. Row upon row upon row of white crosses filled me with a majestic sadness. There were men and their stories buried beneath the ground we would never know. It silently screamed with bloody murder. This all belonged to the Custis-Lee family before the Civil War when they made it into a cemetery so they could bury Union soldiers on General Robert E. Lee’s confiscated land.