“I answer no because it’s less complicated. The truth is that the answer is yes, as well as anyone can predict the future. I have tried to tell the truth once, in psych class, where the professor, a very gracious old man, started the hour by saying he’d never had as a student the wife of an air ace. He congratulated you and said that I must be very proud. I said I was. He asked the question and I said yes. I told him—the class, really—about your strong sense of duty. Some of them hadn’t known about the robbery. He said that he’d always been curious about the personal lives of men like you, and I said yes, that’s too bad—very quickly, you know, and without malice, and we all laughed. He laughed, and said something very nice to me. You’ve said it but I am showing no modesty in telling it to you. Very casually he said, ‘Your husband must need you very much.’ Of course he meant that I had your interests at heart.”

At the end of the year he went up to the American Embassy and took the examination for Detective Lieutenant. The results came back quicker than they would have under normal conditions. He had passed. In January, at the end of the month, he went home for thirty days. It was his first trip home since Christmas, 1942.

She met him at ten o’clock in the evening at the downtown railroad station, her hands in her pockets, her kerchief loose around her neck. He had changed, he realized, as he saw her face. Her eyes filled up and she had trouble speaking. He put down his valise.

“Hello, Joe.”

“Hello, honey. You look fine.” He took her in his arms and kissed her. He sobbed as he held her. When he moved back she took out her handkerchief for both of them.

“Stephanie’s with your parents. We can go there or home, whichever you want.”

“Let’s go home.”

She unbuttoned his coat. “Let me see the ribbon.” She touched it with her fingertips. “They know how to make them impressive. Joe, I hope you’re proud.”

“This is no time to talk about it. Come on.”

In the cab they kissed and held each other. She had put on a little weight. It was the starchy diet, she told him, and he would see many people who had been affected by it. He had put on another five pounds. He had put on ten pounds in training, all muscle, and he was at the highest weight of his life.