“Hello?” answered the cook. “This is the Preston residence.”
Margaret could hear Joanna wailing in the background.
“This is Margaret. Please tell Mrs. Preston that Gladys and I will be there in one hour. We need to talk.”
She put the receiver down and huffed back to her house to get her coat and boots. She’d run out in her robe and slippers once she’d read the contents of William’s—no, Tom’s—latest letter.
She wished she told them half an hour. This couldn’t wait.
Sixty minutes dragged on. Margaret managed a lopsided braid and decided against cosmetics. The girls had seen her without them before. Maybe not George, but she didn’t care.
At last, ten o’clock arrived. She stepped off the bus and marched up the steep hill to Dottie’s house. Gladys was already waiting. She held a cigarette between her two fingers and her eyes bore the baggy look of weariness. Last night’s cosmetics had not yet been washed off, and the remnants of blurred mascara didn’t help.
“You’re all in a rage this morning, aren’t you?” she asked. “This is a new side to Margaret Beck.”
“Get used to it.”
Margaret was about to rap on the front door when Dottie opened it, Joanna balanced on her hip.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she apologized. “She’s cutting some teeth, and it’s been a night. I’ll hand her to the nanny as soon as I’m able to nurse her.”
She welcomed them into the parlor and put a blanket around her shoulders before settling into a chair. Margaret and Gladys took the couch.
“Ouch!” Dottie yelped.
Gladys looked sharply at Margaret, frustration in her eyes. “What’s so important that you woke my husband up, pulled me out of bed, and forced Dottie to hurry through getting her titties chewed up by a teething child?”
Margaret covered her gasp with her hand, the weight of her selfish behavior sinking in. Tom’s blasted letter had come in yesterday’s mail, but she only saw it this morning. And since then, she’d thought of nothing other than steaming about it to her friends. Yes, this was important news. But she could, in all honesty, have waited for a more proper time of day.
Although with a few more hours, she probably would have torn her pillow to bits, leaving a feathery snowfall on her floor.
Remembering Gladys’s suggestion, she’d screamed into it instead.
Margaret had never felt anger like this.
She took a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But I had to tell you—William is dead.”
“Oh my darling!” Dottie’s voice melted like butter and she extended her free hand out to Margaret. Joanna’s busy feet were kicking from underneath the blanket, and Margaret was temporarily distracted by again feeling sorry that her innocent little niece would someday have to know the darker sides of life.
“Margaret,” sighed Gladys. “We didn’t know. Of course that’s something we’d want to hear right away. You were right to call us.”
Dottie nodded. “How did you find out? Did you get a telegram?”
Margaret’s mouth wrinkled. “No. I wasn’t on any kind of list since I’m not family. If I were, I would have found out that he died in June!”
Gladys sat straight up and cocked her head. “In June? Then how—”
“How have I still been getting letters from him?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Tom. Tom Powell. William died right in front of him. Shot down by a sniper in Normandy. But that’s not even the whole of it. The letters—nearly all of them have actually been written by Tom.”
Dottie unlatched Joanna, and the nanny, with her keen sense of timing, swept the baby into her arms and took her away, patting her back over her shoulder. Dottie folded the blanket and then joined Margaret and Gladys on the couch.
She held Margaret’s hand. “What do you mean?”
Margaret’s jaw quivered rapidly like on a cold day where her teeth would chatter.
Gladys pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. “I brought along a few of these. I thought they’d come in handy. You were in a state.”
“Thank you,” she managed.
Dottie’s voice almost cooed with velvety sympathy. “Why don’t you tell us all about it? From the beginning.”
Margaret had had the foresight to bring all the letters she’d received, including the new one. The one that confessed the truth. She handed the stack to Dottie and Gladys and sank into the couch while they read the letters, passing them between each other.
Hmmms and groans and oohs and aahs and various sounds emitted from each of them. Margaret closed her eyes and leaned her head back, listening to them. Her one comfort right now was knowing that they were here to support her.
They spoke at the same time.
“That’s just rotten,” huffed Dottie.
Just as Gladys said, “That’s so romantic.”
“Romantic?” Dottie turned to Gladys with surprising force, so much so that it nearly made Margaret laugh in spite of it all. She could hardly believe the role reversal. Maybe since Gladys was a newlywed, she was more susceptible to Cupid’s arrow.
“Yes,” Gladys defended. “Okay. He misled you. I’m not saying that isn’t a concern. But did you see his explanation? I’d say it’s pretty understandable.”
“You are really letting him off the hook?” Dottie argued.
“You’ve never lied? Never ever?”
“I try not to.”
“So you’re telling me that you told your parents about your pregnancy as soon as you found out?”
Dottie’s face flushed. “That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“I didn’t lie. I just—”
“I just didn’t tell them the truth.” Gladys’s voice was a high-pitched singsong as she mimicked Dottie.
“But—”
“Look, I’m not knocking you for it. I would have done exactly the same thing. I was one of your accomplices, in fact. I took you into my home to prolong the deception. What I’m saying is that you had good reason. Sometimes there is a good reason to lie.”
Margaret watched them as if they were a vaudevillian show, and she had to admit that Gladys had a point. Still, Margaret wanted the satisfaction of their mutual indignation. She was rankled and she wanted Gladys to be too. In fact, Gladys was almost always rankled about something. Why not now? Unless in her ire, she was seeing something that Margaret couldn’t.
“But—” she began.
“Oh, Margaret,” Gladys said, rolling her eyes. “I know all about you telling Oliver that he should let me propose to him. And don’t worry—I’m not mad about that. This is not what it’s about. But it does show that you have your secrets too.
“And,” she continued, without letting anyone respond, “even more than that, do you think George should have told Dottie all these years that he was in love with her?”
“No, but I don’t see—”
Gladys was on a roll. “And why is that?”
“Because of John.”
“Exactly. Because of John and you and your parents and Dottie. If George had told the truth about his feelings, it would have hurt a lot of people. So he kept the secret. Until it was the right time to speak up.”