The only black eye on the new assignment is the awful foreman. He missed the cut-off age for joining the military by a mere four months and he takes out his anger on the employees in his charge. Acting like the general he imagined himself to be. (He sounds a bit like your precious Sobel.) I never understood a man’s impulse to be “in the action”—but now that I am enjoying my work so thoroughly, I see the appeal.

Not that I’m comparing it to what you’re doing. Not in the slightest. But for a woman—this woman, at least—it has been the height of excitement.

She wrote a few more lines telling him about Joanna cutting her first tooth and her worry over her father slowing down. Previously, she’d tried to keep things like that to a minimum—William had far greater things to worry about. But him sharing his vulnerability felt like invitation to share hers.

When she was satisfied, she signed it,

Love, Margaret

She put the end of the pen in her mount and thought for a moment.

P.S., she started. Please tell Tom how very much I am enjoying the flowers that he “adumbrates.” (How’s that for a new word?) Assuming you don’t have a dictionary at your disposal, it means “to sketch an outline of something.” If you’re not careful, my friend, I may even begin to anticipate those drawings even more than I do your letters. Tell him to keep them coming.

Margaret smiled as she set her pen down. William’s survival was the cherry on top on a run of things that had been looking upward. The Sock ’Em Club had knit nearly two hundred pairs to date, and her new position in the Navy Yard reinforced how much she loved creating something with her hands. But these accomplishments were small in comparison to Dottie’s new roles of wife and mother. And if Gladys indeed married Oliver, she’d be off having adventures in foreign lands.

It was all the inspiration she needed to imagine a future of her own. And even if she didn’t yet know what they were, she was going to save for them. She gave half her earnings to help her parents, but as she told William, she kept the other half for herself.

She put on her favorite green dress with its lacy V-neck collar, feeling like mailing this letter was an occasion and ran down the stairs before the postman arrived.

*  *  *

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” Gladys responded when Margaret shared William’s letter with her friends.