“Well,” huffed Gladys. “That’s a bubble burst if I ever heard one. Thanks a lot, Bing.”

Dottie tugged at one of her stitches. “He didn’t write it. He just sings what’s given to him.”

“And makes a lot of dough doing it, to be sure. Lure me with touching sentiments and then—pow!—remind me of how miserable it will be this Christmas as we’re scattered around the globe.”

Margaret shrugged. “That just means that next year, we’ll look back on this time and be even more grateful when our families are together again.”

Gladys rolled her eyes. “Cut the Pollyanna act. Even if John comes home, how many people do you know whose tables will be forever empty?”

The doorbell rang and Margaret never had a chance to answer.

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Tom was jolted from a deep sleep when John snuck up behind him and started blowing kissing sounds in his ear. The morning sun sent bright streaks of light through their attic bedroom and he shielded his eyes from its brightness.

“Get off me, man,” he said. Though it was all in fun. The brotherhood of John, William, and Tom grew every day. And along with it, the teasing.

Tom relished it.

He was the latest target. When William’s pen pal, Margaret, had sent her picture a few weeks ago, Tom felt something lurch inside him in a way he’d never felt before. She had long blond hair that appeared white in the photograph. Her eyes, too, were light—probably blue in person like her brother’s—and her cosmetics perfectly enhanced her already beautiful features. Though she didn’t seem like she’d need them. She was that girl-next-door type that populated his part of rural Virginia, but she had a spark in her eyes that said this was no farm girl.

And that smile. He would love to be the reason a girl smiled like that someday.

William had shared all of her letters with Tom, and through them, he’d come to know this girl whose spirit and heart displayed themselves in black ink on thin paper. He was delighted to discover that she looked as friendly as she sounded in her correspondences.

Tom still wrote the letters back to her, as William’s cast remained in place for the time being. So although they were William’s dictations, Tom felt an affinity for Margaret Beck as well, his soul pouring its way to the page through the ink almost as if it were all his own. And indeed, he’d embellished here and there with a word she might enjoy learning or a turn of phrase he thought might delight her.

He’d also continued to sketch flowers at the end.