Letters From Home

“Oh, that’s perfect. I love it!” Enthusiasm shot through Betty like an electrical current, straightening her posture, widening her eyes. “Now, what was that again?” She held up her pen, a stenog-rapher ready for dictation—with no knowledge of shorthand.

Already Liz felt exhausted. She opened her mouth to repeat the phrase when the tinkering notes of her grandfather’s cuckoo clock rang out from the living room.

“Cripes. What time is it?” Betty rotated the alarm clock on the nightstand. “Shoot, I’m gonna be late.” With the speed of a fireman preparing for a five-alarm blaze, she jumped into her carnation-pink diner dress and pinned on her name tag. At the vanity, she smoothed Julia’s styling lotion over her pageboy hair.

Relief and aggravation rivaled within Liz at the postponement. Now that they had started, she wanted nothing more than to rid her thoughts of Morgan McClain; him and all the “what-ifs” that had tangled her mind like ivy.

“I really gotta go,” Betty addressed Liz’s reflection in the mirror, “but could you please finish the letter while I’m gone?”

“Finish?” A laugh of disbelief snagged in Liz’s throat. “We haven’t even started it.”

Betty applied her Victory Red lipstick in one circular motion. “I wouldn’t ask, but I won’t be home till late. And then I’ll be with Suzie all weekend visiting her family.”

Liz was about to refuse, needing to draw a line somewhere— wavering and faint though the line may be—when Betty produced a scrawled address on a napkin.

“Pretty please?” She knelt by the bed with clasped hands. “A couple more lines is all it needs.”

This was ludicrous. “Don’t you think he’ll know it’s not from you?”

“He’s a guy. He won’t have any idea,” Betty said, as if reporting the sky was blue. “Besides, what’s the difference? I’d just be writing down everything you say anyway.”

If gender and academics weren’t a factor, the gal would have made a great trial attorney. After all, it was her indisputable case that had convinced Liz’s father to allow his daughter not one but two roommates in his absence, an arrangement for which Liz was grateful. At least on most days.

Betty glanced back at the clock. “Piddle, I gotta fly.” Scurrying toward the doorway, she motioned to the bed. “Stamps and envelopes are in the drawer. Just toss it in the mail when you’re done.”

Liz’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t want to read it first?”

“I trust you,” Betty called as she rounded the corner. “The sooner it goes out, the sooner I’ll get a letter back, right?” Her footfalls sounded down the hall and out the front door, leaving Liz alone. With a pile of stationery. Shackled.

She should have escaped with Julia when she had the chance.

“I must be going mad.” Liz snatched the pen and paper and tramped across the room. Seated at the vanity, she scowled at the page and debated reneging on the deal. This wasn’t what she’d agreed to.

The heck with it.

She tossed the pen down. Grasping the edge of the table, she began to rise, but a memory stilled her—the memory of Morgan’s face. She’d tried so desperately to erase him from her mind. Yet there he was, as vivid as if they had shared a dance yesterday. She could almost feel the tenderness of his breath gracing her cheek, the heat of his hand pressed to hers.

Why couldn’t she forget him? And why did the mere idea of him cause her pulse to quicken even now?

Her grip loosened. Her body lowered. She settled her gaze on the empty page, its fibers beckoning the beautiful stains of the written word. And she sighed.

“All right, I’ll do it,” she repeated her verbal assent.

Really, it was just a short note. A small favor for a friend. What was the big fuss?

At that, she placed the tip of the pen on the stationery, and surrendered her thoughts to flow through the ink.

Chapter 5

July 15, 1944 Chicago, Illinois

“It’s about time!” As usual, the greeting flew out of the kitchen, over the diner chatter, and into Betty’s ears before she could even clock in.

“Yeah, yeah, so fire me,” she meant to mutter to herself, yet a look from the grizzled chef indicated her retort had made it through the pass-through window.

“You straighten up, or that’s precisely what I’m gonna do. You got me?” A cigarette bounced against his bottom lip as he spoke.

“Hey,” she said coyly, “I can’t control the bus schedule. But give me a raise and I’ll happily race down here in a cab.” She blew him a kiss, a standby tactic to alleviate his mood.

Today, however, he wasn’t having any of it. He shook a fistful of his mottled dish towel in her direction, an especially deep scowl carved into his face. “Don’t push me, Betty. You’re this close—this close—to gettin’ the ax. Now, get to work!” With a grumble, he returned to his grill, which crackled like the invisible eggshells he’d erected beneath her feet.

So much for a warm welcome, she wanted to say. Instead, she buttoned her lip and snagged an order pad. She wasn’t up for yet another career hunt, specifically when she’d just spent money intended for her shared living expenses. But then, who could blame her? That keen aqua dress from Goldblatt’s was to die for.

Tucking a pencil behind her ear, Betty assessed the status of business. Her jitters kicked in as she played her customary game of catch-up. Holding a job all the way down by the Loop wasn’t the most convenient, but there was nothing like being in the thick of things. And the Loop was certainly that.

Betty threw on a wide smile, cocked her hip. Accentuate your assets, she had learned, and no one noticed your troubles. “How about a warm-up, gentlemen?” She raised a coffeepot, interrupting the three guys parked at the counter sparring over the same old topic—the war, what else?

“Thanks,” they said, voices overlapping. Hands calloused, fingernails smudged, they were as blue-collared as the pedigree she strove to hide.

She filled their mugs, committing small splatters she deftly hid from the chef’s view. She swiped the mess away with a rag. “Let me know if you need anything else,” she told them. As she sauntered away, she could feel their gazes latched to her backside, coupled by murmuring about a nice ass. Her first instinct was to admonish them, given that their ages approached her father’s—how old she presumed he’d be, anyway. But she needed their tips. For the time being.

And so she continued on, relieving the frazzled busboy from serving her tables. Mostly regulars dotted the room, plus a few additions. She topped off their mugs, took some orders—only two of them wrong—and delivered dishes back and forth, wearing a trail into the chessboard floor. Hours from closing and already her feet begged for a soak.

By the time she hit a break in the dinner rush, the sun had excused itself for the evening. Scribbled bill in hand, she ventured back toward Irma, rooted in the back booth, same as every Friday. A subtle indentation in the black cushion permanently reserved her spot. Aside from rather wide hips, her frame was of medium size. Her silver flapper hat and gaudy brooch, a firefly with tarnished wings, dated her peak years to be more than a decade past.

“Enjoy your dumplings, Irma?”

The woman, gazing distantly at the empty seat across from her, replied with a nod. Rarely saying a word—not even for her order; it was always the same—she carried the perpetual grief of a widow. The familiar reserve of a lonely child.

Betty forced a smile. “Can I interest you in a slice of pie? We got banana cream tonight.”

Irma declined with a slight shake of her head, already unsnapping her worn velvety clutch.

“Well. Next time, then.” Betty presented her tallied check.

The woman’s hand trembled, more noticeably than ever, as she emptied all her coins onto the table. She seemed to be struggling with counting them. Given that Irma’s bill never fluctuated, Betty swiftly noticed there wasn’t enough money. And something told her the lady’s purse didn’t have a reserve compartment.

Betty glanced back at the kitchen, where the chef’s mood remained stuck in a ditch of aggravation. He didn’t believe in running tabs, and was far from the charitable sort.

“Here,” she told Irma, “let me get those.” She scooted the change off the edge and into her hand, whispering a pretend calculation. “Forty-five, fifty-five, seventy . . .” Then, “Perfect!” She dropped them into her uniform pocket. Her tip from the last table would provide just enough to compensate for the shortage. “Be sure and try our dessert sometime. A girl’s gotta treat herself once in a while.”

A smile brushed past Irma’s dry, wrinkled lips, but only a shadow. A memory. An echo of her withered beauty.

Betty didn’t know why she was helping her out exactly. Maybe it was an offering to the universe, a bribe to prevent her from ending up the same. Or worse, like her own mother, an old maid whose scandalous life had been the infection of Betty’s childhood.

“Order up!” The chef’s voice jerked Betty back to greasy paradise and her mouth into a frown. She deposited Irma’s bare dinner plate in a bussing tub. As she headed for the kitchen, someone called out, “Excuse me? Miss? Over here.”

“Be there in a minute,” she shot back; she couldn’t be in two places at once. But then she registered the new customer’s appearance. An Army sergeant, all alone, dark and suave. Fit in his sharp uniform, he boasted looks as dreamy as they came.

Her shoes did an automatic U-turn, straight to his table. Cosmetics undoubtedly needing to be refreshed, she tilted her face to its most flattering angle and asked, “See anything you like?” She inserted a deliberate pause before gesturing to his menu.

His mouth slid into a grin. His eyes glinted.

And she knew she had him. “Hey, I know you,” he said. She would have taken the phrase for a tired old pickup line, but his tone sounded of genuine discovery. “The USO,” he explained. “A few weeks back.”

Had she danced with him and forgotten? Surely she would have remembered a guy like this. Crud, she hated when a fella had the upper hand.

“You were one of the singers,” he added. The connection seemed to end there.

“You’ve got quite a memory . . .” She drew out the last word, a prompt for him to volunteer his name.

“J.T.,” he said. “And you’re Betty.”

“How did you—” she began, then glanced down at her name tag. “Oh. Right.”

“Pleased to finally meet you.”

“Likewise.” The feel of something sticky between her fingers prevented her from extending her hand. As a cover, she yanked the pencil from her ear and notepad out of her pocket, posed them in order-taking position.

“Well, Betty, I think you got a fan club started by some of the guys in our office.”

“The office?” she asked, milking the compliment.

“Army recruitment, down off Jackson.” He reclined in his seat, one arm draped across the top of the neighboring chair, as if accustomed to claiming ownership and space at will. His posture launched a wave of arrogance stronger than his spicy cologne. “You should come by sometime. We could use a smart, beautiful woman like you in the Women’s Army Corps.”

A giggle bubbled through her. “You see me in the WAC? Marching around all day in khaki?”

J.T. gave her figure a brief scan, no doubt picturing her out of a uniform rather than in one. “Just think about it, sweetheart. You could help out our soldiers by doing more than singing to ’em.” The implication might have been offensive had he not continued so smoothly. “Besides, you seem like the kinda girl who’d like to travel, see the world. Sydney, London, Rome. Maybe Hawaii? White sandy beaches, luscious palm trees. Water so blue and clear you could spot a dime at the bottom.”

His pitch sounded as rehearsed as that of a Fuller Brush salesman, but the vision towed Betty’s mind into a drift regardless. Life could certainly be worse than living in a tropical haven. Too bad military enlistment was a requirement. She’d sooner become a lumber jack than run around playing soldier. Why, for the love of Mike, some women tried so hard to swap roles with men, she had no idea.

“I said order up!” the chef bellowed.

She pushed out a sweetly appeasing voice. “Coming,” she answered, abruptly reminded of her unglamorous servitude. The chef’s call should have taken priority, given his grumpiness tonight, but she couldn’t bow to another command before enlightening someone, anyone, of her overflowing potential.

Posture lifted, she peered down at the sergeant. “Thanks for the offer, but I already got plans,” she stated, as though he should have expected as much. “I’ll be traveling with the USO, soon as a spot in a touring group opens up. So I’m sure I’ll be stopping in all those places you mentioned.” She added with a wink, “Even drop you a postcard if I have time.” In reality, all the Hedy Lamarrs and Marlene Dietrichs took overseas priority. But the possibility of joining the tour was the main reason Betty had auditioned for the USO, and she wasn’t about to give up the chance at a better job—a better life—no matter how slim.

“Well, if things don’t work out,” he said, “come on by and see me. Or, even if you wanted to chat about other things, besides the military . . .” He trailed off, inviting her to fill in the blanks.

“Wessel, there you are!” A GI appeared at the front door beside two rather refined-looking girls. To top it off, they were knockouts, which J.T. seemed to note in less than a blink. “We’re hittin’ O’Toole’s. Ya comin’, or what?”

The girls whispered to each other, then giggled, a sound that drew the sergeant from his seat like a snake to a flute. Not until reaching the exit did he rotate back, as though suddenly recalling Betty was there. “Like I said, you oughta come by.”

She layered on a smile. “Yeah, sure.” In your dreams, her mind added. Jerks like this reminded her why she’d be better off with a real gentleman—like Morgan, that soldier from the dance. Because mysterious and chivalrous deserved to beat out suave and dreamy every time.

Not that they always did, of course.

As J.T. and his gang strolled gaily past the diner windows, Betty tried to imagine a hundred ways to put the nitwit in his place if given the chance. But before she could come up with a solitary one, a gruff warning from the chef took another stomp at her pride.

Chapter 6

Late August 1944 France

“Charlie! Where are you?” Morgan screamed, pain grinding his throat. He rubbed his eyelids with the back of his hand and strained to focus. The gray smoke of mortar explosions burned his nostrils.

“Charlie!” His voice melted into the bursting of artillery shells and hammering of machine guns. He fought off a cough. The taste of tar coated his tongue. He spat and missed the water, hitting the sleeve of his fatigues. Black, grainy liquid.

Waves were riding him mid-thigh. Ocean waves. But he couldn’t feel the chill. Too numb, too filled with terror. Too confused by how he and Charlie had ended up separated.

He clutched his M1 rifle to his chest and plodded through the bloody sea, the water like a flood of molasses. Leaning every pound of his body forward, he pushed toward the hazy beachhead. German bullets zipped past his ears. He ducked his face away, grasping his net-covered helmet. Behind him, miles of Allied ships, now tattered floating tombs, dappled the ocean. Infantry hung like soiled rags off bow ramps. Uniformed corpses plugged jagged holes in landing craft.

Morgan refocused and resumed his march, until something bumped his knee. He gasped at the sight. A swarm of dead bodies hovered beneath the surface of the water. Their unseeing stares reached for him, pleading for help too late. Boys, all of them, too young to be soldiers. Still, here they were, cut down by machinegun fire. Drowned by the weight of their own field packs.

Staggering from dizziness, he trudged onward. He searched for pillboxes camouflaged in the trees overlooking the shore. Not a bunker in view, but he knew they were there, preserving the merciless rage of Wehrmacht troops awaiting his approach.

Once at water of knee-high depth, he hurdled the waves with his weighted boots. The suction of wet sand suddenly yielded. He stumbled out of the ocean and onto a quilt of fatigues covering every inch of the beach. Was he the only GI left standing?

The question retreated as he plowed through the patchwork of helmets and weapons, of crumpled bodies lying facedown in the gritty sand. A mortician’s waiting room for fallen heroes.

He dropped to his knees in a bucket-sized gap, tossing his rifle aside. He yanked back on jacket collars for a glimpse of their faces. Blood trickled from their gaped mouths. Gashes, bullet holes, missing pieces. The stench of death seared his senses, folded his stomach in quarters. And their eyes, their glassy eyes, shining hollow, like tinted doors entrapping their souls.

“Morgan. . . .” A hoarse whisper seemed to cry out from the heavens.

He flew back on his knees. “Charlie?”

“Morgan. . . .” The voice drew nearer, echoing as if spoken from the base of a well.

“Charlie!” he shrieked, searching, searching. “Where are you?”

A fatigue-clad arm shot up from the pile of bodies. The sandy hand grabbed hold of his shoulder and shook him.

“Morgan, wake up.”

The unexpected words jolted him back to their French campsite. From the milky light of the moon, he could see his brother, wrapped in a blanket an arm’s length away.

“You okay?” Charlie asked groggily.

Yeah, Morgan mouthed without sound. The terror of his dream tapering, he forced a dry swallow and nodded.

Charlie yawned as he rolled onto his other side, adjusted his head on his elbow.

The duty had always been Morgan’s, waking his brother from nightmares. All those months after their mother’s death, he would climb up the bunk-bed ladder to interrupt the kid’s tossing and turning.

When had things become so backward?

Morgan blew out a quiet, shaky exhale, his muscles as taut as tucked Army bedding. He swept a glance over the mounds bivouacked around him: his slumbering squad, spread throughout the pasture like grazing cattle.

He rested the back of his hand on his forehead and inhaled the familiar smell of dewy meadow. He’d find it soothing if not for the distant barrage of artillery fire, or the vengeful explosions of Hitler’s “Buzz Bombs.” Not quite the sounds of summer nights on the farm.

From star to star he drew imaginary lines, struggling to erase the haunting pictures flipping through his mind. Considering how many images there were, it was hard to believe only two months had passed since their troop transport ship left New York. For twelve days they’d sailed in the dank, creaking chamber, zigzagging to avoid wolf packs of German subs. Poor Charlie had rarely been sick a day in his life, but the Atlantic’s unforgiving pitch and roll made up for lost time; his waistline shrank two belt loops before the ship had anchored.

“Good thing we didn’t join the Navy,” Morgan had joked. Charlie hadn’t laughed.

Looking back, Morgan almost laughed himself, remembering how eager they’d all been to reach the living nightmare that waited across the English Channel. His squad had arrived on the Norman shore well after the D-Day invasion, but the gruesome crime scene still invaded his dreams. Even now, the memory of bodies washing ashore sent a chill zipping up his spine.

Then again, the thought of death sometimes offered a strange sense of peace. A morbid notion, perhaps, until you’re at the tail end of another twenty-mile march beneath the hot French sun, with sixty pounds of gear bound to your chafed, raw back, your feet swollen and bleeding, your stomach knotted from K-rations. All elements of an Army conspiracy, Morgan decided, to make battle an appealing prospect.

An effective strategy, as it turned out. At one point, he’d been suckered along with the rest of them. Like a kid awaiting a parade, he too had lined the road to welcome the tarpaulin-covered convoy. No one seemed to mind that the front line was the next scheduled stop.

Over winding roads, their truck had bumped and groaned. They’d snuck through the black of night with taped-over head-lights, getaway cars preparing for a heist. By the time they unloaded in Brezolles, Morgan was certain the torturous hours of marching or waiting for action would surely rival those spent in combat.

The theory didn’t last.

In three-foot-deep foxholes, he and Charlie had dueled trapped members of the German Panzer army, closing the Falaise Pocket like a tube of toothpaste. Though tens of thousands of Kraut soldiers had been captured, a hefty number escaped through the gap. Both a success and a failure. The essence of war.

The battles were far from over, but the amount of bloodshed Morgan had already witnessed could soak the earth to its core. He’d learned there was no limit to how violently men and their machines could deconstruct the human anatomy. How desensitized people could become. How barbaric it all was.

Now, studying the dirt road cutting through the meadow, the road they’d be tackling at daylight, he feared what other lessons war had in store for them.

“Charlie,” Morgan said in a loud whisper. Unable to sleep, he wanted someone to talk to. He tapped his brother’s shoulder. The kid didn’t move. Not even a break in the rhythm of his heavy breaths.

How was it that he rested so peacefully?

Maybe in Charlie’s dreams they were somewhere far away. A safer time, safer place, where the air brimmed with warmth and the lullabies of crickets. They were kids back in their dad’s Iowa fields, dozing out in the open, naming shapes made of stars in the sky. A sky that offered them promises, futures as limitless as the universe.

A sky that lied.

Chapter 7

Late August 1944 Chicago, Illinois

The gilding of the room amplified the stiff formality at Liz’s table. In the corner, a string quartet played Rachmaninoff over silverware clinking on fine china. A tuxedoed host at the entrance relieved a woman of her fur stole while waiters slipped in and out of the kitchen that smelled of grilled steak and spices. Diners nodded and murmured and lobbed laughter back and forth like a tennis ball in a never-ending match.

“All done here, miss?” The waiter gestured with his upturned hand, the movement as groomed as his mustache.

Liz opened her mouth to decline, but Dalton replied for her. “We both are, thank you.”

Why on earth did he choose a place as fancy as this if he wanted to eat at drive-in restaurant speed? Had she known he was in a hurry, she would have bypassed the vegetables and savored the marmalade chicken first.

Liz pressed up a smile as the waiter retrieved their plates. The distraction of eating gone, she bounced her leg under the tablecloth, keeping time with the drumming awkwardness.

Dalton took a long drink of red wine. Tabletop candlelight traveled through his crystal glass and cast severe shadows across his face. With the chiseling of his features, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine him draped in a toga, orating before the Roman Senate in another lifetime.

“Was your steak all right?” she asked, attempting conversation.

“Come again?”

“You only ate half your dinner. Was something wrong with it?”

“It was fine. I just had a late lunch.” He offered a lean smile, then popped his second Rolaids of the evening into his mouth. If it weren’t for knowing heartburn ran in his family, she might suspect she was the cause of his indigestion.

Sipping her lemon-wedged ice water, she glanced to her side. A middle-aged couple, necks adorned in a bow tie and pearls, sat silently at the next table. Engrossed in their meals, they sliced, chewed, and dabbed their mouths with white linen napkins. They had to have been married fifteen, twenty years. No children, Liz guessed. Just a small, yippy lapdog waiting at home. The woman would knit next to the radio while her husband read the paper before they retired to opposite sides of the bed.