“I respect you for asking, Tom,” he said. “And if it was my permission to give, you would have it. But I’ve learned one thing being surrounded by only women in the past two years. They have minds of their own. Better ones than mine. So I’ll leave that answer to Margaret.”

Joanna slapped her hand into applesauce as Dottie squealed, “I’m calling Gladys!”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

September 1945

Gladys picked up the phone and smiled. Then she buttoned up, responding to the person on the other end in a very businesslike way. “Sure. We can do that. No problem. Send him over.”

Margaret wrapped twine around the box that held the scant personal items that Gladys had decorated her office with. Margaret, on the other hand, was determined to make the place feel homey for as long as the position was hers.

It was a task that distracted her from thinking about how much she would miss Gladys when she and Oliver left for London next week.

“Well, I told you it would happen,” Gladys said matter-of-factly.

“What?” asked Margaret.

“The men are coming home and they’re going to requisition our office and staff for some of the interviews.”

Margaret sighed. “We were expecting that.”

“Starting today.”

“Today? But they haven’t given us any instructions on it yet.”

Gladys looked at her watch. “Look. Do me a favor. That was a call saying that our first soldier is coming in at three o’clock. I need to go to the main administration building and turn in my badge. Can you be on hand to give him the standard application until they tell us what else they want to do?”

Margaret shrugged. “Sure. That’s easy enough. But while you’re over at admin, please tell them that we need a little more notice in the future if they want this to be smooth.”

“Will do. Oh—look at the time. Nearly three now. See you in a bit, doll.”

Gladys hurried out, and Margaret slid over to the large leather seat that was to be hers starting tomorrow. She’d placed on it her finished pillow and admired the color it brought to the space. Twenty-seven varieties of flowers found in western Europe as drawn for her by Tom Powell. She’d run out of room to stitch more, so she’d started a second one and hoped that he would discover many more to send to her.

She opened the closet where she kept her personal items and pulled out a canvas bag that contained the items she wanted to be surrounded with every day. Her desk had been in an open room across the hall from Gladys’s office, but now this room would be hers. With enough wall space to put her touch on it.