* * *
Tom’s eyes jerked open. Sweat streamed down his face as he relived those terrible moments. The pain in his right arm screamed in anguish as he remembered where he was.
And then, with all the veracity that mind and body could muster, he was reminded of several truths.
Despite the loss of blood and the near loss of his arm, he would recover.
Which meant that he would have to go back into battle.
Without William.
The despair of loneliness was perhaps the worst pain of all.
Because—like John—William was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
July 1944
After several months in the engraving yard, Margaret’s fingers seemed permanently grayed from the metal shavings. Soap and water merely dulled them, and bleach had left them feeling raw.
They did not at all suit the best friend of the bride, and she was glad to have an excuse to wear lacy gloves today. They would hide the discoloration and prevent her from picking at her nails. Newly polished for the occasion.
Margaret tried to zip up the back of her dress but had some difficulty as the fabric was caught. She looked out her window to see if her mother was already outside so that she could call down for some help. Instead, she saw the mailman walk up their stoop, flipping through envelopes before slipping them through their door.
She rushed downstairs, her back exposed. But she didn’t care. Her father was already outside and her mother was the only other person in the house.
She sorted through advertisements and bills and at last found the letter she’d been hoping for. She almost passed it by—it was typed rather than handwritten—but there it was, William’s name on the envelope.
Her heart did a little leap. He was alive!
But then she saw the post date. June 3. And her stomach knotted with disappointment. It was written before her last letter. And worse—sent before the invasion in Normandy. The deadliest battle of the war that she’d heard of so far. This wouldn’t tell her what she most wanted to know—if William and Tom had survived.
She walked back upstairs and set it facedown on her desk, eager to read it after the wedding.
But then she stopped.
On the back, he’d written: Do not open unless I don’t make it back from the war.
Her eagerness melted into confusion. What could he have to say that he wouldn’t want her to read unless he was dead?
What were you thinking, William?
It was almost worse than not receiving a letter at all, and her temples throbbed with the beginnings of a headache. She was tempted to read it anyway and slid her thumb under the seal. But no, she couldn’t do that. William wouldn’t have written that if he didn’t have a serious reason to.
Disappointed, she turned the envelope back over and sighed when she looked again at the post date, hoping that she’d read it incorrectly.
Articles from Ernie Pyle and other journalists on the ground about the horrors of D-Day had sent her out of her mind with concern for William and Tom.
In a strange way, it had made her grateful that John had not lived to see it.
Pyle had described bodies and personal items and carcasses of vehicles strewn across sands that had once been the sites of frivolity but would forever be stained with the blood of heroes. Barbed wire and hidden ditches awaited the men, along with Germans embedded in concrete bunkers that were nearly impervious to naval fire. Land mines. Floating mines. Everywhere they looked, the men had been surrounded by an unprecedented campaign to kill them.
Some of the accounts had been more personal in nature. Tales of soldiers coming upon the bodies of the dead—friends and foes—and rummaging through their pockets for ammunition, canteens, grenades, food. Reduced to scavengers hunting for survival.
She shook it off. She’d read too much in the past few weeks, clinging to any new detail, especially accounts of the Airborne. Picturing William and Tom in every scenario and praying—she hoped not posthumously—for their safety.
She heard her mother calling from downstairs, urgency in her voice to hurry. Margaret looked in the mirror and adjusted the corsage attached to the right side of her chest. An orchid on a bed of baby’s breath with a small fern leaf behind it. She tucked some stray wisps of hair into the braid that formed a crown over her head, smiling at the variations of color that the summer sun had created.
Would William think her hair was beautiful when at last they met?
She dismissed the thought as soon as she had it.
He had never acknowledged her many pleas to tell him which one he was in that picture that Mr. Brown had taken months ago, nor did he rise to her admonishment that it was unfair for him to know what she looked like when he didn’t reciprocate. She’d receive the occasional “I’d tell you, but that’s top-secret information likely to be redacted.”
Or, “I’m the devilishly handsome one.” Which was really no help at all, because if he was actually the handsome one, would he really say that about himself? But could she be sure that he wouldn’t? It’s not as if they had spent any time together. The kind that allowed for getting to know one’s mannerisms and jests.
Not that it mattered what he looked like. He was no more than a friend to her, though one who had become quite dear.
And yet she hoped—was it a vain wish to have?—that he was, in fact, the tall one. The eyes that had depth. That looked serious and kind at the same time.
That was how she’d begun to picture him when she penned her own words on air mail stationery. Though she’d continue to care about him greatly even if she was wrong.
“Margaret Jane Beck, if you don’t come down here this minute, we are leaving without you and you’ll have to take the bus to the church.”
She bristled. Her mother hadn’t used that tone with her since she was a child, but she couldn’t blame her. George’s family had hired a fleet of cars to pick up the bridal party and close friends from all parts of Brooklyn, and the driver had just pulled up outside of their row house.
Margaret took the letter from her desk and slipped it into her pocket instead. Even if he didn’t want her to read it, it was the most recent thing she had of his, and she wanted to feel as if he were attending the wedding with her. She ran down the stairs in her silk stockings, a gift from Dottie for standing up for her at the wedding. She was careful not to catch them on a stray splinter or to slip on the floor’s glossy varnish. Her heels—specially made for her by her father for this occasion—were hanging from her fingers. She put them on before stepping outside and marveled as she looked down at them, pleased that something of such beauty had once again been crafted in their shop. Creamy leather with embroidered pink rosettes.
It was almost like old times.
* * *
Margaret didn’t know if it was typical for Catholic weddings to last as long as this one was or if the Troutwines had paid the priest to make it purgatorially long to make up for their first daughter’s lack of nuptials, but it was sweltering in the pew at St. Charles Borromeo and time ticked by with aching slowness. Though she’d only heard tidbits of the theology of Dottie’s family in the years they’d known each other, Margaret suspected that the offer it up nature of the religion encouraged them to withstand it without complaints. Poor Dottie and George had to kneel through the whole thing, and Margaret imagined that her friend was drowning in sweat on this blazing July afternoon. If it were her, she would have been slumped over the velvet-lined wooden kneeler, but Dottie’s back was as straight as if a rod were attached to it. George’s too.