Disgusted, she flung back the covers and threw her legs over the side of the bed. She padded across the floor in her bare feet, grabbed her robe out of the closet to cover her flimsy nylon nightgown, and went out to the living room, flopping into a chair and fishing her cigarettes out of her sewing basket. Byron didn’t like for her to smoke in the house, but she lit one anyway and puffed with relish, turning sideways in the chair, dangling her legs over its arm. She thought about the scrap-book she had labored over for more than four years, which she had left back at her parents’ house in Minnesota under her frilly bed. She still remembered the headline of the article, clipped from the Battle Point Gazette and glued tenderly to the first page of the scrapbook: BYRON MAGNUSON COMPLETES BASIC TRAINING. The date was February 1942.

Dolly had been only twelve years old when Byron Magnuson, eighteen, had lined up with about two dozen other Battle Point boys on the depot platform to bid the town good-bye in front of the train. It was a frozen, overcast day, just ten days before Christmas, a week after Pearl Harbor. The farm boys with their pink cheeks and bright eyes were puffed up to the size of real men in their plaid mackinaws and heavy boots. A few members of the high school band huddled together and repeatedly blared “Over There,” a song that had worked well for the previous war. Dolly stood on her tiptoes to see through the jostling crowd, her gloved hands nestled in the pockets of her wool coat. The ties of her knit hat chafed her chin. Members of the crowd surged forward to kiss cheeks and shake hands, the women fading back with proud tears in their eyes. Dolly’s gaze was drawn to Byron; she thought his large ears, which were bright red from the cold, distinctive. He was smiling at the crowd, magnanimously, she thought, and the way he half closed his eyes against the cold, looking proud and invincible, caught her fancy. She elbowed her best friend,

Jane, and told her, “That’s the boy I’m going to marry,” pointing her chin at Byron. Jane laughed with delight. “Byron Magnuson! Sure, Dolly, and I’ll marry the one next to him.”