Page 57

The principal told Ruth that he’d understand if she decided not to return to school.

Her grades were solid. She could cross the graduation stage and accept her diploma.

Her friends told her they’d understand if she didn’t join them for their trip to Dallas.

Patrick told her he’d understand if she skipped prom.

They all wanted nothing to do with her. As if some Rutledge taint might rub off on all of them.

She went to class. In the hallways, other students scurried past her as if she weren’t there.

She went to prom. In the car after the dance, she took Patrick’s hand and put it on her breast. He yanked it back. “We shouldn’t.”

“If not now, when?” she asked, placing her hand on his thigh. He flinched from her touch and mumbled something about curfew. About waiting. “Never mind,” said Ruth. “Just take me home.”

She went to Dallas and forced herself to trill over dresses and pedal pushers and shoes. To appear fascinated by her friends’ accounts of their own post-prom adventures.

Patrick never called her again. Her friends called occasionally, but Ruth declined their invitations. She was tired of them all. She was tired of everything.

She lazed around the house, ignoring her grandmother’s disapproving glare. She’d mope if she wanted to.

Her father called her regularly. He came by the house to see her.

He had an apartment in Oklahoma City, “convenient to the airport,” he said, as if that were the only reason.

No one mentioned divorce, and her parents no longer seemed angry with each other.

As if Ivy’s disappearance had freed them from caring about their marriage.

Ruth wondered if she were to disappear, too, whether they’d talk at all.

She took the job at Bridlemile Properties so that she could stop taking an allowance from her mother. Ivy, wherever she was, wasn’t collecting an allowance. She was living on her own, independently, without help from anyone. Well, Ruth was perfectly capable of doing the same.

She was perfectly capable of making coffee, and filing, and answering phones.

The next step up, if she wanted that, was the steno pool.

She observed the ranks of typists, seated at their identical desks, wearing nearly identical skirts and blouses, deploying their identical bottles of whiteout and sheets of carbon paper.

She thought of Ivy, out in the world having all kinds of adventures.

She felt poky, sitting in Enid, still living in her mother’s house, working at her mother’s boyfriend’s company, still tethered to her childhood.

Then one morning, outside the five-and-dime, a red, white, and blue flyer caught her eye.

The Army wanted nurses and would pay for their training.

Nursing sounded much more exciting than filing and fetching coffee.

The flyer didn’t mention Vietnam, but Ruth watched the nightly news. She knew where the Army needed nurses.

“And would you be willing to go overseas?” asked the woman who looked over her application.

Overseas was the whole point. She slept in her childhood bed.

She dithered away her days filing and fetching at Uncle Frank’s office.

Meanwhile, Ivy was out in the world, wings spread, soaring, having adventures Ruth couldn’t even imagine.

Never once looking back, never once missing them, missing her.

Ivy wouldn’t find any aspect of Ruth’s life surprising.

Ruth’s life was unfolding exactly as Ivy would have predicted, minus, perhaps, an engagement ring and wedding plans.

“Would you be willing to go to Vietnam?” asked the woman, her tone indicating that the answer was usually no.

“Yes,” said Ruth. “Yes, I would really like to go to Vietnam.” Because Ivy would certainly never imagine her doing that. Not even in peacetime.

The woman raised her eyebrows.

“Really,” said Ruth.

“We’ll let you know when your application has been approved. Shouldn’t take long.”

“A scholarship?” said her mother when Ruth explained that she didn’t have to pay tuition. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so proud of you.”

Ruth had never been an exceptional student, so she was surprised to find herself near the top of her class in nursing school.

The bio and anatomy material just ... stuck.

When they trained with actual patients, the teaching nurse complimented her bedside manner.

Ruth loved the sensation of placing her hands on another human body, assessing its well-being and providing comfort.

What a powerful feeling—probably Ivy had always had it—to know you were good at something, to feel so confident in your abilities.

She was eager to get to Vietnam, to charge into a new adventure with her newfound confidence.

But first, she wanted an adventure closer to home.

She wasn’t going to travel halfway around the world with her virginity still intact.

She let her classmates know she was interested in dating, and then accepted every offer that came her way.

If a man didn’t seem right for her purposes—not attractive enough, not kind enough, not un-Patrick enough—she declined a second date.

At last, she winnowed the pool to an acceptable candidate.

He was more than willing, once he understood what she had in mind.

She combed her memory for Sandra’s advice from their sleepover days, but came up with only images of Cindy.

Besides, they’d been only fourteen. None of them—not even Sandra—had known a thing.

Naked in his bed, she liked the roughness of his skin against hers.

She’d expected the pain, but she hadn’t expected the undertaking to wrap up so quickly.

Surely there must be more to it. But he levered himself up off her and said, “You can stay if you want.” In the morning they tried again.

The result was the same, except that this time he said, “I’ll drive you home. ”

“Oh, him,” said one of her classmates when Ruth hinted at her experience.

“He doesn’t know anything.” Which suggested that there were men who did know something.

The trick was to figure out who they were.

If she kept hunting, she was bound to find one.

Eventually she did: a dark-haired, serious resident.

Even before he’d gotten her clothes completely off, she knew it would be different.

The way he ran his fingers down her sternum, the way his lips brushed her jawline, made her think of Cindy.

So that’s what all the fuss is about, she thought when it was over .

Even so, when he called for another date, she told him she was too busy studying.

Really, she was busy wondering what had become of Cindy.

Besides, she didn’t want a boyfriend. Men had opinions about women going to Vietnam.

They had opinions about women working, period.

Ruth wasn’t about to let anyone stand in her way.

Not when she was so close to the finish line.

In just a matter of weeks, she’d don her dress uniform and board a flight to Travis AFB. En route to Tan Son Nhut.