#william killick

The smell of steam and the shuffle of fast moving feet filled your senses as you stood at the train platform watching the train appear on the distance. Your stomach turned , swishing everything around as your heart pounded in your ears. Over two years ago your husband had went off to war and left you alone. The war had finally ended and the amount of joy that rain through your veins was enough to make you almost pass out.

You and William had met three years before he got drafted. He was a simple man that caught your eye one day when you were at the market buying your sickly mother some flowers. The two of you reached for the same flower which made you giggle like a school girl before he smiled at you and your cheeks turned pink. He had apologized and let you pick the flowers before offering to walk you home. Letting a complete stranger walk you home? Your mother would’ve yelled at you had she been more alert. That was not the last time you seen him though. The next time was when you were out shopping, well it was more browsing than anything but fate had it so the two of you would meet again. He was in the same store doing the same thing of just browsing.

Three weeks would pass again before you’d see him again and it was starting to make you wonder if he was stalking you in a way, but it was also a small town. William finally made a move on you with a sly smile and boy oh boy did you fall head over heels. It wouldn’t be long after your first date that William would actually ask you to be his girl. He knew what he wanted in his life and what he wanted from his girl. You were a dream come true.

After a year of dating William moved in with you and your mom. He did everything he could to help you with her until she passed away peacefully. You were a wreck and William stepped up to keep you back at peace. He helped you bathe, do your hair and sometimes he’d just allow you to lay in bed and feel what was bothering.

As the universe would have it, you were about to be happy again with William. He had popped the question , he wanted to ask you earlier but with your mothers passing he didn’t want you to make a decision with a clouded mind and that just really proved he was the man for you. You had made him a heart shaped locket with your picture in it as a gift for being so sweet and understanding. He wore it everywhere he could and he did it with pride. However your heart would be broken as he got the letter that we was drafted off to war.

The letter brought a black cloud back over you as you stood with him at the platform with tears swelling in your eyes. You wanted to take it out of his hand and rip it into a million pieces but you realized the two of you were not the only ones about to be separated. William shoved the letter into his pocket before he grabbed you and wrapped his arms around you tightly. Your hands rested on the middle of his back while he inhaled your scent one last time before he’d see you again.

Your heart shattered into shards as he waved goodbye to you from the window. It took everything in you to run past the crowd of people, jump over some of them and pull yourself up to him to give him a final kiss. William did his best to hold you while your feet dangled and the two of kissed as long as you could before the train whistle blew. You watched as William waved goodbye with tears in his eyes as well.

Nights were restless as you moved through an empty house. His presence lingered everywhere and it hurt in a way you couldn’t describe. Days became weeks while weeks became months at a slow pace. You waited everyday for the mail to be delivered and at least once a month you got a letter from William. It didn’t make it any easier but at least you knew he was alive.

A small brown box under your bed held the letters he wrote to you. It also had some of the smaller gifts and trinkets he had given you over the years. William really was the love of your life.

As the war went on you stayed inside holding in the grief even though you knew you weren’t alone. It was just easier to be alone. A few of your friends tried to recruit you into going out to find someone but your heart couldn’t do that. The reason they were pushing is because the letters from William stopped coming but he had wrote in the last one that it could be the last one for a while.

Finally the war came to an end and you never felt relief like you did in that moment. You cleaned yourself up the best you could and made it to the train station as fast as you could. You stood nervously on the concrete below your feet, knees shaking, hands clenched together and lip bitten waiting for William to get off the train. Hours passed before the train pulled in and as everyone ran past you, you stood frozen hoping he’d be one of the first to get off the train. Time moved so slowly as you watched all these other men get off before you sighed and hung your head before a tap on your shoulder perked you up.

William stood there all scuffed up with a few bruises and stitches but you didn’t care you were just thankful he was there smiling at you. You felt your tears stream down your cheeks as he picked you up and spun you around before you gripped onto him.

“Don’t ever leave me.” You whispered into his ear. William kissed the top of your head with a gentle kiss before he smoothed his hands over your body. “I’ll always find you, no matter how far apart we are, I’ll always find you.” He kept his word, he never left you.

As the two of you grew older he got the life he had dreamed of. A beautiful wife with two kids. One of each. He was there for both kids on taking their first steps, potty training, helping them learn how to talk and just being a good dad. Times did get hard but the two of you kept going. When the kids were old enough to drive William wasn’t scared to teach them but when your daughter brought home her first boyfriend, William about scared the boy away. When your son was old enough William took him for his first beer in bar. William was the man that proved to you that love was real. He was around to watch both of his kids get married and start their own families, but the older he got the sicker he got from all the issues he had felt with during the war.

When William had passed, you were once again a mess. He was your rock, your peace and comfort and now he was gone.

It was five years after his passing that you finally did it. You had came back to the train station every year to let him go one final time but it was too much. His ashes stayed in an old brown box that had made for you, the old box you had kept under the bed when he was at war.

Today was the day. You stood as the sun set on the horizon as your eyes swelled up.

Small disclaimer: Yeah, yeah—I get that The Edge of Love isn’t supposed to be a feel-good romance. It’s meant to be messy, raw, and full of flawed people making flawed choices. That’s kind of the point. And why I keep watching it. I love these types of emotional conflicts and it helps me become a better writer. But still—just because it’s intentional doesn’t make it any less infuriating to watch these people fumble around with each other's hearts like it’s a game. Messy art is great. Emotional whiplash with zero accountability? Not so much.

Vera is so wrapped up in her own self-pity and drama that she can barely see past her own nose. She strings William along with all her highs and lows, and she just expects him to drop everything for her. Meanwhile, poor William is constantly proven to be the stable, steady force she needs (at least before his posting in Italy..) while she’s out here, tossing him aside whenever Dylan comes around...

I’m not saying William's perfect. He’s flawed, sure. He persuaded her to marry him when she wasn’t ready and disregarded the fact that she openly said “what if I can’t love you” so I can see the conflict there (that scene made me raise an eyebrow..). But the man is trying, and the least Vera could do is appreciate him, instead of playing these games. But no, she keeps yanking him back in, using his devotion as a safety net. It’s like she’s so caught up in her own mess that she can’t even see what she’s doing to the one guy who actually wants to be there for her. If anyone’s taking the emotional beating here, it’s William.

It’s not that Vera doesn’t care about William it’s that she cares in the most convoluted, self-serving way possible that irks me so bad.

Now, I get it. Vera's drawn to Dylan because he’s familiar, magnetic, and lets her romanticize the past. When William is off to war and the letters stop she spirals and loneliness sets in and suddenly Dylan feels like the only person who remembers who she used to be. That kind of emotional isolation is real. But let’s not confuse understanding her motives with excusing them. Because yeah, William stopped replying to her letters—he’s at war!! That doesn’t give Vera a free pass to hop in bed with Dylan just because she’s feeling sad and abandoned.

At some point, you've got to take responsibility for the damage you cause, even when you're hurting. William deserved honesty. He deserved loyalty. Instead, he got sidelined. And honestly? He should’ve walked...

The parallels between Caitlin and William are striking, especially when they both utter those heartbreaking words: "I have nothing left." They are a reflection of each other’s despair. William, broken by Vera’s betrayal and the disillusionment of war, feels like everything, love, trust, even himself, has been stripped away. Caitlin, on the other hand, says it from a place of emptiness, like she’s losing whatever hope she had left for the life she once imagined. Both of them are grasping at what little remains of their dignity and sense of self. The beauty of it is that they’re both at their emotional lowest, yet there’s still this thread of humanity that keeps them moving forward, even if they don’t fully understand what they’re holding onto. It’s a masterful way to show the human condition.

And can we talk about how Vera was out here spending William’s money on Caitlin and Dylan’s freeloading? While he’s literally dodging death, it's just another layer of the chaos.

But all that emotional wreckage leads us right to the film’s sharpest point: William, back from war, unable to even trust that the baby she’s carrying is his. That tension builds and builds until it snaps in that quiet, devastating moment of him lashing out at them all. It's brutal. But it’s also brilliant storytelling. All the betrayal and disillusionment finally give way.

Vera’s declaration that she couldn’t live without William to Dylan during the trial is just the peak of her hypocrisy and self-serving manipulation. It’s almost laughable when you think about it. She spent so much time emotionally and physically distancing herself from William, finding comfort in Dylan and Caitlin only to pull this “I can’t live without him” line when it’s convenient for her.

Honestly, it’s infuriating because it’s the exact opposite of how she treated him. If she couldn’t live without him, she sure didn’t act like it when it mattered most. When she tells Dylan that William is her “world” that she has “no room for anyone else”, it reeks of self-preservation more than anything like real love. She’s not choosing William because she loves him more. She’s choosing him because he’s the only real option she has left. It’s another layer of her selfishness still all about Vera doing what’s best for Vera.

Because really, staying with William means stability. It’s the more forgiving path and a future that still offers some grounding. Dylan, on the other hand, represents chaos. He’s exciting but ultimately untenable. She knows that.

And we haven’t even touched on the poems. The way they thread through the film, carrying all that unspoken emotion, regret, longing...it’s a whole layer of storytelling that deserves its own deep dive. Same with Caitlin and Vera’s relationship. It was sometimes intimate, competitive, tender, and sometimes cruel. There's so much happening between those two that it’s an entirely separate discussion.