For all of the long, silent ride back to Paris, Jess thought of three things. The U.S. Army soldier saying ain’t nobody going to stop me having her. Dan saying I love you. And her terror at what those words would bring upon one of them.

The bomb, it seemed, had just gone off.

Twenty-nine

Jess was in London longer than she’d expected. The war in Europe finished just as she arrived. Everybody cheered and drank champagne and kissed. Jess didn’t. Instead, she lost the contents of her stomach at the thought that maybe if she and Dan had strung Amelia along just a few more days, then Amelia’s threat would have amounted to nothing. But then she heard that Dan’s division was likely being sent to the Pacific and while it didn’t make her stomach feel any better, it reassured her that she’d done the right thing. Imagine if she’d been responsible for sending Dan’s battalion off to the unknowns of Asia with a new CO who was a stranger to both the men and to decency?

She handed in her accreditation papers in London but it took a month to organize passage for her back to New York. Troops being repatriated had priority.

She received two surprises in London. The first was a letter, forwarded from the Hotel Scribe and obviously opened by Warren Stone. Warren had enclosed a note that read: I couldn’t let you leave without seeing this.

The letter was from Dan. It said:

Jess, I know it’s a cliché that a writer like you will detest but you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Better than the best; you were the miracle.

I keep asking myself—if I’d never gone to your party at the Scribe, would that be better? Then we’d still be the best of friends, and I’d still be able to see you. But I shake my head because half of you isn’t enough. All of you isn’t enough. None of you is unthinkable.

I was out on a raid last night and I thought perhaps I would die and that would be good because then I wouldn’t feel like this but I know you left because of my men and to throw it in your face by dying would be too cowardly. Besides, I know how you’d feel if I died and I can’t do that to you.

Be happy, Jess. I can bear this if I know you’re happy. Otherwise my life has nothing in it at all.

Jess sank to the floor, brought to her knees by Dan’s letter, as Warren Stone had intended her to be. It took her a long, long time to stand up, to splash her face with water, to pour herself a whiskey, and light, then stub out, a cigarette, unsmoked.

Because the other surprise, she knew now, was that she wasn’t going to New York alone. She was taking a child with her, inside her womb. A child whose father was unknown. She and Dan had always been careful but she wasn’t dumb enough not to know just how many rubbers had failed in wartime. And then there was Warren. He hadn’t bothered with a rubber.