She looked up at him. “You saw a lot of action, didn’t you, in the war? Harry was telling me. What battles were you in?”

“Well, since you asked,” he said. “The Canal. Tarawa. Saipan. And Iwo.”

“It’s a miracle you made it home at all!”

He shrugged. “Well, it makes you wonder sometimes. Why you and not the guy next to you. I think about that all the time.”

“My brother says the same thing,” Anne said. “And I tell him, there has to be a reason.”

JJ laughed. “I don’t think there’s a reason for anything in this world. Life and death is just a matter of inches. Of luck.”

Anne frowned. “I don’t see how you can live like that,” she said. “Don’t you believe in God?”

“Sure, I believe in God, America, and the United States Marine Corps. Only not in that order.”

“Do you wish you had been killed?”

“If I’d wanted to die, I would have,” he said. “Look, Anne, for almost a year now I’ve been having surgeries and lying in a hospital bed and learning to walk again. Living again inch by inch. It’s not like it comes back automatic. That’s what I mean. Dying’s a matter of inches, and so is living.”

She studied him. She decided that perhaps he had lost his mind. But then, perhaps he was saner than she; she was so naïve. Perhaps he had seen life for what it was. “I’m sorry,” she said finally.

He stabbed a slice of turkey. “Don’t waste your time,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade being a Marine for anything.”

Anne picked up her fork again. Her hand was trembling.

“The only thing bad about it, really,” he said, “is knowing that a girl like you would never look twice at me now.”

She looked up. He was looking directly at her, and she blushed. She was certain she must have mistaken the tone of his voice. “That isn’t true,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “You’d look twice at me?” he said. “At a freak like me? A half-man like me?”

She didn’t know what to say. “I—”

“If you weren’t engaged already, I mean,” he said, with a sly smile. “Be honest.”

“Well, you’re very handsome.”

He laughed.

“Besides, you’re not a ‘half-man,’ as you call it. You’re missing part of one leg, that’s all. A lot of boys came back a lot worse off than you. A little while longer, you’ll be perfectly healthy, walking around on your prosthesis, and I bet you’ll hardly notice it! And neither will any girl who’s got half a brain.”

He just looked at her, a curious little smile on his face, as he chewed another bite.