The second envelope contained a greeting from the director of the Office of Strategic Services, cosigned by his deputy. Bridgette had never heard of the government organization. The letter’s content was surprisingly personal, containing intimate details of her short history, including her coming graduation from Stephens College. The correspondent wrote of his knowledge of her grandmother’s torture and her grandfather’s murder in Germany during World War I, and concluded by asking if she would be willing to meet with him to discuss how she might “do her part to rid France of the Third Reich’s evil domination.” A telephone number was listed below the sender’s name.

Bridgette folded the letter and reinserted it into its envelope, slightly disconcerted that a Washington agency had somehow sniffed her out as having cause to fight the despicable Nazis, but her degree was in fashion design and illustration. What contributions could she make to assist France? She might be tempted to reply if she didn’t feel in her bones that tomorrow she would be offered an invitation to interview with Edith Head. Besides, she must take care of her grandmother. After her first thought to toss the letter into a campus waste can, Bridgette reconsidered its private nature and slipped it into her purse with Steve’s.

Back at her dorm in Columbia Hall, she was given a note from Gladys saying that her family had arrived at the hotel; she would spend the night with them and meet Bridgette for breakfast the following morning. Bridgette felt a smart of disappointment. There had been many times during the past four years when she would have welcomed a break from Gladys’s constant presence, but tonight she was feeling at sixes and sevens and could have used her chatty company and the pleasure of being with her boisterous family. Bridgette thought it odd that Gladys, excessively solicitous about her, had left her on her own tonight of all nights, when the dorm was practically deserted and the dining hall closed. Students had been given a sack lunch for their supper.

She shook her head at her mood. Since when had she depended on Gladys Bradbury to fill her time? And she had no right to presume that she’d be included in tonight’s private family gathering when the Bradburys had been kind enough to invite her to join them for the celebratory dinner tomorrow evening. By then, the style show would be over, and she might well be dining in the restaurant of the Pennant Hotel with the dean and Edith Head herself.

Rather than sit alone in her room, she went downstairs to the reception room with a book to read and pen and paper to write a reply to Private Steve Hammett. The return address listed his home in Traverse City, and Bridgette hoped his drunkard father would forward it to his military unit.