She suspected it was the same all over the country. The army had delivered a flag, and her mother had promptly hung it in the window. Red border, white background, one gold star.

It announced to passersby that they had lost someone. Marked their house as one well-acquainted with lamentation.

They wished they had more details than simply a telegram saying that John had died in a parachuting accident. And that his body would remain in England. Had he suffered? Had it been quick? Had anyone else been hurt?

It was an entirely new wound, a sense of emptiness that their family would never be complete again. Not only with him missing at their table but from his home shores altogether.

Dottie had spent the nights since then at the Becks’ house, sharing a bed with Margaret, more tears shed than words spoken. The girls were careful to cover her up with baggy sweaters and blankets so that her growing belly did not show. It was thankfully still early enough that such precautions were successful and the weather was cold enough to make the costume believable.

They’d mustered the energy to make it to the Navy Yard, silently losing themselves in the monotony of engraving, grateful for the solace it provided.

And it was not as if there was a choice. Since she hadn’t been a spouse, Dottie did not qualify for any bereavement leave.

In fact, if her condition was discovered, she’d be fired.

She needed to make all the money she could while she was able.

When William’s letter arrived four days after the telegram’s awful news, Margaret tore it open, gouging her thumb with a deep paper cut. Little droplets of blood stained the white envelope. She pressed her hand into a fist and began to read.

William offered the only answers they’d received, and it rescued Margaret through the dreary week.

My dearest Margaret, he wrote.

I don’t know when this will find its way to you, but I am writing it only hours after we have lost our beloved John and I’m hurrying to have it be carried out on the next helicopter leaving Chilton Foliat. I know those army telegrams don’t tell the families what their hearts most want to know, and I would hope that should the jaws of death ever take my life that someone would do the same for my parents and sisters.

And so, I am sending this out to you at the earliest opportunity.

William wrote at length about how much John had come to mean to both him and Tom ever since they’d trained together in Georgia. Only a third of the men who’d enlisted as paratroopers actually made it past boot camp into the Airborne in North Carolina, so they trusted each other’s abilities, having proven themselves time and time again.