Erin pulled out the small box she’d packed the ring in and handed it across to her mother. Serenity opened it and stared at it for a few moments, then held it out to Thomas. ‘It’s Jimmy’s ring,’ Erin said quietly. ‘That’s what started this whole search. I wanted to bring the ring back to his family where it belongs.’
Thomas carefully picked out the large ring and turned it around to read the inscription. ‘It always was where it belonged. It belonged to Evelyn and then to you and your mother.’
‘But we didn’t even know him,’ Erin said.
‘So many died too young, and without making any lasting memories for the remaining generations. But we have something of him with us still: you and your mom. You’re both living, breathing monuments to his life, and he would have been very proud to call you his granddaughter. And you his daughter,’ he said, turning to place a hand on her mother’s arm gently.
As she watched tears run down her mother’s face, Erin tried unsuccessfully to blink back her own. It was hard to imagine Jimmy as her grandfather, but when she tried to imagine her mother’s pain at never having known this man as her father, the grief was hard to ignore.
It made her angry to think of all the hurt her mother had gone through over the years, trying to please a man who had never shown her any love. She knew how close Jimmy’s family was and how much he would have loved having a daughter. Her mother would have been a very different person had she grown up here amongst these people.
‘You keep it,’ Thomas said.
‘I’m not sure I’m worthy of it. I feel ashamed. I should have come looking for you a long time ago, but instead I turned my back on you all. If it wasn’t for Erin,’ she turned her watery gaze on her daughter.
‘You hush now. Everything in its own time. You’re here now and that’s all that matters,’ Gwen said, stepping in. She turned to Erin. ‘You mentioned that you’d like to go and see the World War Two museum in New Orleans?’
‘Yes, I would. I wanted to donate a photo of Jimmy to them.’
‘I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ Gwen said with a beaming smile.
Erin was awed by The National WWII Museum’s enormity. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before. They made their way through a maze of exhibits, searching for the one thing Erin was longing to see up close. She found what she was looking for in a huge space that resembled a hangar. There in the centre of the room behind a rope was the French Quarter. The painted starlet in all her buxom glory gleamed beneath the overhead lights.
‘Honey, this is Captain Graham; he’s a volunteer here at the museum. I called him up the other day and mentioned that you were coming here to visit,’ Gwen said, introducing an elderly man.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,’ he said, shaking her hand gently. ‘I believe you have a special connection to this old gal.’
Erin smiled at how strange it all was. She’d first seen this plane in an old photo hidden in a tin box in the bottom of her gran’s wardrobe. The journey that had started there had taken her from Townsville all the way to Louisiana. And along the way she’d not only uncovered the name of her biological grandfather, she’d also found her mother once more. Yes, I do have a special connection to this plane, she thought with a wistful smile.
Carefully Erin withdrew an envelope from her handbag and took out her grandmother’s photo of Jimmy standing beside the plane on the tarmac in Townsville. She handed it across to the captain. ‘I thought these two should be reunited again,’ she said, looking between the photo in the man’s hand and the plane. ‘I’d like to donate it to your museum.’
‘Would you look at this,’ the captain breathed out slowly. When he lifted his gaze from the photo again his eyes were shining with excitement. ‘Young lady, this is very generous of you. The museum and the United States Air Force would be honoured to accept this donation.’
A small part of Erin wanted to snatch back the photo. She’d developed a very strong bond to the images in Gran’s tin box, but she knew that this part of Jimmy, the military part, belonged to the country and the people he’d died serving.
‘There’s one more thing I thought might interest you,’ Captain Graham said, leading his small group to another part of the museum. ‘Right here.’
They stopped in front of an entrance to a photo gallery entitled Love and War, and Erin led the way into a dark hallway where images of women and uniformed men lined the walls. Erin slowly walked along, loving the many photos and reading the written accounts of men and women who had found love during war in far-off places. Extracts of old letters and diaries made for fascinating reading.
Was this how it had been for Evelyn and Jimmy, she wondered as she read about dances and shore leave, young American men falling in love with women from all over the world during their stays in foreign lands. There was a section dedicated to the women from all across the world who had married US soldiers and the journeys they had undertaken to be reunited with the men they loved. Fifteen thousand Australian women had married American servicemen during World War Two.
Erin stopped in front of a photo of a ship departing Sydney Harbour. Her gaze roamed across the faces of the hundreds of women hanging over the rails of the ship as it departed. Many carried babies. Some looked excited as they waved goodbye to their homeland to set off on a grand adventure across the ocean; others looked tearful and more than a little daunted, and some were crying openly as they waved goodbye to mothers, fathers and siblings watching from the docks.
What had these women, some still teenagers, given up? And for what? Men they’d only known for a handful of days if they were lucky? The faith these women had put in those men was staggering to think about. Evelyn had been one of these women . . . would have been one of these women, Erin corrected sadly. Had Jimmy gotten on any other plane that day, she would have married him and maybe even been in this very photo hanging on the museum wall. She swallowed hard over a lump in her throat and blinked back the pressing tears. There was so much heartache and pain. She ached for Gran and Jimmy and what might have been. Life was so very short and precious. And you never knew what lay around the corner.