Margaret’s heart clenched as if a vise had wrapped itself around her. John had always wanted for her the idyllic love he’d found with his beloved Dottie. And Margaret had told him that it was not a lack of wishing for it but a sense that she would know when it happened. It was not something she could rush just because many of her friends were settling down.

Leave it to him to give her such consideration even as he spent his last breaths.

And one more thing, added William.

Which I will leave to you to tell Dottie or not, as you see fit. But we told John about the baby. If that was wrong of us, please find it in yourself to forgive us. Tom and I looked at each other after John had struggled with the litany of his loved ones. And we nodded, understanding that he deserved to know. “There’s something else,” I said. And I spoke the words quickly, fearing that he had no more than a few seconds left. “Dottie is carrying your child. And I and Tom and your family will all be sure that your son or daughter will be loved and cared for.” At this, Margaret, a sight I wish I could give justice to—he smiled a brilliant smile and it seemed in that moment that no amount pain could overcome his joy. “I’m a father,” he said.

Those were his final words.

Margaret, by the end of this war, I fear that John’s will be only the first of many deaths that we will have to witness, and I will admit that it terrifies me. No man, no matter how tough he proports to be, is prepared for the unnaturalness of a passing that is far too early and far too tragic. But John’s bravery has bolstered me—and Tom too—and I believe that because of him, we will be able to withstand whatever lies ahead. And if I am grateful for one other thing, it is that John escaped the ugliness I know we are about to encounter. Perhaps, in the end, he is the luckier of us.

At the bottom, Tom had drawn an exquisite lily.

*  *  *

The days at the engraving department continued to roll into one another, anesthetized by sadness. Two weeks passed before Dottie moved back in with Gladys. She’d told Margaret that she had trouble breathing in a place whose air and walls and memories were so saturated in grief. Every time she walked by John’s bedroom, her heart clenched at the thought of what might have been. Mr. Beck had barely spoken since the telegram arrived, and Mrs. Beck had become a ghost of herself. Her cooking lacked salt and she sat by the radio out of habit, but without any reaction to its output.