At the time, of course, I didn’t know this. I spent most of the long bus ride thinking how I would let Charlie down gently. All my thoughts were focused on Joe and how marvelous our lives would be together.
I’d expected to see my mother at the bus station—and possibly my father. The person I hadn’t expected to see was Charlie, standing right there where the bus unloaded, propped up on crutches. His parents stood on either side of him.
“Adelaide,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.
He was pale and thin—so much thinner than I remembered. His eyes were sunken and ringed with shadows. My heart gave a sick little clutch, just like it had that time I’d found a bald baby bird with a broken neck under the oak tree. “Oh, Charlie.” I stepped toward him, and the next thing I knew, he’d dropped his crutches and grabbed me. He kissed me full on the mouth, so hard it hurt my teeth, smashing my nose against his, making it impossible to breathe. I pulled back, but he clung to me, burying his face against my neck and sobbing into my hair.
All I could think was—God help me!—how much better Joe had felt; how much taller, sturdier, stronger, and manlier he’d been, how the press of his body against mine had unleashed a dizzying surge of desire, while Charlie’s frail, childlike frame filled me with pity. I flushed with shame at my thoughts. A ripple of revulsion rolled through me—not at Charlie’s touch, but at his naked devotion, at his beggarly need.
“Charlie,” I murmured. “My parents. Your mother...”
That seemed to bring him to his senses. My father cleared his throat. Charlie’s mother stooped and picked up his crutches, and his father steadied him as I drew back.
“When did you get here?” I asked, smoothing my skirt and trying to hide my embarrassment under a show of normalcy.
“At noon,” Charlie said.
“The whole town turned out,” his father added. “The high school band played, and the mayor gave a speech.”
“How wonderful.”
His mother grew teary-eyed. “Yes. It was.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re exhausted,” I said. “I didn’t travel nearly as far as you, and I’m about to drop.”
“Yes, we’d better get you both home,” my father said.
“You two young people can catch up tomorrow,” my mother said.
“Yes, indeed,” Charlie’s father echoed.
I rode home with my parents. Mother talked the whole time, telling me how Charlie had taken shrapnel from a grenade, how brave he’d been, how they’d feared he would die, how his mother had been beside herself.
“It’s just so wonderful to have you both back home! Didn’t I tell you Charlie was anxious to see you? As poorly as he felt, nothing would do but that he come to the bus station to see you the moment you got here.”
Words built inside me like steam in a kettle, until they fairly burst out of my mouth. “Mother—I tried to tell you on the phone. I met someone. A pilot. And... he’s asked me to marry him. And I said yes.”
“What?” My parents spoke simultaneously. Mother twisted around the front car seat and stared at me, her jaw slack. “No!”
“Yes. I’m engaged.”
She looked at my hand, obviously noting the lack of a ring. “You are no such thing.” She whipped back around to face my father. “Tell her, Robert. This man hasn’t asked for her hand or even met us. She isnotengaged.”
My father glanced at my mother, then looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Adelaide, your mother’s right. He hasn’t done any of the things one does to make it official.”
“There’s a war on, for heaven’s sake! He’s on his way to thePacific. The rules can’t be followed to the letter during a war. He’s writing you, Daddy. He told me he was going to write you and ask for my hand.”
“We haven’t received any such letter,” Mother said. Before I could tell her that there hadn’t been time, she demanded, “Where did you meet this man?”
“At the USO.”
“How long have you known him?” Father asked.
I hated to say, because I knew how it would sound. “A while.”
“How long a while?” Mother pressed.
“Long enough to know I love him.”
