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What the hell . . .

“He . . . uh . . . told me you were in the family way.”

“I was. The way that happened was that Bruce asked me if it was all right if he brought you along with him to the Kappa Delta Sigma New Year’s Eve party. I was surprised, mostly because Jimmy Cronley made no secret of the fact that he thought sororities and their social events were bullshit.

“I also was excited. I told him sure. And I gussied myself up real nice. New dress, new shoes, hours in the beauty parlor, and plenty of Chanel No. 5 behind my ears and between my boobs. Tonight was the night I would snare Jimmy Cronley in my web.”

Jesus Christ!

“So, the two of you show up. Bruce heads right for me. You head right for Candice Howard.”

“Why not? You were Bruce’s girl.”

“That’s what I mean about you being stupid. Anyway, an hour later, during which you finally said something to me . . . You remember what you said?”

“No.”

“‘Be gentle with Bonehead, Ginger’ is what you said. ‘He’s not experienced with sorority girls like you.’”

“Ginger, the reason I never made a pass at you was because Bruce was nuts about you.”

“And that’s precisely what I mean about you being stupid. That wasn’t a two-way street, and you should have seen that. Anyway, about an hour later all the girls were whispering to each other that the prize for first score of the evening went to Candice Howard. She had Jimmy Cronley upstairs, where he was screwing her brains out.

“I figured, what the hell, and took Bruce upstairs. He got my pearl of great price. And in the process, lucky me, I got knocked up. He did the gentlemanly thing, of course. And in June we graduated, and then Bruce—after following you into the cavalry instead of the engineers, which he really wanted—and his pregnant wife wound up at Fort Knox with you. Where you used to visit us in that ugly apartment and talk about you being godfather to the baby. And then Bruce came home one night and said that you were gone, that you were now in the Counterintelligence Corps, whatever the hell that was.”

Cronley shrugged. “They needed German-speaking officers in the CIC in Germany,” he said.

“Anyway, at that time I decided my life had been decided. It was my destiny to be an Army wife. Our baby would be an Army brat. Bruce was a genuine good guy, smart, and he’d probably get to be a colonel, maybe even a general. It would be a pretty good life, and I was just going to have to forget my schoolgirl crush on Jimmy Cronley. He was out of our life forever.”

“And then I showed up in Fritzlar?” Cronley asked, softly.

“And then Captain Cronley showed up in Fritzlar. Flying a mysterious secret airplane across the East German border to rescue a Russian woman and her children. And with enough clout to get Bruce out of the Constabulary and into the DCI.

“I didn’t want to leave Fritzlar. I didn’t want to be around you. Women about to have a baby shouldn’t be thinking about a man who is not the father of that baby.”

“Ginger—”

“Shut up, Jimmy, let me finish. So off we go to Munich, and the Compound, because I can’t think of any way not to go. And I have the baby. And we’re back to you being the godfather. And right after you gave us thirty minutes of your valuable time to show up for the christening, you were off again, this time to Nuremberg.

“That really decided it for me. I was going to be a good mother and a good wife. And you were out of my life. Period. End of story.

“And then the chaplain comes to call. ‘There has been an accident. Your husband was cleaning a pistol and it went off.’

“And you showed up to offer your condolences. And I was thinking that if you weren’t so stupid, you’d have seen how I felt about you, that if you hadn’t taken Candice Howard upstairs at the Kappa Delta Sigma house and screwed her brains out, maybe I would have become Mrs. Cronley instead of the Widow Moriarty.

“So I told you get the hell out of my house.

“And when they handed me the flag after we lowered Bruce’s casket into the ground, and I saw your mother and father, I lost it and gave her hell, too, just because she was your mother.”

She paused, cleared her throat, then went on. “I told you I came to my senses and went to your mother and apologized. And that she said maybe I should come down here. So I came. As much to get away from my mother, and her parade of nice, young, unmarried men, as anything else. But also to apologize.”

“No apology is necessary. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

Ginger ignored him and went on.

“And on the Dorotea, on the way down, I half decided to take a chance and tell you the reasons behind me being Ginger the Bitch to you.”

“Half decided? You just did.”