Whoosh! The wind blew outside in a tremendous gust that sent a spray of sand across the window. Margaret had always heard people say that wind could sound like a freight train, but until this moment, she’d thought it was an exaggeration.

“Geez Louise,” Gladys exclaimed.

Dottie was the epitome of calm, however, ignoring the fact that her house seemed to be getting battered from the outside. “I am so very happy for you, Gladys,” she said, pulling the conversation back in like the good hostess she was. “But you have not answered one important question—how did you ask him?”

Gladys shrugged. “Simple. I told him he’s going to marry me and take me with him. And he didn’t say no.”

As if the skies were rebelling against her buck to tradition, the lights flickered and the house was plunged into darkness.

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

September 1944

Tom burrowed into a corner under a bridge, letting the darkness of the night engulf him. He pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

Holland was a disaster.

The men had been told that if Operation Market Garden was a success, the war would be over by Christmas. His mouth had tingled with anticipation of a Virginia ham in the center of the table, glistening with maple glaze, decorated with fresh orange slices and dried cloves.

His body ached with the idea that if Margaret would forgive him when he told her about William’s death, she might accept his embrace and he would at last draw her into his arms and never let go.

The terrible defeat they’d suffered stole those hopes from him with such ferocity that he felt as if they were phantom limbs. He’d learned about such things from men in the French hospital. They’d lost arms and legs and though their eyes and their pain testified to their disappearance, the corners of their minds felt them as if they were still present.

They were ghosts.

Ghosts all around. Men, gone. Limbs, gone. Christmas, gone. Victory, gone.

Hopes, gone.

God, maybe he didn’t want to meet Margaret. Or rather, he didn’t want to burden her beautiful, cheery face with the hull of a man he was.

Maybe he would never tell her. Maybe he would continue to write her as William. To escape into the freedom he felt when he wrote pseudonymous words, to conjure the courage to write her things he would not otherwise say. Because Tom Powell…Tom Powell was destined for a career in the military. His education and his family history would catapult him as high as he wanted to go.

If, indeed, that was still where he wanted to go.