“It’s not every man who will sport a suffragette sash at a commemoration event or keep his head together while serving up soup in the Bowery line. Or talk me into joining him at a damn feline fashion show and then actually having fun together. That’s not a man you easily say goodbye to.”

Margaret reached out and grasped Gladys’s hand. “Of course you wouldn’t want to let him go. And just think of the adventures you’ll have as his wife. You’ll get to see all those places, Gladys. You’ll live in them for months on end. Your big heart that wants to bring justice to an unjust world will actually go out into that world and discover whole new purposes for you. Side by side with the man you love.”

It almost made her weepy as well, thinking about how nice it would be to have someone to partner through life with like that. Could it be the man she’d been writing to all these months? She had never anticipated anything more than his letters, never felt as liberated as she did when her words flowed back on the paper. Even though she couldn’t precisely picture him, as he still had never revealed which one he was in the photograph. She kept it pinned to the wall above her bedpost and said good night to them all before she closed her eyes. John, resting in peace. William and Tom, whichever they each were. At first, she’d imagined that William was the one with the cropped hair, the one who looked as if he could be any age. There was a teddy-bear comfort to him. But nothing that elicited a reaction any stronger than pleasantness.

Not the stirring of a heart.

The other one—the taller man—was more conventionally handsome. The type girls would swoon over during cinema outings. When she pictured this one being her pen pal, her pulse quickened like a silver screen embrace come to life.

One man’s words overwhelmed her with their beauty. The other man’s drawings made her dream of other places.

But only one in the photograph made her feel the things she’d read about in romance novels.

She knew enough from observing her parents’ marriage and those of all the older couples of her acquaintance that the endurance of love did not lie merely in the physical attraction but in the sustainability of the friendship. In the end, which was which mattered little.

Although, as Gladys had once strong-armed her into revealing, she would choose the tall one with the dark hair if pressed.

She shook those thoughts from her head. Pondering this was a poor use of her time. William, Tom. They were thousands of miles away. Life was happening right now. Right here in Brooklyn.

Talking about Gladys’s engagement.