From that day forward, Dolly had combed the Gazette each evening for news of Byron, and each snippet went into the scrapbook. She prayed fervently for his safety, especially when word came that he was going over to Europe, and later, that his tank battalion had been involved in the fighting. She imagined various scenarios in which he came home to Battle Point, saw her on the street (or at the post office or at the movie theater or at the homecoming football game), and fell madly in love with her. As the years went by, the frequency of her daydreams did lessen, and she dated a boy in her class that she liked quite well. But, out of either habit or a lingering childish devotion, she kept up the scrapbook of Byron’s exploits.

When he finally came home, just before Christmas in 1945, she was sixteen. She and Jane were trading secrets over malts at Bridgeman’s when he and three other fellows, all wearing uniforms, strutted in and flopped into a booth two down from theirs.

Dolly, who hadn’t seen anything in the paper about him being home, nearly choked on her malt.

“What’s the matter?” Jane said, turning to look.

“It’s Byron!” Dolly whispered. “Isn’t it?” For despite the many hours she’d spent gazing at the grainy Basic Training photograph from the newspaper (they ran the same one every time his name got in), she couldn’t be absolutely sure. He looked a lot older, for one thing, and she had never imagined him as having changed from the day she’d seen him at the depot.

“Byron Magnuson?” said Jane, much too loudly for Dolly’s comfort, twisting her head again to try to catch a glimpse of him.

“Jane!”

But the boys in uniform were laughing and joking too noisily to have heard her.

“Well, you’ve got to go say something to him!” Jane said. She had spent four years hearing Dolly’s dreams of Byron Magnuson, and was impatient for action.

“What would I say?”

“Tell him you’ve been waiting all this time for him to come home!” Jane giggled.

“Oh, hush,” Dolly said, and quickly formulated a plan. “Come on, Jane, let’s go,” she said.

“Go?” Jane said. “I haven’t finished my malt yet.”

“Well, hurry up, then,” Dolly said, tapping her fingernails on the table.

When they finally stood up from their booth and put on their coats, a waitress had just brought the boys each a hamburger. “Now, watch this,” Dolly told Jane, wishing only that she was wearing pumps instead of her childish saddle shoes. As she and Jane passed the boys’ booth, Dolly, walking slightly behind Jane, dug in her pocket for her gloves, dropped one, and kept walking.

She was almost to the door when a male voice called, “Mish?”