There were so many to choose from—mesh, moss, single, double—but she’d landed on a simple shell stitch. Its scalloped look evoked a sense of gentleness to her and she thought it would be such a sweet keepsake for the baby. Not one for pastels, she’d chosen an emerald green yarn—John’s favorite color.
She opened the door before a second ring, not wanting to disturb her parents, who had spent the day reviewing the year’s scant financial receipts for the cobbler shop and were now preparing for bed.
One look at the man in uniform turned her stomach sour.
She slipped out the door and closed it behind her.
No, no, no, no, no.
Because there were only two reasons for such a visit, neither of them good.
“Telegram,” he said, handing an envelope out. He stood at attention on the stoop and looked as if he’d prefer to be anywhere but here.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Her voice caught in her throat, and she held her hand out, her actions moving slower than her racing mind.
She stuffed the paper into her pocket, opened the door, and stepped back into the house, watching him through the glass as he got back into his car.
Her heart beat rapidly and the heat of her worried breaths created a fog on the pane.
She rested her head against it and wondered how she’d muster the strength to face what seemed inevitable.
She turned around. Dottie was no longer in the living room—probably upstairs, citing lately that her bladder was the size of a thimble. Gladys was concentrating on a stitch that seemed to be giving her a problem.
So Margaret walked into the kitchen, needing a moment alone before sharing this with her friends.
She gripped the wood counter until her knuckles matched the flour still scattered over the surface from when she had made bread earlier in the evening. One loaf had just come out of the oven and its warm aroma still overtook the kitchen.
John loved that scent.
She let go and sliced the fresh bread into three thick pieces and spread some butter from the crock over its divots, watching detachedly as it melted into nothingness.
Despair washed over her and she hung her head. She took deep breaths, telling herself that nothing was wrong.
Nothing was wrong.
Nothing was wrong.
Dash it—her eyes welled up with tears and she wiped them away with a tea towel.
She placed the bread on a plate and walked back into the living room, taking a deep breath as she did.
“Margaret?” asked Dottie as she made her way downstairs. “Who was that?”
“T-t-telegram,” whispered Margaret. She wanted to pull herself together for Dottie’s sake, but found that it was taking all of her concentration just to move her feet and hands and mouth. She set the plate down and pulled the envelope from her pocket.
Gladys stood up and set her knitting on the table. “Let me have that, you ninnies,” she said. “No need for long faces until you actually read what it has to say.”
She hadn’t seen that the man had been in uniform.
Margaret turned toward Gladys and felt like she was looking through a veil of water. Life, distorted. Because if this news was what she was fearing, she didn’t know how things could ever be the same.
She pulled the telegram from her pocket with trembling hands and gave it to Gladys without saying anything.
Gladys stuck her red-glossed thumbnail underneath the seal and ripped the thing open.
“Probably just a solicitation for the volunteer fire department. They’re always collecting this time of year.”
Then her eyes grew wide.
“The 101st Airborne and the Department of the Army deeply regret to inform you—” she began, her voice wavering.
“No!” screamed Dottie. She collapsed onto the couch and Margaret snatched the telegram back from Gladys’s fingers.
“The 101st Airborne and the Department of the Army deeply regret to inform you,” she began again. “That your son, Private First Class John Francis Beck, died in performance of his duties and in service to his country on November 30, 1943, in a parachuting accident in Aldbourne, England. The department extends to you its sincerest sympathies in your great loss.”
November 30. Today. John must have died just hours before they were luxuriating in the glow of the Christmas carols.
John was already gone even as Margaret had been imagining future holidays with his wife and children around the Beck table. As she’d been knitting a scarf for his Christmas box.
“Margaret?” Mrs. Beck spoke from the top of the stairs. Her hair was in pink foam curlers and she was tying the sash of her robe around her waist. “Is everything all right? Was that Dottie I heard just now?”
Gladys zipped over to Margaret’s side and held her hand.
“Mama,” Margaret said, infusing her voice with a steadiness she did not feel. “Please bring Pops down. I need to tell you both something.”
* * *
Four days passed in the house as four years might have. It took all Margaret’s willpower to accomplish even the smallest of things like brushing her teeth and buttoning her pajamas.
In any other family death, that span of time would have included a funeral and a burial. But there was no body to be buried. At least not here. Their John had died a world away from the people who’d loved him all his life.
Oliver and Gladys were unexpected saviors, cooking together and delivering meals that might have been delicious if the world had not turned tasteless.
Brooklyn was all too experienced with the process of mourning, and Margaret was aware that their acute pain was one shared by too many.
She suspected it was the same all over the country. The army had delivered a flag, and her mother had promptly hung it in the window. Red border, white background, one gold star.
It announced to passersby that they had lost someone. Marked their house as one well-acquainted with lamentation.
They wished they had more details than simply a telegram saying that John had died in a parachuting accident. And that his body would remain in England. Had he suffered? Had it been quick? Had anyone else been hurt?
It was an entirely new wound, a sense of emptiness that their family would never be complete again. Not only with him missing at their table but from his home shores altogether.
Dottie had spent the nights since then at the Becks’ house, sharing a bed with Margaret, more tears shed than words spoken. The girls were careful to cover her up with baggy sweaters and blankets so that her growing belly did not show. It was thankfully still early enough that such precautions were successful and the weather was cold enough to make the costume believable.
They’d mustered the energy to make it to the Navy Yard, silently losing themselves in the monotony of engraving, grateful for the solace it provided.
And it was not as if there was a choice. Since she hadn’t been a spouse, Dottie did not qualify for any bereavement leave.
In fact, if her condition was discovered, she’d be fired.
She needed to make all the money she could while she was able.
When William’s letter arrived four days after the telegram’s awful news, Margaret tore it open, gouging her thumb with a deep paper cut. Little droplets of blood stained the white envelope. She pressed her hand into a fist and began to read.
William offered the only answers they’d received, and it rescued Margaret through the dreary week.