“I have no idea. This is all I’ve known and done for years now.” Since she was fifteen, when her father died and her mother got sick. “Maybe I should enlist, like you did.” She had thought of it a few times, but there was no question of it while her mother was alive. “I have no one left, no family, nowhere I have to be. I was thinking of getting a job as a nurse. I need to take some classes to brush up. I’ve only been doing what Mom needed. I’m a little rusty on the rest.”

“You can catch up in a month or two,” Lizzie said. “I wish I could be sure we’d be stationed together.” The armed forces kept fathers and sons and brothers together, when asked to do so, but friendships weren’t always respected.

“Maybe I will anyway. I’ll sign up for some classes. I need to do that anyway. I can’t just sit here in an empty house and do nothing.” She knew her mother had left her a little money, and she owned the house now, although she didn’t want to live there alone. She was thinking about closing it up and getting a nursing job in Baltimore, or enlisting in the army. It was too soon to say. She hadn’t even buried her mother yet.

“Let me know what you’re doing,” Lizzie said, and told her again how sorry she was. She would always have precious memories of Ellen and how kind she had been, and welcoming, when Audrey first brought her home from nursing school for Sunday dinners, which had become the mainstay of her student life, and a second family for her, warmer than her own.

The funeral was three days after Ellen died. Only Audrey, Mrs. Beavis, and two of their neighbors were there. Audrey arranged for burial in the naval cemetery at Annapolis, next to her father. The minister Audrey and her mother knew read from the Scriptures and spoke briefly about Ellen. Then her casket was lowered into the ground. It was a bleak November day, and Audrey went home alone. She started packing the next day. She didn’t know where she was going. But she knew she couldn’t stay long-term in the house that had become a hospital for her mother. It had served its purpose, but too many of its occupants were gone now. Audrey couldn’t bear the thought of being there alone any longer than she had to.