“How long is that in calendar terms?” my father queried.
I drew in a steadying breath. “About two weeks.”
“Two weeks! Did you hear that, Robert? Two weeks.” My mother leaned back in her seat, as if it were all settled. “You can’t possibly be telling us that you know this man well enough to want to marry him in that length of time.”
“But Iamtelling you that. I love him.”
“Love.” She said the word as if I were either too big of an idiot to know anything about it, or as if the very concept itself were ludicrous. “I refuse to listen to this nonsense. And I forbid you to say anything about this to anyone while you’re here.”
“Mother!”
“You listen to me, young lady. You arenotgoing to break the heart of a man who’s known you his whole life and who loves you to pieces and who just returned from the war with a missing limb. Why, he nearly died, defending our freedom!”
I wanted to say that a few toes didn’t qualify as a limb, but I didn’t. “Mother, I don’t want to hurt Charlie. But I don’t want to get his hopes up, either.”
“You don’t have to do either, Adelaide. Just be nice to him. Just act like you used to when you were dating. I venture to say that after you’re around him again, you’ll realize you still have feelings for him.”
“Mother, we broke up before he left.”
“Nonsense. You’ve been writing to him.”
“I’ve been writing to several soldiers. I send them all the same letter.”
“Adelaide LeDoux.” My mother’s voice was shocked and disapproving. “I raised you better than that.”
“Better than what? I haven’t done anything wrong.” A hot flare of anger shot through me. “There was nothing of a romantic nature in those letters. I’ve told you and told you. I don’t love Charlie.”
“Well, that doesn’t matter right now. He loves you, and this is not the time to break his heart. You need to do everything you can to make him happy.”
What about my heart?I wanted to say.Don’t I have a right to be happy, too?But I bit my lip and kept my mouth shut. Arguing with my mother was futile.
When we arrived at the house, I went up to my childhood bedroom and crawled into the bed where I’d slept since I’d outgrown my crib, feeling just as helpless and under her thumb as I had back then.
•••
By the time I got up for breakfast, Charlie had already called, and our mothers had made plans for our day.
“I’ll pack a picnic lunch,” my mother said. “You can drive his father’s car, and you two can have a lovely day down by the river. Just be back by four. The town is throwing a potluck celebration at the Baptist church at five thirty, and you want to have time to dress for it.”
Which is how we ended up driving to the country, out to the Atchafalaya River. As we left town, Charlie put his hand on my neck, playing with my hair. I told him it interfered with my ability to concentrate on my driving, and he’d chuckled, as if it pleased him. He kept his hands to himself, though—and when we got out of the car, his crutches and the fact I was carrying the picnic basket and blanket kept him from trying to hold my hand.
I tried to deflect every romantic thing he uttered.
“I can’t tell you how much I missed you,” he said.
“I’m sure you missed everyone and everything about home.”
“Oh, yeah. But you most of all.”
“Tell me all about life in the army.”
He did. I spread a blanket on the riverbank, and he talked and talked, telling me about maneuvers and battles and the personalities of his fellow soldiers. The tight guardedness in my chest eased. This was Charlie, my lifelong friend. He’d been through hell and back, and my heart ached as he talked about the cruel, ugly, unremitting horror of the war.
“How did you get injured?” I knew the general story, but I hadn’t heard the specifics.
He lay back on the blanket and draped his arm over his eyes. “We were in a trench, under heavy fire. I was sick with dysentery. All of a sudden, a grenade landed at my feet. Like most of the others, I scrambled to get away. But there was one soldier...” Charlie’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “His name was Albert, and he was from upstate New York. He came from money, big money, and he’d enlisted against his family’s wishes. He kept to himself all the time. He wouldn’t drink cheap hooch or cut up or joke around with the rest of us. I figured him for a snob—you know the kind, the type who thought he was too good for us. But Albert... well, damned if he didn’t throw himself on that grenade.”
Charlie’s face was still covered by his arm, but I saw a tear trickle down his cheek. My chest felt both floppy and tight at the same time.
