Tom got in line and his jaw tingled in anticipation when he saw that they were serving up beef tips and gravy—his nose had been right—as well as mashed potatoes and chocolate cookies. Two chocolate cookies, and he hadn’t even had to ask for the second. Mourmelon-le-Grand might as well have been paradise.
He found his way to Malarky and Muck. Muck set a bottle onto the table with such force that Tom wouldn’t have been surprised if it had shattered.
“Told you so. Champagne. Look at the label. Compliments of the people of the region for liberating them.”
Tom looked around. The soldiers on KP duty were carrying boxes and boxes of them.
“Anyone seen Winters?”
“El Capitán took a train into Paris. Said he always wanted to see it. Should be back tonight.”
Paris. Tom smiled at the memory of his stolen journey to the City of Lights. How had it fared in the past few months? Had shops reopened? Had it returned to its glory days?
He’d have to ask the captain when he returned. And maybe, if they were in Mourmelon-le-Grand long enough, he’d get to go back.
Dick Winters, in fact, didn’t return until the next morning. Tom heard him come in, laughing with a few of the guys. Apparently, he hadn’t checked the train line and had taken the last one into the city—with no more returning for the night. So he’d found a room in a small hotel and eaten chocolate croissants and jam for breakfast.
“None for us?” Tom heard Malarky ask him.
The captain pulled out a large paper bag and tossed it to him. “Would I ever forget Easy Company?”
Tom sat up straight and instantly regretted it. His head was pounding, and he couldn’t recall how much champagne he’d drunk. Only that it had been a lot. They hadn’t bothered with glasses; they’d just passed the bottles from man to man, and it was impossible to tell what they’d consumed.
Dearest Margaret, he composed in his head. Someday I want to take you to Paris and stay in a hotel overlooking the green lawn of the Eiffel Tower and eat chocolate croissants and jam for breakfast.
“Mail call!”
The men scrambled to their feet, and indeed, it was better than getting a bicycle at Christmas because it had taken months for the mail to catch up with them. A crowd formed around the unfortunate soldier who’d made the announcement and who carried the letters in a canvas bag slung over his shoulders like Santa’s sack.
“Lipton. Taylor. Guth. Malarky. Powell. Guarnere. Muck. Martin. Talbert.” The soldier read off names as he pulled envelopes from the bag. Tom’s heart leapt when he heard his name, wondering if it was from Margaret. And then he remembered that Margaret would have written to William. Not to him. However, four letters written by his mother had arrived, and he looked forward to reading them when he returned to his bunk.
“What the hell do we do with these?” Tom half heard the soldier’s question, but he turned. The man was holding out some letters to him. “You were William’s best friend, weren’t you? Do you want these?”
Letters. Letters for William. They had to be from Margaret. Because his family would have been informed that he’d died.
“I’ll take them,” he said with nonchalance, even though all he wanted to do was look down at the handwriting.
He returned to his bunk and set the ones from his mother down.
Yes—yes! The others were from Margaret. There were only three of them, but he saw her handwriting and he held them to his chest, bending over at the joy of holding a piece of her once again. Not hearing from her had been like a drought. He wanted to rip into them, but that wasn’t how he would have treated her, and it wasn’t how he would treat her letters. She deserved delicacy, and he was careful to open them by slipping his knife through the seal.
He put them in order of their dates.
Dearest William,
Gladys and Oliver
Sweet baby Joanna
Dottie and George bought a house…
The welding foreman is an angry little man.
A hurricane. The first one I’ve experienced.
Dottie used her house to shelter people who’d lost theirs.
A fire. Saved a woman’s life.
They were full of the tidbits of her life in Brooklyn and at the Navy Yard and he rushed through them because he knew he’d have the time to savor them later, as they’d all been given passes for the day. He had thought about going to Reims, but he didn’t need to go meet French girls when he had the only one he wanted here.
But there was something about the letters that pierced him sharper than a bayonet.
Winters had hinted that Tom might be up for yet another promotion—sergeant. Three stripes. More responsibility. He was earning promotions faster than any other man in his family had, as far as he knew.
It was good news. It was terrific news, in fact. His plan to advance in the military was going splendidly and Winters had even told him that “the sky was the limit.”
And yet. And yet he had not received it with the enthusiasm he would have expected of himself.
Margaret—or at least the idea of her—had offered a different path. As she talked about the marriages of her friends as well as her little niece, his mind considered a life as settled as that and it was strangely welcome.
It had sowed just enough seeds of doubt to make him think about deviating from what had always been expected of him.
It had led him to imagine a picture on that mantel that included a wife. Children.
A surprisingly welcome thought.
He pulled Margaret’s picture from his pocket—always close by. They’d been writing for over a year. At first, he’d romanticized the whole thing—and her—encouraged, as he’d been, by John and William. It had been fun to have a girl to think about. A photograph to hold on to.
But he was beginning to realize that he’d thought of her as a good luck charm. She was disembodied words on a page. A joyful diversion from the horrors he’d seen. Any romantic notions he’d attached to her had been rooted in encouragement from John and William. And he’d willingly played that game.
This was different, though. He was soon going to have to decide to go as far as he could in the military and postpone a family until the timing was right. Or take a chance that what had been a lark might actually be…love.
Every one of her letters revealed something he hadn’t known before. They filled out the two-dimensional air mail sheets with hopes and dreams and worries and fears and gave shape to an actual woman who was giving him so much without even realizing it.
Tom ran his hands through his newly clean hair and gripped it into a fist.
No matter what he chose, they’d grown too close for him to keep up a pretense.
She needed to know him as Tom Powell.
If she chose not to continue their friendship after that, the decision for any more wouldn’t even be his to make.
He owed her another letter. But it was not something he could pen in a hurry. He’d have to ruminate on it if he had any hope of her forgiving him.
* * *
“We’re rolling out, men. Have your things ready. We leave at zero five hundred.”
Captain Winters had given Tom the unenviable task of rousing the soldiers, many of them hungover after several days of gambling and drinking and brawling. They had reverted to the teenaged boys that many of them still were, releasing months of the terrors of battles in immature ways.