“Where did you learn to knit?” he asked.

“Grandmother.” The needles clicked.

“Agnes?”

“You remembered.” She glanced at Ollie, noticing the caramel color of his eyes.

Ollie watched Susan knit, the candlelight creating a silhouette of her slender hands on the wall. “Looks difficult.”

“Only requires time and patience.” Susan wrapped yarn around the needle. “My first project was a scarf when I was a little girl. In my eagerness to give it to Grandfather, it was rather short, barely enough to wrap his neck. It should have stayed in the box or had several inches added. But Grandfather insisted on wearing it clasped together with a pin.” She pulled more yarn. “Better to start early so this sweater will have both sleeves.”

Susan knit a row. “Earlier, you were going to say something about this afternoon.”

“I was going to ask you about your parents.”

An explosion rumbled like thunder. The ball of yarn fell to the floor.

Ollie retrieved the yarn and placed it on Susan’s lap. “Do you mind if I ask what happened?”

Susan turned to Ollie. “When my father came home from the Great War, my parents wasted no time getting married. In fact, the day my father returned home, they summoned the minister, who had taken the day off to go fishing. My father didn’t even take time to change from his uniform, and Mother was still wearing her nursing attire from the hospital.” She pointed to a framed photo on the wall. “Mother served a year as a nurse on the Western Front.”

Ollie stood and looked at the photo of a smiling trio: a nurse, a soldier, and a preacher disguised as a fisherman with feathered hooks strung across his vest like war medals. He took particular notice of the woman holding a bouquet of daisies. “You look like your mom.”

Susan smiled. “My father promised he would marry her the day he came home. Mother wanted to get married sooner, but despite how much my father loved her, he couldn’t bear the thought of potentially making her a widow. Grandfather always told me my father was a true gentleman.”

Ollie returned to his seat.

“They wrote to each other every day,” Susan said. “Grandfather saved the letters in a keepsake box. They’re lovely.” She put down her needles. “I was born less than a year from when my father came home. They—we—had our whole lives ahead of us.” Susan took a deep breath, then exhaled. “Britain had thought the war was over. But when the troops came home, they brought with them an even more deadly threat than guns or mustard gas.”

Ollie swallowed. “Spanish flu?”