Hope looked at me as if she wasn’t sure if I were in my right mind or not. “But I thought Joe was dead,” she said.
“Yes, I thought so, too. My every decision had been based on that belief. I thought I was seeing a ghost.” I closed my eyes, and his face haunted me again.
1946
Joe was almost skeletally thin—his shoulder bones jutted through his shirt in sharp points—and his face seemed like skin stretched over a skull. Just like in the movies, I started to faint dead away. Joe caught me under the arms and half carried, half dragged me through the door to the sofa. He sat down beside me, and I touched his face, trying to determine whether he was real or whether I was dreaming.
His skin was warm, and I could feel the trace of stubble on his gaunt, clean-shaven face. “You’re alive,” I said, staring at him, my hand moving to his close-cropped hair. “You’re alive!”
He looked much older. His mouth had lines at the corners, his hair was thinner, and his eyes seemed more deep-set. He drew me into a hug, and I didn’t resist. When he started to kiss me, though, I drew back.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I realized my hand was over my lips. I dropped it and scooted back on the sofa. “I—I still feel faint.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water.” He strode into my kitchen, rummaged in my cabinets, and returned with a tall glass. He sat beside me on the sofa as I drank it.
“Tell me everything,” I ordered.
He said that the other planes in the squadron didn’t see any parachutes because he and the rest of his crew had bailed at the very last second, under cloud cover. The bombardier and gunner were shot before they hit the water; the navigator, the copilot, the engineer, and Joe were picked up by a Japanese PT boat and sent to a POW camp. Conditions were horrendous; out of all of his crew, he was the only one who survived.
“You’re what kept me going,” he said. “I thought about you, and I knew I had to live.”
His camp hadn’t been liberated until after the war had ended. He’d been so ill and malnourished that he’d spent eleven months in a military hospital. Due to a clerical error, his family wasn’t notified of his whereabouts until he was on the way home. It wasn’t until he arrived at his aunt’s home that he’d found my unopened letters—including the one saying I was pregnant.
He’d immediately set out to track me down. He’d already been to my parents’ house. Apparently my grandmother had told him where I lived.
My heart catapulted in my chest. “What—what did you tell her?”
“Just that I was looking for you—that I’d known you in New Orleans, that I’d just been released from a POW camp. She gave me your address.”
I tried to explain what had happened and why I’d married Charlie. He sat there, stoic as a statue, and said he didn’t blame me. His eyes misted, though, and he swallowed hard a bunch of times.
“Our child?”
Our.Oh, Lord, how can such a short word carry so muchweight? “Rebecca. I named her for my great-grandmother. She’s napping. She—she doesn’t know. No one knows. Everyone thinks Charlie is the father. We can’t...”
“Damn it, Addie. Don’t tell me what we can and can’t do.” His blue eyes were dark, his voice a low growl. “I spent years in a hellhole, and thinking of you was all that pulled me through. When I got out and read your letter, I nearly lost my mind. I vowed that if you’d given the child up for adoption, I’d get it back, one way or the other. And I swore that I’d marry you, and...”
“You never wrote my father.”
“I damn sure did. The night I got back from the base.”
“He never...” Oh my God! Fatherhadgotten the letter! That’s why he’d pulled me aside when Charlie and I came home married, and asked if I was all right. He must not have even told my mother, because my mother could never keep a secret like that.
Oh, dear God, did my father suspect the baby’s paternity? Oh, heavens to Betsy! I couldn’t bear to think of it. It was a mercy he hadn’t told me or my mother about the letter, wasn’t it? So why did I feel so outraged and confused?
There are pauses in the rhythm of life—space between heartbeats, time between inhales and exhales. Maybe those are little deaths. Or maybe that’s when life is lived most intensely. This felt like both.
“Joe.” His name on my lips was like menthol on chapped skin, both sweet and stinging, a needling balm. “Joe... it’s too late.”
My hand rested on my belly, an involuntary move. His eyes followed. The words were unnecessary, but I said them anyway. “I’m having Charlie’s baby.”
The door opened and Becky came out, rubbing her eyes. “Mommy?”
His eyes locked on her. I ran to her and scooped her up.
“Who’s dat man, Mommy?”
