They finally sent Will’s body back shortly after Christmas. There were so many bodies to send home to families all over the country, and others who had gone down with their ships in the harbor and remained there. Divers brought up as many as they could, but there were a vast number they hadn’t reached yet.

Lizzie went back to Annapolis for the small funeral service Audrey arranged for her brother. His classmates from Annapolis were all over the world now. His childhood friends had moved on too, and a bigger funeral would have been too much for her mother. Audrey, Ellen, and Lizzie and a few of their old friends attended the service in the church Audrey and Will had gone to as children. Ellen hadn’t been well enough to go to church for years, and Audrey no longer saw her old high school friends. She was too busy taking care of her mother. Lizzie was her closest friend. They buried Will in the cemetery at Annapolis with his father. Will’s grandfather and grandmother were there too. There would be a place for Ellen next to her husband, Francis, when she died. It was grimly depressing standing at the cemetery, as they lowered Will’s casket into the ground, and two navy pilots handed Ellen the flag from his casket. Her hands trembled violently as she took it and pressed it to her chest.

They went back to the house for a quiet meal afterwards, and Lizzie shocked Audrey with what she told her after they put Audrey’s mother to bed. Her health had deteriorated markedly since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Will’s death. It was as though she didn’t care enough to put up a fight anymore. Audrey was fighting to keep her stable, but Ellen didn’t seem to care one way or another. Lizzie could understand how she felt, and Audrey did too.

They were sitting at the kitchen table drinking a glass of wine when Lizzie told her. Lizzie looked tired and had lost weight in the last month, and the light had gone out of her eyes, as though everything was dark inside her. Audrey didn’t look much better, but she was busy with her mother. They were both young to have suffered so much loss.

“I’m going to enlist,” Lizzie said so quietly that Audrey didn’t hear her at first, and then it hit her.

“You’re what?”

“I’m going to enlist in the army as a nurse.” She said it as simply as though she had said, “I’m going to the store tomorrow to buy a quart of milk.”

“They’re not drafting women, Lizzie, for heaven’s sake.” Audrey was shocked.