Face of Love
At the moment of his birth, the midwife had cast him aside before she even cut the cord. “Monster,” she muttered, wiping blood from her hands, but his mother heard.
“My baby. My son. I want to see him.”
“He’s dying, God be praised. He should never have been born.”
Somehow the younger woman, though she’d almost died herself during the thirty-one hour labor, raised herself to look at the baby struggling to breathe. “Give him to me.”
The midwife pushed her down. “Do you want to die, too? Let me finish!”
When she’d gone, slamming the door of the one-room flat, Carys Davies painfully retrieved her baby, blue and unresponsive, from the table where he lay. She wrapped him warmly and cradled his tiny body against hers, and then she slept.
**
Waking as a few feeble rays of sun trickled through the single window facing out on another shabby building, Carys inspected the mite now making small sucking sounds near her breast. She guided him to the nipple and watched his eat with weak but ravenous hunger.
As he ate, she inspected him. His left ear was missing, and the right one appeared folded in half. Though his mouth was perfectly formed, inside as well as out from the sounds of his feeding noises, there was barely chin beneath the bottom lip. His tiny nose was pushed to one side, and his right eye sank back into his skull.
Carys kissed the top of his head covered with thin silky strands of light brown hair and realized Ewen’s desertion had been a blessing. He’d never have accepted this baby as his son. He might even, had he just come from the nearest pub, have killed him then and there, as he’d killed the deformed calf born to his other’s milk cow last year.
She shifted the baby to her other breast, and he settled down to business immediately. “Tegan,” she murmured. “I’ll call you Tegan. It means loved one, and that’s what you are. You’re my loved one.”
When he’d finished eating, she rose from her bed, weak though she was, and heated water on the stove to bathe him and herself. When she’d dressed him in a diaper and a little shirt, she wrapped him in a clean blanket and put him into the wooden cradle someone at St. Winifred’s had donated for mothers in need. And she, left alone and without resources, had been much in need.
**
Fr. Garth came in the afternoon. “Mrs. Evans said your baby had been born and died,” he said.
“My baby’s alive. Come in and see for yourself.”
The old priest didn’t react to the baby’s deformities. “Thanks be to God for his life,” he said gently.
“Will you baptize him, Father? I…I’d best not bring him into church.”
The priest did. “But you mustn’t stay away from the Mass, my child. Remember, Tegan is also a child of God, perfectly created by him.”
Shortly after the priest left, Dr. Lewis arrived. “Mrs. Evans said the baby was deformed.”
Carys pointed to the cradle. “See for yourself.”
The doctor looked. “So it’s true.”
“Fr. Garth baptized him a little while ago. Now will you examine him?”
The doctor complied with her request. “He seems healthy enough. He can eat?”
“Very well.”
“Are you all right?”
“I seem to be.”
“There are places for babies like him.”
“He has a home.”
“Is Ewen coming back?”
“I hope not.”
“Then how will you live?”
“I’ll manage.”
Dr. Lewis took out his leather wallet and extracted several bills. “To tide you over then.”
“I’ll pay you back.
“Whenever you like. I’ll call in again next week.”
**
Carys did manage, although sometimes it seemed to be hour by hour. Her father, when she wrote to him about Ewen’s going, sent her what he could every week. Fr. Garth made sure she received a portion of money given for the poor and destitute in the small town. Ewen’s mother, though refusing to see her grandson once she heard of his circumstances, regularly sent milk, eggs, butter, and the occasional chicken by her hired man. When Tegan was older, she supplemented their income by cleaning houses while he sat unnoticed in a corner. Eventually she found a position in a small shop.
He achieved all the normal milestones and exceeded intellectually. Carys taught him at home to preclude the inevitable taunting and bullying by schoolmates. At the age of four, he could read. By six, he was keeping account of their monetary pittance and, wearing an over-sized cap pulled low, often went to the local fruit and vegetable markets just at closing for their cut-rate leftovers.
**
When Carys caught him trying to paint with his finger and juice from some raspberries, she put aside money for watercolors and a brush and saved old butcher paper. Fr. Garth said what God had withheld in one area, He had poured out in abundance in another. He bought Tegan’s first sketch pad himself.
By the time he was fifteen, Tegan’s paintings had begun to be noticed in the unaccepting community. A visiting priest took several back to his own parish where they sold for more than Carys could believe. He even arranged an exhibit through an art dealer who attended his church. Tegan declined to attend despite Carys’ urging. “I can’t go, Mum. People would stare at me, not look at my paintings.”
Carys knew it was true. As her son had grown, his facial features had grown, too, becoming even more grotesquely obvious. “Would you like for me to go?” she asked. “Someone might want to buy a painting or two.”
“I’ll write down what I think each one should sell for,” he said. “Then you can ask the dealer how close I came.”
Almost hidden in a corner of the small but elegant exhibition hall, Carys watched and listened as people admired her son’s work. “I understand why your son didn’t come.” A man’s voice close to her ear made her step back. “I’m sorry. I’m John Hughes, by the way. My friend Samuel sponsored this exhibit and invited me when he realized I was in London.”
“You came all the way from London for this?”
“He said I shouldn’t miss it, so I didn’t.”
“You’re an American, aren’t you?”
“A New Yorker. I’ve spoken for the painting of the mother and child.”
Carys nodded. “It’s one of my favorites.”
“As it should be. The mother looks exactly like you?”
“Does she?” Carys frowned and moved out of the shadows toward the canvas. “Yes, you’re right. She does. I suppose my son doesn’t get out enough to know what other women look like.”
“You think that’s the reason?”
“I suppose so.”
“You haven’t noticed then that the face of every woman or female child is your face?”
“My face?”
“Yes.”
“Well, as I said, Tegan doesn’t…”
“I wonder if it’s not more than that.”
“More?”
“I understand the midwife who delivered him left him to die. That you refused to let him be institutionalized. That you’ve devoted your whole life to him.”
“I’m his mother.”
John Hughes smiled. “It occurs to me there’s one more thing you should do.”
“What?”
“What will he do when you’re no longer there to provide for him?”
Carys flushed. “I hadn’t thought of that, I suppose.”
“That day will come as it does for all parents. What kind of future will Tegan have?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I have a suggestion for you, if I may be so bold.”
“Of course.”
“I know of several small colleges where he could study all aspects of art. Perhaps he could even expand his medium to something besides painting. Find friends. Friends with mutual talents and interests. Not everyone is unaccepting of handicaps. He might ultimately have a living teaching his skills to others.”
“You don’t know about him.”
“More to the point, others don’t know him either. I believe his paintings reflect his soul. A soul full of beauty and goodness--which you taught him.”
“We’ve gotten along any way we could.”
“Believe me, I understand. I come from very humble beginnings myself. And, after the war ended in 1918, there were many young men who needed to be put back together again so the could live as normal a life as possible. Surgeons in America have made great strides.”
“We’ve gotten along, but there’s no money for that.”
“There are many possibilities. But somehow I feel your son wasn’t meant to hide in corners all his life.” He reached into the breast pocket of his expensive suit. “Here’s my card. Tell your son what we talked about. He can write to me if he likes—and I hope he will.”
“People are saying there’s going to be another war.”
“I’m afraid they’re right.”
“That’s a blessing, you know, that Tegan won’t have to go.”
“I’d say so.”
“I’ll tell him what you said.”
**
Carys arrived home with an amount of money she could scarcely believe her purse could accommodate. Tegan was jubilant. “We can take that little house on the edge of town,” he said. “It’s still within walking distances of the shop. And I can get outside to paint now without worrying about someone running me off from where I’ve set up. I can paint more. Sell more. Earn more for us.”
Carys divested herself of her hat at the cracked mirror and adjusted a few hair pins. “I have something else for you.” She handed him the card John Hughes had given her and explained the man’s ideas. Tegan’s face, as he listened, lit up with something she’d never seen in his expressions before—hope.
“You’d consider it?” she asked him.
“I…oh, Mum! Oh, Mum!”
**
She was clearing up their tea the next afternoon when she thought of what she’d forgotten to mention. “That man…Mr. Hughes…he mentioned that all of the female figures in your paintings have my face. Is that true?”
Tegan didn’t answer while he mixed a new paint color in the fading light from the window. Finally he put down his palette and looked at her. She considered how his infant’s sky blue eyes had darkened to the color of a stormy sea. “Yes,” he said slowly, “they do.”
“There are other faces,” she said, turning her back.
Again he didn’t reply for a few moments. Then, “Yes, but yours is the one that says what I want to say with my paintings.”
“I see.”
“Do you, Mum?”
She thought of her first look at him as he nursed greedily at her breast. For all the terrible mistakes nature had made in his tiny face, she’d thought him beautiful. She’d loved him fiercely, completely, devotedly, and she’d made sure he always knew how she felt. Now she realized he’d felt the same way about her, and a wave of unworthiness swept over her.
Her beautiful boy, her loved one, her miracle returned her love as only he knew how to do.
“Do you, Mum?” He repeated his question with more insistence.
She bowed her head over the dishpan. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I see, my son.”
Dark of Night
I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she was sitting in the booth right behind me. In fact, if I’d turned around, her hair would’ve been in my face.
The steamy scent of my cheeseburger drew my attention away from the annoying ringtone of her phone until I heard her say, “Tonight? That’s awfully quick, isn’t it? Yes, I know it’s all planned, but there’s a moon tonight. A full moon. Yes, I checked. A full moon.”
When I bit into the burger, the satisfying crunch of an onion slice filled my ears. Surely this was Heaven. It beat a lot of meals I’d eaten in a lot of years on my traveling sales route.
“I just think we need to consider the moonlight. It could be a problem. No, I’m not backing out, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life...” Her voice trailed off as if she were listening intently. “And on top of that, the water reflects the moonlight, so it’s doubly risky.”
My ears perked up. What needs total darkness?
“I understand it’s a risk either way, but we’re being paid well for this job, and I don’t intend to blow it.”
My fingers dug into the soft warm bun. Paid well for doing something in total darkness?
“Look, what’s another night or two? The outcome will be the same. I want this done right. We have one shot at it, and if we get it wrong...”
I choked on a pickle slice. One shot? Get it wrong? What is she planning with her anonymous caller? Whatever it is doesn’t sound good.
“I’m telling you, this could be a major screw up, and the consequences are so bad...”
Consequences? Bad ones?
“I can call off the protection. They’ll do it another night. They don’t want to have to come back and finish things off either.”
The half-eaten burger slipped through my trembling fingers and plopped onto the plate, sending chips flying. If I can just get to the register and pay without waiting for a ticket...go around the corner and call the police...they can get here before she leaves...I hope.
Without a single regret for my uneaten lunch, I effected my escape from the King Kafé and removed my cell from my pocket as I shimmied around the corner of the building. Trying to dial 9-1-1 with fingers which could barely grasp the phone, I flattened myself against the brick wall as two police cars slid into the No-Parking space in front of King’s, and four uniformed officers emerged and strolled inside.
Somebody beat me to it, thank fortune! I won’t be on a hit list, and any operation as big as this has got to have a hit list.
But hit list or no, I couldn’t resist sneaking back inside to watch justice unfold—hopefully without any gunfire. I heard the girl in the booth say, “I’ve got to go. The guys are here. I’ll ask them what they think.”
Ask them what they think? About a murder at the lake in the dark? What do you think they’ll think, you moron?
I didn’t catch the rest of the conversation, but in a few minutes the officers walked out with the girl in the middle. She wasn’t handcuffed, and all of them were smiling. I literally used my palm to close my mouth.
**
“That’s so exciting,” the waitresses said when she stopped by my table to leave the ticket. “Imagine a movie being shot right here in our little town. I’d love to go out and see that scene being filmed at the lake, but a bunch of off-duty police are keeping everyone away from the set, at least tonight. I heard it was going to be a murder scene. I hope the full moon won’t interfere with their lighting. It’s supposed to rain next week, so they need to do their outdoor filming ASAP. Or so I heard from that nice lady. She’s the director, I think, or maybe just the assistant. She said they needed to get it right the first time, or they’d have to go somewhere else to finish up.”
“We don’t want that,” another waitress said, overhearing. “They’re bringing money in here. Lots of it. Both motels are full. My brother said so. He manages one of them.”
“Well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed,” the first waitress said. Then she saw me. “You need something else?”
I shook my head and slunk back to my deserted cheeseburger. “I’ll just take this with me.” I wrapped the cold bun in a napkin and slipped it in my pocket. “I’ll just...”
“You sure you don’t need something else?” The young lady looked worried.
I shook my head. Brains maybe.
The bell over the door tinkled as I left. I still had customers to see, but I’d come back another time...maybe.
*
At the End of the Story, No Regrets
Sage Scanlon, the pen name she finally decided on, danced on the covers of half a dozen books, all bestsellers, within eight years after she quit her day job and became a full time writer. Eddie Lee Smith knew how far she’d come and felt properly grateful.
She’d found her niche in romantic suspense, a popular genre judging from the royalties on which she’d had to pay some hefty taxes. But she’d earned them sitting at the computer six to eight hours a day, not to mention the numerous edits and finally the galleys which followed.
Her publisher sent her on book tours, wining and dining her and making reservations in the best hotels. She smiled and made small talk, signed books until her fingers cramped, and came to hate every minute of the time she spent away from her cozy condo nestled in Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“You have to do this,” her agent told her. “It’s part of the game.”
“I’m not playing a game. I’m writing. I nearly starved after I quit my job to work on my first book. Now I’ve earned the right to enjoy myself.”
“Sorry, kid, that’s not how it works. You’re the hottest property since Nora Roberts.”
“Does she like all this hoopla?”
“How would I know? Look, Sage, ride the wave while you can. You can put away a nest egg for when you run out of ideas.”
With a contract for at least three more books--and the generous advance to encourage her to write them--Sage knuckled under and did as she was told.
Sometimes she wondered what life might have been like if she’d married Nate, her high school sweetheart, who’d proposed at least half a dozen times before they graduated. Her parents thought she should have. A father-in-law who owned four department stores in as many towns, which Nate would inherit, sweetened the pot as far as they were concerned.
Sage--or Eddie Lee as she was known then--liked Nate. He was sweet and smart, and he made her laugh. But she didn’t love him and doubted she ever would. Besides, she wanted more. She wanted to be a writer. A famous one.
Sometimes she thought about Rob, the boy who’d wooed her for their last two years in college. He went on to law school and would’ve taken her along for the ride--financed by his wealthy father in whose firm he would become a partner upon passing the bar--but she’d declined him, too. He was married with four children now and billed a fortune per hour of his valuable time.
But she had no regrets. She’d followed her dream, caught the brass ring, reached the pinnacle of her chosen career. Now, however, the excitement had passed, and she wanted something different.
She completed the three books called for on her contract, made the usual rounds, and stopped off to see her publisher who had a new contract on his desk. She declined. Then she broke ties with her agent, leased her condo, bought a new laptop and small printer, packed her bags, and drove away without looking back.
**
30 Years Later
“So you just walked off?” The young journalist-cum-biographer whose proposal Sage had accepted from among at least fifty submitted, sat curled in the swing on the deck overlooking the city of Asheville, tapping her pen on the stenographer’s pad in her lap.
“Actually, I drove off.” Sage laughed and reached for the single glass of white wine with which she indulged herself every day.
“You were famous. How did you manage to avoid being found?”
“I don’t suppose anyone was looking too hard. Besides, I kept in touch with my sister and went home to visit my parents twice a year.”
“But your name…my gosh, everyone knew it!”
“They didn’t know Eddie Lee Smith.”
“I guess they didn’t. So Eddie Lee Smith just made a new life for herself.”
“No--I’d always wanted to be a writer, and I always was.” She leaned forward and handed Cissy a piece of paper. “Here’s a list of pseudonyms I used. You’ll recognize some of them. I wrote short stories, novellas, travel articles, and a lot of other things. Traveled the world. Met people who weren’t standing in line at book signings. And most importantly, I wrote--which is what I wanted to do.”
“And now you’re letting me tell your story. Solve the mysterious disappearance of Sage Scanlon.”
“That’s right.”
“I can’t believe you picked me. I mean, I just submitted an application on a dare from a friend. I don’t even have all that much experience.”
“You will when you finish my biography.”
“You really think I can do you justice?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re young. You want to write. And you said on the application that being famous wasn’t important to you.”
“It’s not.”
“Tell me why.”
“I don’t think I’d enjoy it. Besides, I’m engaged.”
“Ah, engaged.”
“He’s the boy next door. When he finishes this last tour in Afghanistan, we’re getting married. But he’s staying in.”
“A career man.”
“It’s all he’s ever wanted to do, so I’ll be pretty busy being a military wife. Moving around and all that.”
“And that’s what you really want.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But you also want to write.”
“I can do that, too. I expect there’ll be a lot of times I can’t go with him, so I’ll have something to do.”
“And children, of course?”
“I hope so.”
“You know what you want then. So did I.”
“And you don’t have any regrets?”
Sage shook her head and closed her eyes. “None at all. And neither, I suspect, will you.”
*
Cause of Justice
Lucy didn’t consider she’d arrived when she was appointed deputy district attorney of Leland County. She had her eye on the DA’s job and didn’t doubt she’d get it one day. As a defense lawyer for six years, prosecuting those accused of crimes would be a whole different story, but she had confidence she could do the job and do it well.
Once she’d physically moved into the office provided, she made sure she was on time for her introductory meeting with her boss. Most people were a little in awe of Palmer Sargent, a Vietnam vet and a proven formidable foe in the courtroom. But Palmer had slowed down in the last couple of years. His combat injuries—the loss of a leg and an arm—were finally getting to him. More and more he relied on his deputies to be his physical presence in the courtroom.
Lucy had seen him in action and thanked her lucky stars she’d never had to go up against him. But working for him was another story. She could rise to that challenge.
**
Her first impression of the man sitting behind a desk which almost dwarfed him was, He looks old. Old and tired.
He nodded an invitation to sit. “Are you settled in and ready to go, Ms. Thane?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You’ve heard about the n Walford case.” It wasn’t a question.
Lucy’s heart plummeted to her toes, and nausea threatened. DickWalford, politically connected multi-millionaire, rumored to have friends in the local and even the national mafia, all around sleaze ball against whom the grand jury had brought in an indictment of first degree murder based only on circumstantial evidence. She swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
“His attorneys are pushing for a dismissal. It’s not going to happen, but I’m asking for a court date next month just to get on with things and end their stream of motions.” He rubbed his eyes. “He’s guilty as hell, and he knows it, and so does everyone else.”
“Yes sir.”
“You’ve formed an opinion then?”
“Yes...no...I mean, the police investigation...”
“Was sloppy until Jesse Thompson took over as police chief after Ace Harbin...died.”
Was murdered. A mob hit. Everyone says so. Thompson’s already had public threats.
“I want Walford put away, the sooner the better. His lawyers will appeal ‘til the cows come home, and maybe they’ll be successful, but he’ll do some time until a bought and paid for judge somewhere turns him loose. Whatever, I’m going to personally be there to see the door slammed on his cell.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be trying the case.”
“Me?” Lucy’s stomach heaved, and her body felt ice cold.”
“I’m going to feed you everything, but you’re new, and the defense will consider you easy pickings. You won’t be.”
“But...”
“I can’t physically do it, Ms. Thane. Besides what Nam did to me, I’m in the early stages of Parkinsons, and it’s getting worse every month. Walford’s bully boys would go for the jugular in a public forum. That’s not how I want to go out. Nobody does.”
“No, sir.”
“You came with great recommendations, and you’ve been a defense lawyer. You’ll have some idea of where that side of the aisle is going and how it’s planning to get there.”
Lucy couldn’t speak.
“Take those files home over the weekend and internalize everything in them.” He indicated a pile of manila folders on the corner of his desk. We’ll talk again on Monday.”
Back in her own office, Lucy sank into chair still clutching the thick stack of folders. She hadn’t counted on this. Not being thrown to the wolves on her first day. Walford’s attorneys would make mincemeat of her. They’d chew her up and spit her out and drop innuendos to the press. Her career would be finished before it even got started.
**
By Sunday night, when she’d read all the files, some of them twice, she was convinced Dick Walford was a monster who deserved to rot in the worse prison in the state. But the evidence against him for murdering his wife was only circumstantial, and his lawyers would have no problem paying witnesses to lie under oath. She didn’t stand a chance. Better to turn in her resignation tomorrow and crawl off with her tail between her legs in private than to become a public laughing stock.
After carefully reorganizing all the papers, she locked them in a drawer and went to bed. The phone beside her bed rang at three o’clock in the morning. Precisely three.
“Ms. Thane?”
“Yes.” She tried to wake herself to a level of cognizance.
“Ms. Thane, this is just a friendly call. You won’t want to get mixed up with the case Palmer Sargent just foisted off on you. You’re young. You have a life in front of you. You owe it to yourself to take care of it.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just this: decline to prosecute. Oh, Sargent will find someone else, but it won’t do him any good.”
“And if I do?”
“Then you’ll fall into some remuneration. How does two hundred K strike you?”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll fall into your own grave. Think about it.” The caller hung up.
Lucy dropped the phone back into the cradle and lay back. Oddly, she felt no surprise, only gut-wrenching fear and scorching anger. She closed her eyes and considered the man’s words again. His threats were veiled, but they were real.
Exhausted after failing to fall back to sleep, she presented herself in Palmer Sargent’s office at nine o’clock the next morning. “I read the files.”
“And?”
“I’ll give it my best shot with your guidance.”
“Good. Pull up a chair, and let’s get started.”
**
Within hours the first day of the trial turned into a ludicrous circus featuring four defense attorneys who, in the judge’s words when adjourning for noon, might as well be wearing clown costumes and riding donkeys. Lucy thought she recognized one of their voices as her three AM caller, but she couldn’t be sure.
Finally, with the jury selected and the judge’s warnings to the defense to come back the next day with a more respectful attitude, she let one of the police officers sent over by Jesse Thompson escort her out of the courtroom and back to her office.
For the second time her phone rang at three o’clock in the morning. “You can still take my offer.”
She smiled into the darkness. “Go to hell,” she said and hung up.
**
The next morning Chief Jesse Thompson appeared in the courtroom along with four officers and sat directly behind the prosecutor’s table. They were there every morning thereafter. Palmer Sargent wrote the summation for Lucy, and she stayed up all night memorizing it word for word so it would seen extemporaneous and authentic. She could tell from watching that the jury bought it.
They stayed out just over six hours and brought in a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. Dick Walford sat down abruptly. Even his cadre of attorneys looked shocked. Lucy felt like crying with relief, but she held it together. The judge set a sentencing date, and the defendant, now deemed a flight risk, was remanded to custody.
“If looks could kill, you’d be dead twice over,” Jesse Thompson said behind Lucy as she gathered her papers and stuffed them into her briefcase.
She shrugged.
“It’s not over, you know.”
“I know.”
“You’ll have police protection twenty-four-seven for a while.”
“Thank you.”
“Just watch your back.”
**
But it was Palmer Sargent they went after. Shot and killed instantly—assassinated—as he left his house a week later, no one doubted Dick Walford had exacted a revenge of sorts. There was talk of Lucy moving into the DA’s office, but she squelched it. “I’m not ready,” she said. “He prosecuted this case, just not physically in the courtroom. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”
Another more experienced deputy took the job and won re-election twice. Lucy found him a good man to work for and gave everything her best shot. Somewhere along the way, she found her ambition diminished. Doing what she could do—and doing it well—satisfied her completely. She’d become a lawyer because she believed in justice, and she believed in it even more with each passing day.
On the fifth anniversary of Palmer Sargent’s death, she took flowers to the cemetery and stood a moment beside his grave. He’d given his life in the cause of justice on the battlefield abroad and at home. He’d taught her she could do no less.
*
So Long Ago and Far Away
About a million letters in the gold foil Schrafft Chocolates box. That’s what Sandra thought anyway, until she counted them. Only one hundred and forty-seven, all of them on thin V-mails except for seven regular letters on the stationery she’d given him after he left for Camp Payne. She re-tied them with a frayed pink hair ribbon, the one he said made her hair look like cotton candy, and laid them back in the box.
About a million men. That’s how many they said stormed the beaches at Normandy that day. Pete was just one of them. He wrote to her later about how the Channel was so rough that the nets they used to climb down into the landing craft were almost parallel with the water. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it into the boat, much less to the beach.”
He’d made it in and even off the beach and onto the road leading inland among the hedgerows. That’s when the real trouble started, he said. That’s when he said he knew he wasn’t going to make it home in one piece, and he was right. “It’s rough, Sandy,” he wrote. “I’m glad you’ll never know just how bad it really is. If I get home, don’t ask me to talk about it, because I won’t.”
Sandra opened the box again and put her hand on the letters. It had taken her three days to read them all again, but she wanted him to be fresh in her mind before she made this trip. He was as real to her now as he was the day he squeezed her one last time before making a dash for the train which was already beginning to move along the platform. As long as she lived, he’d never be older than he was that day---just twenty-two. She was seventeen.
“You’re in love with love and a uniform,” her mother said. “You’ll get over him.” She was wrong. Yvonne, her older sister said she’d wasted her life, but she was wrong, too. Two degrees and thirty years at the local junior college didn’t count as a waste. A lot of Petes sat in her classes. She watched them go off to other wars and wondered how many came back, though she never knew. She tried not to think about it. It was enough to know the lessons of history: Men fought wars. Men died. Nothing changed.
Leaning her head against the crisp white cloth on the headrest of the train seat, she closed her eyes and thought about the first time she ever saw Pete. He was living at the CCC camp just outside of town. A lanky cotton-headed boy, his fair skin sunburned from working outdoors. He winked and called her a cute kid when she sat down beside him at the soda fountain where Yvonne worked.
She could tell he was interested in Yvonne, and it was equally plain that Yvonne wasn’t interested in him. She had bigger fish to fry, like Milt, the captain of the high school football team that had just won the state championship. When Yvonne snubbed him, Pete turned his attention to Sandra, but in a brotherly sort of way. She was only twelve then.
He came into town every Saturday afternoon, always alone and with a willing ear to listen to her adolescent problems. He said he had a little sister of his own back home in west Texas. Yvonne tattled on her, and Mamma said it wasn’t a good idea for Sandra to sit in the back booth at Bramble’s Drug Store every Saturday afternoon with an older boy from that place out there, but she did it anyway. When the camp closed, she felt like she’d lost part of herself.
It was funny how things worked out, running into him again four years later on the same stool at the soda fountain when he came back for basic training at Camp Payne. “You’ve changed,” they both said at the same time and then laughed. He didn’t even ask about Yvonne who was married to Milt by then and had two kids.
She cajoled Mamma into asking him for Sunday dinner. He even showed up early and went to church with them, helped with the dishes, and then asked her mother if he could take her downtown to the movies. They went to see “Holiday Inn” with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and danced all the way to her front door afterwards. Mamma heard them laughing and came out to see what was going on. When they told her, she said they were being silly.
The next time they met at the drug store, he asked about her father. “He left when I was a baby. That’s why Mamma’s the way she is.”
He didn’t say he was sorry, just, “I wondered.” Then he told her about his parents and kid sister and scribbled their names and address on a napkin. “I’d like for you to meet them someday.” She still had the napkin, and she’d met his family eventually, but he wasn’t there.
The day he took the jewelry box out of his pocket, she knew what was coming. Not a proposal. They’d talked about that and agreed it wasn’t the right time. What he’d bought her at Clemmie’s was a locket, a heart that opened with places for their pictures. Then they went to Woolworth and spent a quarter in the little photography booth so she could cut out their faces for the locket.
Without opening her eyes, she touched the heart beneath her blouse and smiled. She’d worn it every day for the last forty-five years and left instructions with the funeral director that nobody should take it off. Yvonne or one of her know-it-all girls would try if someone didn’t watch them.
She felt he train stop and opened her eyes on the green French countryside. It wasn’t so beautiful when Pete saw it, but she’d enjoy it for both of them now. The porter, who’d been surprised at the fluent French of le americaine, appeared to help her with her luggage and explained that a car would be waiting to take her to the pension the travel agency assured her was within walking distance of what she wanted to see.
She found the information correct and the pension comfortable. After a night’s sleep, the best she’d had since she began the trip, and a substantial breakfast of hardboiled eggs, cheese, croissants, and strong coffee, she changed into her walking shoes and slipped into the all-weather coat the travel agent assured her she would need, even in June.
About a million graves, she thought as she paused to take in the white crosses and Stars of David spilling across the green, meticulously-kept grass. Well, maybe not a million, but too many. One too many anyway. From her purse she extracted the slip of paper with the exact location of the one she’d come to see.
All the graves faced west, toward the United States. It was as close to home as these soldiers would ever come. If they were to be reunited with their loved ones, it would have to be here. So now she was here. Not to say goodbye. Not to find the closure that seemed to be the buzz word today. None of that. She was here to keep a promise to herself.
By the time she stood by the grave marker, she could feel the strain of the long walk. Holding to the top of the cross, she lowered herself to the damp grass. “Well, Pete,” she said, glancing around to see if there was anyone close enough to overhear, “I came. I always said I would before I died.”
With the tip of one finger, she traced the letters of his name. “I’ve had a good life. I guess you know that. We’d have had a good life together, too, but things just didn’t work out that way. We talked about that, how things might not work out. But it’s still all right.”
Sandra shifted her thin legs into a more comfortable position. “I’ve always felt you were a presence in my life. Yvonne said I lived with a ghost, but you’re not a ghost.” She traced his name again. “I’m not staying for the anniversary ceremonies next week. I wouldn’t want to get all weepy over the music and the speeches. Besides, this is just between us.”
She looked around. A million men and the grief of the women left behind, a million shattered dreams. But not hers and Pete’s. She hadn’t let that happen. She put her lips against the cold stone. “Years ago I shed a million tears, Pete. I’ve told you a million times that I love you.”
It was harder getting up than getting down, but she managed, though her breathing came raggedly with the effort. “And I lived a million days just for this one.”