Page 46

I handed it over to him, and with a trembling hand he accepted it.

For a long moment he didn’t look. Finally, he lowered his gaze, and through thick glasses he studied the picture.

His hands shook a little as he traced a bent finger over Jenna’s face.

He’d been transported back to another place long ago.

“Do you remember them?” I asked gently.

“Yeah.” His voice, thick with emotion, sounded like rough gravel. He cleared his throat. “I met Jenna at the USO dances. She was a peach. And I was half in love with her after that first dance we shared.”

When I headed out here today, I’d truly believed I was on a fool’s errand. I’d never expected him to remember. But I’d underestimated Sara as well.

“You said you met her at a USO dance?”

“Yeah. A local church sponsored it the first and third Fridays of the month. She was one of the local girls who came to dance with us guys and serve us cookies and punch. Jenna and me, we danced to Glenn Miller’s “Old Black Magic.” I must have stepped on her feet a dozen times, but she didn’t seem to mind none.

” He pointed at the picture. “The man on the right is Walter. The man on the left is me.”

“You?” I studied the picture and then him. Nearly seventy years had erased most of the resemblances. The only remaining likeness lingered in his eyes. Mr. Lawrence’s eyes were the same as those of the man in the picture.

“Walter and I took the train up from Quantico a couple of times to Alexandria for USO dances. We were both infantry. We both knew we were headed to the Pacific and decided the few weeks we had left stateside we’d have a little fun.

At the first USO dance, we met Jenna.” He traced her face with his finger.

“I got the first dance, but then Walter cut in. He’d been watching us dance.

I think he also loved her from the first time he laid eyes on her.

Once he had her in his arms, I never had a chance with her. ”

He closed his eyes and again silence slipped around him, cocooning him from the present-day world. Did he hear the big band music playing from that long-ago USO party? Did he smell the scent of cinnamon lingering in Jenna’s hair or feel the scratch of his uniform against his skin?

I shifted. “She worked for the Union Street Bakery, and I hear she was from western Virginia.”

He cocked his head, and I knew he was riffling through old memories to find the answer. Such a small nugget of information. It would be so easy for it to get lost in time and a failing memory. “Winchester.”

“Winchester?”

“She talked to me about her hometown when we danced, but I didn’t pay much attention to what she’d said.

She felt good in my arms, and I liked holding her.

That’s all I noticed. Later, I’d think back on the dance and scrounge whatever details I could.

” A smile twitched the edge of his lips, and I had a very brief glimpse into the man he’d been.

“Mr. Lawrence, you were a player, a man about town,” I said.

His grin widened. “I was one of the best. I treated the ladies right, and they treated me good.”

“Was Walter a ladies’ man?”

He chuckled. “No. He was a regular joe. Like I said, it took him all night to get the courage to dance with Jenna. But when he did, she had him hook, line, and sinker. He never stopped talking about her. That’s how I remember so much about her. He spent the next couple of weeks talking about her.”

“When did you meet?”

“First dance was in January 1944. Cold as hell and snowy. Fact, the weather was so bad a lot of the girls didn’t come to the dance.”

“Jenna dated Walter after the dance?” I knew Jenna was dating someone about that time. She gave birth eleven months later, in December.

“They were like two peas in a pod. Every second he wasn’t drilling he was with her. After a couple of weeks, he talked about marrying her.”

“They never did marry, did they?”

“Was planning to. But we got shipped out faster than we thought. He couldn’t get up to Alexandria for a proper goodbye but had to call her on the phone. He kept telling her he loved her and he’d be back for her and marry her proper in a church.”

“He wrote to Jenna often.”

“He was always writing that gal. So in love it was enough to curdle your stomach. I kidded him about it a lot. But he didn’t care. No. He was going to write his girl.”

“Did she write him back?”

“She surely did. As faithful as he was. When the war turned rough for us, her letters kept him going. Hell, they kept me going. See, he’d read them out loud.” Another smile appeared. “Her letters smelled like cinnamon. Like you.”

“Can’t get away from it when you work in a bakery.”

“It’s nice. Wholesome.”

He dropped his gaze to the picture, and again I sensed I’d lost him. He closed his eyes, and I wasn’t sure if he’d nodded off or was giving himself over to the memories. Finally, he sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. Stared at me as if I’d intruded into a world where I didn’t belong.

“You were on the invasion team at Saipan.”

He cleared his throat. “We were. We knew it was going to be a meat grinder. We weren’t the first to get off the boats, but close to it.

Fighting got bad. Real bad. But we made it that first day.

And then as we moved inland, the fighting got worse.

I lost Walter in the chaos. When the fighting settled, I went looking for him.

Found him shot up bad. A miracle he was alive. ”

Joey didn’t supply the details of Walter’s injuries, but I’d remembered the autopsy report.

“Almost sorry he wasn’t killed right off. Would have been kinder. Death took a while, but he never regained consciousness.”

I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to find him so badly mutilated. “I’m sorry.”

Tears welled in the old man’s eyes, and he didn’t seem to notice or care that they streamed over his face. I suppose at his age, seeing all he’d seen, tears didn’t matter.

“What happened to you after he was injured?”

“I kept on going. Kept on fighting. I wanted to go visit him and sit at his bedside, but I couldn’t. And when he died, I wanted to give up. Walter was like a brother to me. But there were other kids, marines, who needed me. And I kept fighting.”

His jaw stiffened as he raised it a fraction. “The worst days of my life. There were so many other guys who died like Walter. So many of them didn’t deserve to be blown to bits or torn in two by mortars. Every time I lost one, it felt like Walter all over again.”

“I’m so sorry, Gunny.”

He shrugged. “A job had to be done.”

“Were you injured?”

“Shot in the arm.”

“Did they pull you out of the fighting?”

“Hell no. They tried but I wouldn’t let them. My buddies had died on that ground, and I wasn’t going to pussy out and go home. Stayed until the final surrender.” No missing the deep pride simmering below the words.

“Did you ever hear from Jenna?”

“I wrote to her first chance I could. I wanted her to have Walter’s dog tags.

I sent those along. The marines held his personal belongings for family.

There’d have been lots of red tape getting his property sent to a woman not his kin or wife, but I knew a guy who knew a guy.

We got it put on the forms she was his wife, so his body was shipped back to Alexandria.

She wrote me back. Thanked me for sending him home.

She said she’d buried him proper in the Alexandria Cemetery. ”

“When was that?”

“I got her letter in late December.”

She’d have been ready to deliver by then. Silent, I let him talk.

He shook his head. “I went back to Alexandria after the war to find her. I wanted to return the letters she’d written to Walter.

I went by the bakery, but they wouldn’t tell me about her.

Said she was gone. It took me a good two days to find Walter’s spot at the cemetery.

When I was leaving, I saw another new headstone. It was hers. I bawled like a baby.”

Sadness burned sharp in his gaze as if this had happened to him yesterday and not nearly seventy years ago. “What happened to her? No one would tell me.”

“She died on December 25, 1944, giving birth.”

He blinked and shook his head as if the news struck like a fresh blow. He stared at the cookie, looking at it as if he imagined Jenna had given it to him. “There was a time when I feared dying. Figured it was the worst thing. But it’s not the worst thing.”

He’d been a warrior, a man who loved women, and now here he sat alone in an old folks’ home with a controlling receptionist telling him he couldn’t eat cookies.

I’d never feared death or worried about it. That might have been because I was young. Might have been because deep in my soul I didn’t think I had much to lose. Terry had left me, and I didn’t think I mattered.

But now with the kid on the way, I had an anchor in this world. For my child, I’d move mountains. I feared losing her more than dying.

“What happened to Walter’s kid?” Joey asked.

“I don’t know. The newspaper said he’d been sick when he was born. But I never found a grave near Jenna’s.”

“She was from Winchester. Her kin owned an apple farm. I remember she told Walter she’d moved to Alexandria because the apple crop had gone bad that year ... killed by a frost, and she needed to make money. She and her father also got into a fight, but she never said over what.”

“An apple farm in Winchester. Last name Davis. That’ll narrow the search.”

“Why are you looking into this? She isn’t your kin.”

I struggled to put into words what I didn’t really understand myself. “Maybe I feel for a woman alone with a baby on the way. She had to have been scared.”

He straightened his shoulders. “Wheel me back to my room.”

“What?”

“Wheel me back. I got something to give you.”

I glanced around for the nurse, and seeing no one who said I couldn’t, I moved behind his chair. “The old lady going to give us a hard time?”