2

When Graham Lindell burst through the door of Merritt’s Store in Rosey Corner, Victoria Harper whirled around from stocking the shelves to see what was wrong. He’d lost his hat and his gray hair was poking out in every direction. Chaucer, his mottled tan and gray shepherd, was right on his heels, barking like he was chasing a bear. Out front, Mr. Henderson blasted his horn even though Tori’s mother was right beside his car, ready to pump his gas.

Tori’s little girl, Samantha, let out a wail when Graham rushed past her without so much as a glance.

“What in the world, Graham? Did one of the Redlegs hit a grand slam?” Tori stepped out from behind the counter to pick up Samantha, but she wouldn’t be placated. In all her two years, she’d never had Graham completely ignore her. He was her best buddy.

“Way better than that, Victoria.” He grabbed Samantha out of Tori’s arms and swung her around, changing her tears to giggles in an instant. “It just came over the radio. The Japanese surrendered. The war’s over.”

Tori stared at him while the words sank in. The war was over. Good news for sure, but not soon enough for her and Samantha. For her husband, Sammy. She leaned back against the counter and burst into tears.

Graham stopped in mid-spin, and Samantha stared at her mother and stuck her fingers in her mouth. “Aww, Victoria, I reckon it’s hard for you to feel happy, what with Sammy dying over there in Japan.” He patted her shoulder, awkward in the face of her tears. Chaucer stopped barking and pushed his nose up against her leg.

“I’m happy.” Tori swallowed hard and wiped her face with her apron, but the tears wouldn’t stop. “Happy tears.” She managed a smile, glad nobody else was in the store to see her falling apart. She’d gotten better. She really had. She hadn’t shed tears in front of anybody for months now.

“Of course they are.” Graham gave her shoulder another clumsy pat.

“They are.” Tori took Samantha back from Graham and gave him a little shove toward the door. “Go on with you. I know you’re dying to tell the rest of Rosey Corner.”

Graham’s smile came back. “I done told your daddy. He’s headed down to the church to ring the bell.”

“Everybody will think there’s a fire.”

“Maybe so, but then we’ll tell them the good news.” Graham threw his hands up in the air and Chaucer let out another volley of barks. “Don’t you know your sisters are happy up in their big towns? And where’s that Lorena? We need to tell her.”

Another horn began honking out on the road and then the church bell was tolling. Lorena raced through the door, a smile all the way across her face. She was as tall as Tori now but beanpole skinny. People who didn’t know Lorena had been adopted into the family were always saying how much she looked like Tori. It was their black hair, although Tori’s was straight and Lorena’s exploded in curls. Other than that, they didn’t look much alike. Tori’s eyes were green and Lorena’s brown as buckeyes. Tori knew she wasn’t hard to look at, but even in the midst of the awkwardness of being fourteen, Lorena could make people stop for a second look. She was that striking, especially when she was as happy as she was this moment.

She threw her arms around Tori and Samantha in a hug that had Samantha smiling again. Then Lorena grabbed both of Graham’s hands and pulled him in a circle like a kid playing ring around the rosie. Chaucer danced around them, his tongue spilling out the side of his mouth in a goofy dog grin. Scout, Lorena’s dog, jumped up on the screen door and whined in protest at being left outside with that other dog inside.

More horns started blowing and the church bell kept ringing. Tori could imagine her father’s smile as he pulled the bell rope. He hated the war. Every bit of bad news from the battlefronts had weighed him down. In the spring, he’d caught a cold that lingered, and now here in August he still had a wheezy cough. Aunt Hattie blamed it on the mustard gas in the Great War, the one Daddy fought in before Tori was born and that people claimed would end all wars. They had been wrong about that. Very wrong.

“I wish Kate was here. And Evie. Don’t you, Tori?” Lorena reached back to grab Tori’s hand. “Come on. You have to dance with us. You have to be happy for them.” Her smile lit up the store. “For me. For all of us.”

Tori was glad she’d swallowed down her tears. Their traces might still be on her cheeks and show in her red-rimmed eyes, but she wasn’t weeping now. She was happy for Kate and Evie. Their husbands would come home to them. Maybe Kate would quit her job at the newspaper and come back to work here at the store.

That would suit Tori. She’d rather wave away sweat bees out in the garden picking beans than work at the store. But when Kate moved to Lexington, their mother needed help and Tori needed a job. Some days, though, Tori wanted to be sitting alone on the bank of Graham’s pond watching her cork bob in the water. That wasn’t exactly true. She didn’t want to be alone. She wanted Sammy there beside her.

She pushed away the thought to keep the tears from leaking out again. She could keep smiling, especially with Samantha laughing out loud when Graham bumped against one of the loafer’s chairs against the wall. Making a silly face at the little girl, he plopped down in the chair. Chaucer jumped up to lick him.

“He’s no Poe,” Graham groused, but he didn’t push the dog away. Since Poe, his old hound, had died and he’d taken in the stray shepherd, he said that a lot. So much that they’d all started saying it when something didn’t quite measure up to what they wanted. It’s no Poe.

But this news did measure up. Definitely wonderful. Now Kate and Evie would have the chance to be mothers like her. Tori pulled loose from Lorena to hug Samantha closer.

She might be a widow at nineteen, but she had Samantha. She had her mother and father. She had her sisters. And her brothers-in-law were coming home. For that she could keep her smile bright and not let tears pop out again. At least not until tonight when she was alone in her bed.

When Mama opened the door, Scout slipped past her to add to the craziness. But Mama just laughed and kept laughing even when his long tail knocked some cracker boxes off the shelf. Tori set Samantha down beside Graham to grab the crackers before Scout got them. Scout would eat anything, wrapped or unwrapped.

“It’ll be good to have the store stocked again.” Tori’s mother looked around at the scarcity of cans on the shelves. “Mr. Henderson out there thinks they’ll lift the gasoline rationing right away.”

“It wasn’t gasoline in short supply anyway.” Graham pushed Chaucer out of his lap but didn’t stand up. “The government didn’t want folks wearing out their tires. Not a bother for me. Never had no use for a car. Shoe leather works fine, and if your shoes wear out, you just figure a way to keep on wearing them.” He held his foot up to show the hog rings holding the upper part of his shoe to the soles.

“You should have let Victor resole those for you.” Victoria’s mother shook her head at Graham, but she was smiling. “That’s one reason he started working on shoes. So people wouldn’t have to buy new ones and maybe rob a soldier of boots he needed.”

“He remembered the foot rot in the Great War.”

“Yes, yes he did.” A frown flickered across Mama’s face, but then her smile came back. “Just listen to him ring that bell. You can tell it’s good news, can’t you? No slow, sorrowful tolling.”

“He’s yanking that bell rope hard,” Graham agreed. “Giving it some joy, for a truth.”

As Mama tilted her head toward the sound of the bell, a shadow of concern crossed her face. “Victoria, you better go down there and see about your daddy. Make sure he’s not overdoing it.”

Mama always knew when Tori needed a few minutes alone. Tori reached for Samantha, but she had crawled over into Graham’s lap and was petting Chaucer’s nose. She didn’t want to give up that treasured spot.

“Leave her,” her mother said. “We’ll watch her.”

“Scout and I can go see about Daddy,” Lorena volunteered. She had Scout’s collar to keep him from knocking over anything else.

“No. You need to take Mrs. Jenkins her groceries. You’d better go on now. She might have heard the bell and be worried.”

“Okay. I’ll let her know the war’s over,” Lorena said. “She’ll be happy. Maybe she’ll tell me a story.”

“You’re the only person in Rosey Corner who knows what she’s talking about,” Tori said. Miss Jenkins was hard of hearing and was always thinking people said something different than what they actually said.

“I never know either. We just make it up as we go. As long as she’s smiling, and she’ll be smiling if I take her a few of those cinnamon candies.” Lorena eyed the jar of candies on the counter. “They’re her favorite.”

“Not to mention yours.” Mama’s smile returned as she scooped a few pieces out of the jar into a paper bag. Then she put some in another bag for Tori. “In case all that rope pulling has brought on your father’s cough. These sometimes help him.”

“I won’t be long,” Tori said.

“Take your time,” her mother said.

“No reason to hurry.” Graham settled deeper in the chair with Samantha.

“No hurry,” Samantha echoed his words.

She was talking more and more. Tori had to fight the urge to write every new word down the way she had all Samantha’s firsts to save for Sammy before she got the telegram. Missing in action. His ship torpedoed. When the confirmation came that Sammy was in a Japanese prison camp, she’d thought that was good. He was alive. She prayed and prayed. He was tough. He’d make it. Mike was in a prison camp too in Germany. God would take care of them. He had to. But he hadn’t. At least not Sammy.

Tears gathered again behind her eyes, and she turned toward the door before anybody could notice.

The August sun beat down so hot the asphalt was sticky underfoot. Scout started to follow her, but when Lorena came out with Mrs. Jenkins’s groceries, he ran back to her. He was Lorena’s dog, but that didn’t keep Tori from feeling even more alone in the midst of the jubilation.

A man blew his horn and waved as his car passed her. Smiling. Happy. She had no idea who he was. Some women were out in their yards talking about the news, but not Mrs. Burgin. She stayed inside, peering out the window where a gold star hung for her son killed at Normandy. For a second, Tori considered calling out to her. But what could she say? Nothing that hadn’t already been said a thousand times. Words couldn’t bring her son home.

Out in front of the new mechanic’s shop, a group of men shouted back and forth to one another to be heard over the clanging church bell. Clay Weber spotted Tori and peeled away from the others. And where a moment before she’d felt too alone after Scout deserted her, now she wanted to be alone.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Clay. He was a nice enough fellow. He and Sammy had been friends in school, but Clay had to drop out after his father died suddenly. His mother needed him to work the farm and keep food on the table for his younger sisters and brothers. Mrs. Weber was always saying how blessed she was to have such a good son. As it turned out, the farm kept Clay out of the army. He tried to enlist, but the government said his patriotic duty was to keep milking cows and raising corn. The country had to eat.

Tori wished Sammy had been a farmer.

She didn’t slow her step, but Clay caught up with her easy enough.

“Need a lift somewhere, Victoria? My truck’s just over there.” He looked hopeful as he pointed back toward Henson’s Garage. His broad hands were tan from hours in the sun.

“I can walk. It’s not far.” Tori kept her eyes on the road in front of her. “You can go on back and talk with the men.”

“I’d rather talk to you.”

She looked up at him. He had to be at least a half foot taller than her, and his blue cotton work shirt was stretched tight over his broad shoulders and muscular arms. A straw hat shaded his face, but it didn’t hide the red spreading across his high cheekbones. She didn’t know why he wasn’t already married or at least promised. If only he was, so he wouldn’t keep showing up in her shadow. He had to know she couldn’t look at any man without seeing Sammy. It didn’t matter that it had been almost a year since she’d gotten that final telegram. She and Sammy were supposed to be forever.

Tori blinked away the tears poking at her eyes and managed a polite smile. “I’m kind of in a hurry, but maybe we can talk some other time.”

“I’d like that.” Clay wasn’t a man to give up easy. “How about Sunday after church? I promised my little sisters we’d make ice cream. Mama’s been saving our sugar rations.” A bead of sweat ran down toward his eyebrow, but he paid it no notice. He looked completely too hopeful as he waited for her answer. His dark blue eyes made Tori remember lighter blue ones that had looked at her with that same kind of hope. Sammy’s eyes.

She turned back toward the church and felt a wriggle of discomfort as she dashed his hope. “I’m sorry, but my sisters come home on Sundays and what with this news, I wouldn’t want to miss seeing them.”

“We could make the ice cream at your house.”

She felt his eyes on her, but she didn’t look at him. “No, no. That wouldn’t be right. Your little sisters are looking forward to the ice cream.”

“I guess you’re right.” Disappointment laced his words. “Maybe another time then.” The hope was back in his voice.

She should stop and tell him straight out that no time was going to be right. Dash his hopes once and for all. But instead she kept walking. She wasn’t sure if it was cowardice or niceness that stopped her words. She didn’t want to hurt him. Wasn’t she hurting enough for all of Rosey Corner?

Behind them more horns sounded as another car pulled in to Henson’s Garage. When Clay glanced back that way, Tori made a graceful exit.

“It is great news.” She made it sound as if she meant it. She did mean it. She looked back at the garage. “Look, there’s Mr. Jamison. Will you tell him I’m glad his sons will be coming home from the Navy? I’d tell him myself, but Mother asked me to go down to the church and make sure Daddy’s okay. He’s been ringing the bell a long time.”

“I could come help him.”

“No.” The word came out sharper than she intended, so she softened it a bit. “No, the bell’s rung long enough already. Go talk to your friends.”

“I am. Talking to a friend.” He was like a dog shaking a stick. He just wouldn’t give it up. “At least I hope we’re friends.”

Sometimes a girl had to be plain. “Sure, Clay, but I can’t talk now.”

“Another time then?” he asked again.

She was the one who gave in. “Another time.” She started walking faster, leaving him on the road. She wished she could run the way she used to as a kid. Why was it that mothers weren’t supposed to run? Her legs weren’t old. Only her heart.

Her father had stopped ringing the bell by the time she got there. He was pale, his shirt soaked with sweat, but he was smiling as he came down the church steps. When he saw her face, his smile turned tender and he held his arms out to her. “Sometimes tears happen in the middle of the happiest moments.”