The memory brought tears to her eyes once again, a salty concoction of pride and fear, but she wiped them away as soon as they formed, leaving only their tannic burn behind. She had to stay strong. For John. For Dottie. For her parents. For all of them.

She wished she had someone who could be strong for her.

Margaret pulled her identification card from her bag and strung it around her neck before stepping off the bus, avoiding puddles from an overnight rain. The fumes from the exhaust and the fishy stench of the East River made for a nauseating combination, but seeing Gladys Sievers’s bright red hat near the fence brought a smile to her face.

“There you are, doll,” Gladys shouted through a haze of cigarette smoke. She smoked the unfiltered kind, preferring the gravelly, husky contour it gave to her voice. “Maybe if I sound more like a man, I’ll be treated as well as one,” she’d say with some sarcasm.

She dropped the butt onto the sidewalk and ground it down with her stiletto heel.

Entirely unsuitable footwear for this weather and this place—they had to walk over steel grates to get to their workroom—but she insisted it was all part of the picture she liked to paint about rights for women. “Men know deep down they couldn’t take two steps in these babies, though I’d like to see them try. Ha! That would show them what we’re made of.”

Every breath Gladys took was tinged with the burden of a father who’d left and a mother who had quite literally worked herself to death before the preponderance of unions and workers’ rights. So she never missed an opportunity to advance the causes that combated such injustices, in all ways large and small.

She didn’t have any more money than the rest of them, but Gladys was a whiz at embellishing old pieces and making them look snazzy. As Margaret approached, she could see that today’s heels were red with gold embroidery. She recognized the shoes as one of Gladys’s thrift-store purchases. One had a coffee stain on the toe, if she remembered correctly. But the way Gladys had used gold thread to create a flower pattern on them had made them look brand-new.

“Where’s your sidekick, sick again? Dare we hope she’s loosened up at last and given herself over to a night of debauchery?” Her thick gardenia perfume nearly masked the cigarette smell and it put a tickle in Margaret’s nose.

Margaret checked her wristwatch, relieved that she’d be able to clock in on time. She smiled at her friend. There were some things the war could never change. Gladys would always be a force unto herself, her words and ideas and sarcasms a perfect storm of originality that had earned her the nickname of Hurricane, at least between Margaret and Dottie.