CHAPTER 34

The door eased open.

A fresh-faced girl of no more than fourteen or fifteen at best stood framed within its opening. She wore a pink-bibbed skirt and white cotton blouse. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes shifted from Alice-Ann to Mack and back again. “I’m Cynthia Kelly. I’m here to see if you would like anything to drink, Mr. MacKay. Juice? Coffee?”

Mack shook his head. “Thank you, Cynthia. I’m good.”

“A book? Magazines? Cigarettes?”

“I’m good. Thank you.”

She smiled. “All right, then. If you need anything, just ring the nurses’ station and I’ll come back.”

“Thank you again.”

The girl walked out, closing the door behind her, and Alice-Ann returned to her place on the side of the bed.

“A group of high school students up in New Jersey started something called candy stripers for a school project,” she yammered. “They made their own pinafores in red and white and went to work as volunteers in a local hospital. I read not too long ago in the Savannah paper that some of the schools here were doing the same. Of course, the American Red Cross has had —”

“Alice-Ann,” Mack said, interrupting her from continuing in the blubbering trivia.

“I’m sorry. I —I read a lot.”

He studied her before clearing his throat. “You and Carlton?”

And there it was. He knew. “You know?”

“I know.” He reached for her left hand, tugged at the fingertips of her glove until it came free. He picked up her fingers and turned the ring toward him. “It’s beautiful, as engagement rings go.”

“It was his great-grandmother’s.”

Mack leaned back and silently chuckled. “Just like the boy to do something romantic like that.”

Alice-Ann pulled her hand free again. “If you knew about Carlton and me, why’d you —why’d you tell me —?”

“What?”

“That you’d realized you —?”

“That I was in love with you?”

Was. Not am. Was. “No more?”

“Maybe I should have said that I am in love with you.”

She stood. “Mack, I’m —I’m —”

“Engaged to Carlton Hillis. I know. You just said so. And my parents told me on . . . Saturday, I believe it was. Right after I told them I intended to pursue you. Talk you into going away with me to wherever service to my country might take me.” He winked at her. To soften the blow? To make the whole scenario worse than it already was? “Look here,” he said then. “I screwed up. I take full responsibility for it. You told me how you felt about a million times in your letters and I strung you along. I guess I really am careless.”

Alice-Ann pinched her nose to keep from crying. She’d waited so long to hear these words from him. If he’d only given her some indication . . . But would it have mattered? Would their story have changed? And if so . . . how?

No. He’d been dead. At least she’d believed he had been. But Janie . . . Janie believed in the miracle, and the miracle lay in a hospital bed in front of her. “You also wrote to Janie Wren.”

His brow shot up. “Ah, yes. Janie.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I didn’t think you two were close enough to —”

“To compare notes?” she asked, her wits about her now. “Or letters?”

He laughed hard then. “Gosh, I think I rather like the grown-up you. What a shame I’m going to miss getting to know this Alice-Ann better.” He cocked his head. “Assuming, that is, you really are going through with this marriage to our boy.”

“Of course I am. I happen to be very much in —” She took another step back. Looked at her feet. The sensibility of her shoes.

“You happen to be in . . . ?”

Alice-Ann looked up. “I’m in love with him, Mack.”

He smiled at her. “Are you sure, Alice-Ann?” A dark brow arched, testing her. “Completely sure?”

And she smiled back. “Positive,” she answered. Because she was. If ever in her life she’d been sure of anything more, she couldn’t remember the time. And Mack . . . Mack had spent the last few minutes being her true friend —hers and Carlton’s —by giving her the gift she needed to say “I do” to her one true love.

Not Mack. Not him at all. Her one true love was Carlton. Perhaps he always had been; she just hadn’t figured it out yet.

“Thank you,” she said.

He shrugged. “What’d I do?”

“You know good and well what you did.”

Mack crooked a finger at her, then pointed back to the bed again. “Come give your old buddy a good-bye hug, why don’t you.”

She returned to her place next to him, slipped easily into his arms, and felt his squeeze. Familiar and yet new. This wasn’t the man of her dreams. This was Boyd MacKay, her brother’s best friend. Alice-Ann drew back and Mack placed his hands on either side of her face. “Listen. I do love you. I always have and I always will. You’ve been a dear part of my life. You’re special, Alice-Ann Branch.” He swallowed. “And I’m not saying I wouldn’t have made a halfway decent husband to you. No doubt you would have made the best wife I could have asked for. But you were never really mine. If you had been, you wouldn’t be wearing that ring right now, ready to defend your love for him.” He brought her face to his, and she closed her eyes as he kissed first one cheek, then the other. For a brief second she thought to turn her face so that their lips met. To experience his kiss at least once in her life. But as quickly as the idea came, it fled. Carlton would be the only one to have that pleasure in her lifetime . . . and she wanted it that way.

“Give Carlton my best?” Mack said.

She welcomed the words and kept her eyes closed as she nodded, then opened them and said, “And Nelson and Irene?”

“And my namesake, who my mother says is about the cutest baby she’s ever seen since —well, since me.”

Alice-Ann laughed and stood. “Good-bye, Boyd MacKay. God be with you.”

Mack reached for his book on the bedside table. “Good-bye, Mrs. Hillis. May God be with you, too. Both of you.”

She walked to the door, ready to return to Bynum. Ready to tell Carlton everything. All of it.

“Alice-Ann?”

She turned. He’d already opened the book, but his eyes —dark blue and glistening —were still on her. “Yes, sir?”

“If Carlton does anything foolish —let’s say, he loses his mind and decides you’re not the girl for him —I’m only a letter away.”

“He won’t.”

“I’m just saying —”

Amused by it all, she turned back toward the door, then looked at Mack again. “You know, Janie Wren is a pretty good catch. Maybe even better than me.”

“Better than you? How can that be?”

“Well, for one thing, she never gave up hope. She always believed . . .”

Mack nodded. “I know. Daddy told me. And I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

“Will you?”

He saluted her. “I will, ma’am.”

“Will you?”

His face sobered as though the realization of Janie’s devotion only that moment became a reality. “I will. I promise.”

Alice-Ann smiled, confident in his vow. “Thank you, Mack. I truly believe you won’t regret it.”

His dark brow shot up. “I believe you may be right, Alice-Ann.” He grinned. “I’ll make sure Mama and Daddy bring her with them this weekend.”

She opened the door with a smile and stepped back into the hallway, closing the door behind her. Only then did she look at her watch. “Oh no . . . ,” she said, then hurried to the stairwell.

Alice-Ann knew that it would take an enormous amount of luck —if she believed in such things —to make it to the depot in time to catch the three o’clock for Bynum. A bus she’d already purchased the ticket for. So instead of tossing up hope, she prayed, begging God for one more favor. You brought me out of my distresses, she prayed silently. Now please bring me out of Savannah and to Bynum before —

Before what? Before Carlton found out? Before he worried about her whereabouts and went next door to see Nancy, asking what time they’d gotten off work? Before he learned the truth? That she’d gone to Savannah without telling him first?

She burst into the depot and rushed over to the ticket counter, which was blessedly unoccupied on her side. “Oh, please tell me I’m not too late for the bus to Bynum,” she said to the man on the other side.

He pointed out the window. “Boarding now. Ran a little late today.”

Alice-Ann looked up. “Thank you, God,” she said, then patted the cold marble countertop as she looked again at the man. “And thank you.”

She darted out a side door and to the bus. She hurried up the three steps, handed the driver her ticket, and then plopped into a seat.

“Alice-Ann?”

She turned. Out of the five or six people on board, she only recognized one —a girl who had graduated with the class after hers. “Oh, hey, Sandra.”

“What are you doing on a bus from Savannah?” the young woman asked, making her way from her seat three rows back to the one directly behind Alice-Ann. Beneath her coat she wore a simple white blouse and a pair of slacks, and she smelled lightly of oil and grease.

“Oh, I —more to the point, what are you doing on a bus from Savannah to Bynum?”

“Me?” Sandra shucked out of her coat and gloves, draped the coat over the back of her seat, and dropped the gloves into her purse. “I work here.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

“At the shipyard. I’m a welder.”

Alice-Ann couldn’t have been more surprised. “I had no idea.”

“Uh-huh. And my sister —you know Kristine?”

Only vaguely. An older sister, if she remembered correctly. “A little. Yes.”

“She works over at Union Bag, but she lives with our grandmother because of the hours. I go home every day to help Mama, what with Daddy being gone.”

“Your father is gone?” Alice-Ann asked as the bus jerked into gear and started out of its parking spot.

Sandra looked at her as if she had gone completely mad. “The war, Alice-Ann. Daddy’s been in Europe since early on in ’42.”

Alice-Ann’s mouth fell open. “I didn’t know, Sandra.” Had she been so wrapped up in her own war story that she missed the stories within her own community? “How’s your mama getting along?”

Sandra’s eyes pooled with tears. “It’s hard. We don’t hear from him for long stretches of time.”

Alice-Ann knew enough about that to write her own story.

“And then we get a telegram that he’s fine and missing us and can’t wait to get home.” She smiled weakly. “I hear you and Carlton Hillis are engaged.”

Alice-Ann shifted so she could talk to Sandra without breaking her spine in half. “How is it you know that I’m engaged to Carlton and I don’t know that you and your sister work in Savannah or that your father has been gone for more than two years?”

Sandra’s smile grew. “Oh, that’s easy. Mama’s been working for the Daileys over at the inn. She’s in charge of the housekeepers over there. And —”

“And Claudette keeps her informed, I’m sure.”

Now Sandra laughed. “You know Claudette.”

“Yes, I’m afraid I do.” She wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell?”

“You mean other than me?”

Alice-Ann glanced out the window. “Yes. It’s coming from out there.”

“That’s Union Bag. Stinks to high heaven.”

Alice-Ann looked at Sandra again. “How does your sister stand it?”

“Kristine says it smells like bacon and eggs to her.”

They arrived in Bynum a little before six. Dusk had fallen as deeply as Alice-Ann’s spirits. She’d had Sandra to chat with along the way —to keep her mind off the inevitable.

When they came into town, they passed the house. She saw Carlton’s car parked between their house and Nancy and Harry’s. She caught a glimpse of light in a side window, one at the rear of the house.

Carlton was there. By now, he probably suspected the worst.

More awful was that the worst was the truth.

When they arrived at the depot, Sandra offered Alice-Ann a lift home. “Mama picks me up every evening,” she said. “You live a little out of the way, but I’m sure she won’t mind.”

“No, that’s okay,” Alice-Ann said. Then, thinking it over, she said, “But if you can drive me down to the house Carlton and I —it’s on North Main Street.”

Sandra’s mother chatted nonstop on the way to the house. Even though Alice-Ann managed to respond a time or two, she was only vaguely aware of the conversation. She answered all of Miss Judy’s questions, laughed in all the appropriate places, but as soon as they pulled in front of the house, Alice-Ann opened the back door, thanked them both, told Sandra to “not be a stranger.” She all but ran into the house, closing the door behind her.

“Carlton?”

“In the back.”

She hurried to the room where they’d worked so diligently on the wallpaper to find Carlton kneeling on the floor. He wore a pair of dungarees and a white undershirt, and his hair hung over his eyes. Using the claw of a hammer, he wrenched a piece of baseboard away from the wall, then threw it onto a stack of similar pieces of wood. “What are you doing?”

“Wood’s rotten,” he said. “Has to be replaced.” He looked up at her, pushed his hair from his eyes, and then rested his hands on his knees. “Probably the same throughout the whole house. Don’t know why I didn’t notice it before.” His voice was tense, leaving no room for doubt.

Alice-Ann started to come out of her coat but stopped. “Carlton, I —”

“How was he?”

She pressed her lips together. “He looks better than I thought he would. I mean, when it comes to injuries . . .”

“What?” His eyes narrowed. “I’m one up on him?”

Alice-Ann slipped out of her coat and dropped it to the floor in front of him, then knelt on it. She hadn’t had a pair of nylons since America had gone to war, but there was no need to ruin a perfectly good hem, not to mention her knees. “Carlton, listen to me —”

“No, you listen to me, Alice-Ann. I told you that you could go see him, so I only have myself to blame.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I just didn’t think you’d do it without telling me.”

“I was going to tell you. Yesterday. But you didn’t come home.”

He stood. Threw the hammer onto the pile of splintered baseboard, causing her to jump. To bury her face in her hands. “You’re blaming me now?”