“I intended on getting you something for Valentine’s Day, but every place we went was closed.”

She looked at him, surprised, and he held her gaze a moment, smiling a little. Then he looked up at the sky, and stuck out his tongue to catch a falling snowflake. “I reckon it snows pretty near every day around here,” he proclaimed then, as though he’d just decided it.

Her heart was drawn more and more to him; she could feel it almost like a physical thing. And she didn’t like to think of him as the transient soldier he was, or to acknowledge that he might just disappear from her life as quickly as he’d entered it. If only for a moment, she entertained the dream that perhaps he would not. “Do you like Wisconsin?”

“I like it more since last night,” he said.

She watched her boots make tracks in the snow, wanting to believe him. “You’re an expert sweet-talker,” she said. “You must meet a different girl every weekend.”

“I don’t even like going dancing, normally. My buddies dragged me to town this weekend. I reckon I’m glad they did.” He raised one eyebrow at her. “If you are.”

She looked at him, trying to judge his sincerity. Given the conventional wisdom about soldiers, she supposed she shouldn’t trust him, but she could see something in the set of his jaw, and the clear blue of his eyes, that made trusting him seem the only thing to do. Besides, love didn’t come complete from the start; you built it in small pieces, moment by moment, and you had to start somewhere. “Yes, I’m glad,” she said.

“I’m not fooling around with you, Lissa. I just hope you aren’t with me, either.”

“Of course not.”

“You might think it’s crazy, but I have this feeling like I spent my whole life dreaming you up, and now all of a sudden here you are.”

“Really?”

“You think I’m nuts?” he said.

Though they seemed contrary to what she had just been thinking, his words had immediately felt true. Perhaps love could come complete from the start. The passing of time, the creation of a history, was needed only to verify irrefutability.

“No, I don’t think you’re nuts,” she said, wishing he would stop walking and kiss her.

But he just nodded, his mouth quirking a little. “Good,” he said, making sure that her arm was entwined snugly in his, wrapping his hand over hers, as they kept on.

Chapter 21

Married people who are happy have babies and unhappy people choose divorce instead. The fact is that babies are symbolic of the permanence of marriage.

—When You Marry, 1948

HOME OF MRS. CECILIA FRYT
412 W. First Street, Pine Rapids
Tuesday, July 25, 1950