“They always do that to me, always! Both of them! They decide what’s best for me, and that’s the end of it. They don’t even discuss it with me. I’m not a child anymore. I went to nursing school to make them happy, and I’m glad I did, because I met you, and nursing is a decent job, and as close to a medical career as I’m ever going to get. I’d rather do that than be a teacher or a secretary. But I wanted to apply for a job in New York, and without even asking me, my father got me a job in Boston. He doesn’t do that to my brothers.”

“Maybe he does,” Audrey said gently. She felt sorry for her. Lizzie had her own ideas and wanted to be her own person. “Greg is a doctor, and Henry is in medical school. Maybe they didn’t want to be doctors, and they did it for him,” she suggested. “It’s like Will. Nobody ever questioned that he would enlist in the navy. It was expected of him because of my father and grandfather. And if he couldn’t fly planes in the navy, he’d be miserable. I don’t think he gives a damn about ships, the way my father did.”

“My parents have my whole life mapped out for me,” Lizzie said angrily. “And just watch, if I’m not engaged in a year, they’ll be having a fit. I have a nursing degree. Now they’re going to want me to get married and have kids. It’s what my mother did. Don’t I ever get a voice in my own life?” She had tears in her eyes, but she knew that Audrey’s lot was even harder, alone with her slowly dying mother, with no one to help her, and her only brother three thousand miles away, playing ace pilot in California. It seemed so unfair to Lizzie. “It’s 1941, not 1910. Nothing ever changes for women. They say it does, but it doesn’t. I should have gone to medical school, and to hell with it if my father had a fit.” But she couldn’t have paid for it, and her parents had paid for nursing school. Her father had refused to pay for medical school for her, only her brothers.

“Maybe you will one day,” Audrey said, trying to calm her.