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The heap of pole beans on Harriet Mayes’s countertop filled the kitchen with the scent of spring grass. Adele breathed deeply, tried to settle her nerves. It was just a canning lesson. She had done far more difficult things than canning beans.

Harriet’s blue enamel stovetop gleamed. The Ectors’ cook had taken a job at a gunpowder factory outside Pryor.

For the first time in her life, Adele found herself responsible for her own kitchen.

She cooked the same three meals in rotation and did her best to tidy up afterward, but her stovetop would never look like Harriet’s.

Why was a garage so much easier to keep clean than a kitchen?

“First we’ll wash, trim, and cut these,” Harriet said.

“I like mine two knuckles long.” She pressed her thumb to the second knuckle of her index finger, as if Adele might not understand.

Adele took another breath and strove for patience.

Back in their school days, Harriet had struggled with the simplest subjects.

She’d dropped out before graduation to get married.

All she was good for, Adele had thought at the time.

Harriet—like a number of women Adele had previously dismissed—had proven her wrong.

Adele and Helen had driven all over the county urging women to collect scrap metal, to knit socks, to roll bandages. They organized marketing schedules so that women could take turns standing in lines and buying for each other. They collected dry goods for needier families and war widows.

Adele had been so busy knocking on other women’s doors that she was surprised one evening to find Harriet Mayes standing on her own doorstep.

Harriet was out preaching the virtues of growing a victory garden.

Adele recalled weeding her mother’s garden beds, picking the slugs off the squash, carting bucketloads of water from the well during dry spells.

Even tending her little herb patch, blessedly no longer needed, had been a chore done out of necessity. She politely declined.

But Harriet had persisted, and now Adele had three rows of beans, three rows of squash, plus tomatoes, corn, and potatoes. “No point in growing all of that if you don’t can it,” admonished Harriet when Adele invited her over to show off her weed-free furrows.

So Adele stood in Harriet’s pristine kitchen, slicing beans and listening to Harriet’s plans to spread the canning gospel further.

“Plenty of ladies can hot-water can, but pressure canning is another thing entirely,” said Harriet.

“With beans, you have to use pressure or you’ll give someone botulism.

You should buy a good pressure canner. Then teach someone else and lend it out, and then they can teach someone else and lend it out again.

Meanwhile, I’ll do the same with mine. No sense in everybody buying their own. ”

Adele appreciated Harriet’s tact in not mentioning that while the two of them could afford pressure canners—Adele planned to buy two if she could find them—many others could not.

She also appreciated Harriet not mentioning that Adele had sliced only half as many beans as she had. The doorbell rang, and Harriet excused herself. Adele chopped faster, hoping to catch up before she returned.

Her hands stopped when a boy’s voice piped, “Western Union!” Telegrams were a dicey business these days. Adele set the knife on the counter and moved toward the parlor. “No, ma’am, you keep that,” said the boy.

Adele rushed to the front door. It hung wide open, daylight framing Harriet, who stood rigid, a dime in one hand and a telegram in the other. Unopened. Four black stars on the outside.

Even Harriet could do the math. Two sons overseas plus one four-star telegram meant one more stone in the graveyard, one less chair at the table. The only unsolved variable was which son wouldn’t be coming home.

Adele brushed past Harriet and ran after the telegram boy, shouting.

She wasn’t nearly as fast as she used to be, and he was on a bicycle, but at last he heard her and turned back.

Adele pushed a quarter at him. “Go to Merchant’s Bank and tell Paul Mayes to come home. Tell him right away. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Back at the house, Harriet still stood in the doorway, staring at the unopened telegram in her hand. She blinked at Adele and said, “Well, we should get back to it.”

“Harriet, no.”

“Those beans aren’t going to can themselves. And they’re cut now—they’ll just go bad if we don’t do something with them.”

Adele led Harriet to a chair in the parlor and gently lowered her into it. She took the dime and the telegram and set them on the credenza. “Where does Paul keep the whiskey?”

“Right under there.” Harriet pointed to the credenza cabinet.

“I’ll be right back,” said Adele. In the kitchen, she poured the dregs of the coffee from the percolator into a cup. It was tepid, but she doubted Harriet would care. She sloshed in a good dose of whiskey and then delivered it to Harriet. “Drink this.”

“Oh, I don’t need anything.”

Harriet rose. Adele put a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back down. “I won’t do any more canning until you get this all down.” Paul would arrive soon. He would make Harriet see sense.

Harriet drained the cup, gave a polite cough, and blinked again at Adele, who wondered about supplying her with a second dose. “I sent the telegram boy to get Paul.”

Harriet ignored this. She stood, swaying slightly. “The important thing to know about pressure canning is that you have to keep the pressure steady at ten pounds.”

“I’ll be sure to do that. Paul will be here soon, though. Once he gets here, I’ll take all the beans home with me and get someone else to teach me.”

Harriet snorted. “Who? Bess Cramer?” She leaned toward Adele and whispered, “I heard she reuses her lids.”

Adele had no idea what to say to this.

“I won’t have these beans go to waste.” Harriet stalked back to the kitchen, and Adele trailed behind her, thinking that surely the telegram boy must have reached the bank by now.

Surely Paul must be on his way home. She’d go along with this canning business until he got here and then leave the two of them to their grief.

They finished the chopping and still no Paul.

Harriet sterilized the jars and lids and rings, and still no Paul.

They filled the jars, leaving, per Harriet’s instructions, “just a finger width of headspace” at the top, set them in the canner, and hovered over the gauge, making sure the pressure stayed steady at ten pounds.

They’d finished three batches by the time Paul Mayes finally walked in. He went straight to Harriet and put his arms around her. “Where is it?” he asked Adele.

“On the credenza. She hasn’t opened it yet.” She wanted to apologize for the sparkling countertop, the jars of olive drab beans in neat ranks atop it.

“I had a war bonds meeting down in Edmond,” said Paul over Harriet’s shoulder. “They told me as soon as I got back to the bank. Thank you for staying with her.” Then he spoke into Harriet’s ear. “Honey, let’s go sit down. Let’s read it together.”

“I don’t have time to sit down. There’s too much to do,” insisted Harriet. Her breath must have still carried a hint of whiskey, because Paul looked a question at Adele.

“I gave her a little something. It didn’t take.”

“We can read it after I finish those socks,” said Harriet. “I promised that girl Helen I’d get her another pair by tomorrow.”

“I’ll take them,” said Adele. She was desperate to escape the wave of heartache about to crash down on Harriet and Paul. To run as far from it as she could.

“You can’t knit,” scoffed Harriet.

“Helen will finish them. Paul, do you know where they are?”

“The basket by the wing chair.”

Adele kept her steps deliberate as she approached the basket, hiding her hurry to leave. “I’ll bring a casserole by tomorrow.” She cringed at the insufficiency of this offer. “I’m so sorry.”

She took the knitting basket directly to the Cramer house and was met at the door by a panicked Bess. “Have you seen Helen?”

“No, I was just bringing her—”

“She left a note. She’s run off to San Diego. But she’s never been farther than Dallas, and I just can’t imagine ... When I saw you drive up, I thought she might have run to you instead.”

Adele was flattered. Helen struck her as thoroughly self-sufficient.

She possessed a natural authority that made even older women sit up and listen.

She quickly found the simplest way to cut through any organizational complexity.

To Helen, nothing was impossible—she seemed incapable of hearing the word no.

A word the Cramers had deployed repeatedly when it came to Frank Bridlemile. Who, Helen had told Adele just last week, had finished basic training and had been sent to San Diego, where he was preparing to ship out to the Pacific.

She managed to say something soothing to Bess, but Adele wasn’t worried about Helen.

And now she was considerably less worried about George.

All those nights George went driving off with Frank, she’d feared her daughter might make a life-changing mistake.

What if she got pregnant. Got married. Ended up stuck in Enid, unable to fly.

Adele had been too cowardly to say these things outright to her daughter.

Her daughter who, in every letter home, asked whether Adele had news of any Enid boys. Adele knew exactly which Enid boy George meant. She filled her own letters with news about Helen instead.

But, she decided, as she drove back home to Charles, she wouldn’t write George with this particular Helen-related news item. Let Helen share it herself. Adele intended to keep well out of the mess these young people were determined to make.