Twenty-Two

LOTTIE SIGHED AS SHE pushed through the crowd that was milling about outside the mess hall in the Hawaii twilight.

She was exhausted after her first day in the shop, and all she wanted to do was go back to the barracks and drift off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

But the base was crawling with newcomers. Since they’d deployed so many troops, the Navy had sent in replenishments, getting ready to ship out themselves on later carriers.

A big group had arrived today, Lottie had heard, from training bases all over the continental United States. And it seemed like every single one of them was now standing between her and her bed.

As she wove through the crowd, she let her mind wander to her bed back at home: covered with down pillows and duvets, all wrapped in cotton so fine it might as well have been silk. The flowers on her bedside table, always fresh no matter the season. And the ever-shifting moods of the tree beyond her window. What she wouldn’t have given for just an hour of sleep in that bed. Or just one more glimpse out that window.

In her shapeless jumpsuit and bandana, Lottie felt pleasantly invisible.

She would have never been able to slip through a crowd like this unnoticed before the war, she thought wryly. People were always saying it was amazing what the war could do to change you. And in this little way, at least, it was true for her.

“Lottie!” she heard a voice calling. “Lottie!”

The sound gave her a strange feeling.

She had just managed to pull free from the knot of men and had taken a few steps down the dim path toward the women’s barracks.

But somehow the sound of her own name, said that way, made her feel as if she were suddenly back in Michigan, feeling the evening settle in around her on the shores of a lake, instead of on the cusp of one of the world’s great oceans.

And it made her feel as if she were a different, younger woman.

For an instant, it froze her in place.

Then, before she had a chance to even see who had spoken, she was enveloped in a bear hug.

As soon as the arms closed around her, she knew whose they were.

Eugene had picked her up off her feet and was laughing joyfully.

When he put her back down, she looked at him, dazed.

“Oh, I can’t believe it. Your mother said you were stationed at Pearl Harbor,” he said, his breath short. “But when I checked into it, I heard the place was huge. I’m only here for a few hours before they ship us out. I never dreamed I’d actually get to see you.”

Lottie was overwhelmed by a rush of warmth at seeing the man she’d cared about for so long.

Here, in uniform, he suddenly looked different. She realized how tall he was compared to the men around him, and how handsome, with his dark hair and dark eyes. And there was something new about him, too. Although she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was, he reminded her of Robert, who had come to their engagement party in uniform so long ago. There was some new intention in the way Eugene carried himself. Some seriousness now, where before there had only been joking. She took a step forward, drawn to him.

And then she remembered.

The last time she’d seen him had been the night before their wedding. The wedding she’d run away from, without ever telling him goodbye to his face. And the Eugene standing before her was not the one she had always known. She’d made him a stranger, by leaving him.

Who was he now? she wondered with alarm. Was he angry at her? Still hurting from what she’d done? Was there any chance at all that he might be as happy to see her as she was to see him?

As all of these thoughts collided in her mind, Eugene pulled her away from the crowd, over to a low stone wall, about the right size to sit on, overlooking the water of the bay.

“You’ll have to tell me everything,” he said. Then, as he looked over her greasy dungarees, his brow knit in confusion. “What have they done to you?” he asked.

“They made me a mechanic,” Lottie said.

Eugene threw back his head and laughed heartily. Then he spread his hands in surrender. “I guess you were right all along. Who am I to argue with the US government?”

“I’m second-in-command of my shop,” Lottie said. “Since the captain shipped out.”

“Of course you are,” Eugene said. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

He stared at her fondly.

“Eugene,” Lottie began. “I’m sorry. I—”

Eugene gave his head a firm shake. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he said. “You were right. I did some long, hard thinking after you left. My calendar had been cleared for a few weeks, for some reason,” he added with a grin. “So I had a lot of time to think.

“And what you did inspired me to join up,” he went on. “I realized that I didn’t want to sit this war out, either. Part of me knew I was hiding behind Dad. I never asked him to get an exemption for me. But I never told him no, either. And I never felt quite right about that. I think some part of me always wanted to do something more, but I’d ignored it. Until you made that impossible.”

He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

It felt so familiar, so warm and tender, that tears sprang to Lottie’s eyes.

“Hey,” Eugene said. “This is good news. It’s not supposed to make you cry.”

Lottie took a deep breath.

“I’m just so glad to see you,” Lottie said.

“Me too,” Eugene told her. He glanced at the sky. “Maybe someone arranged it for us, better than we could have ourselves.”

“Maybe,” Lottie said with a smile.

“I wanted to tell you what it had all meant to me, before we shipped out,” Eugene said. “What you mean to me. No matter what happens, you helped me see what I really wanted in life.”

Lottie didn’t know what to say. But before she needed to say anything, Eugene drew her into another hug. For the first time since she’d joined the Navy, Lottie felt as if she were back home, safe and known.

But as they drew apart, someone shouted his name. “Grantham,” a voice bellowed in the darkness. “Where’d you go?”

“Duty calls,” Eugene said.

Lottie gave him one last squeeze. “You be careful,” she said.

Eugene grinned at her. “Always,” he told her, and jogged up into the darkness to meet the men he’d trained with.

Lottie sat on the stone wall, reeling.

It had been a wonderful surprise to see Eugene. A weight she hadn’t even known she was carrying, of sorrow and guilt over their wedding, seemed to have slipped from her shoulders.

But in its place was a new, nagging anxiety. It was one thing to risk her own life. It was another thing to know that Eugene—someone who had always been so precious to her—was now also at risk in the war.

As she stood to walk back, finally, to her own barracks, she felt as if the ground had shifted in some permanent way beneath her feet.

The words he’d used to thank her—you helped me see what I really wanted in life—also echoed in her mind.

And as they did, they raised questions as well.

That was why she had left their wedding behind. To look for something more than the life she’d known. And she’d definitely found something different.

But was it what she wanted? she wondered, looking down at her grease-stained dungarees and thinking ahead to the next day, when she’d have to put on a brave front to the men in her own shop again.

She felt a profound sense of purpose. She was doing her duty to her country. She was doing what was right. But what was waiting for her after the war—if this war ever ended? Lottie suddenly realized that she’d never thought about what came after.

What, she wondered, walking down the dark trail, did she really want in life?