How much longer could she wait for him? On the rare times they had frank conversations about their relationship, he insisted that he was too old for her. Was nineteen years too big of an age gap? Delia was twenty-nine and always wanted to be married before she turned thirty, but Wesley remained resolute in claiming that a platonic working relationship was best.
It would be easy to turn her attention elsewhere if Wesley didn’t care for her ...but he did. He gave himself away in every stolen glance, every affectionate brush of his hand that lingered just a bit too long. He showed it to her one rainy afternoon when he drew the shade down over his office window and kissed her until she was breathless. They had been standing beside the floor globe when he closed in on her, cupped her face between his hands, and kissed her as if his life depended on it.
That had been more than a year ago. A year! And still she waited for Wesley to shed his inhibitions and begin a normal courtship without fear of their age difference or his spoiled daughter.
Delia shook off her annoyance and turned her attention back to the courtroom. She ought to be grateful to have become infatuated with such a thoroughly good man. After a disastrous teenaged love affair, Delia once feared she was incapable of falling in love again, but Wesley disproved that. Finn Delaney was a distant memory, and Wesley was her future.
By five o’clock it was all over. The judge issued a bench decision in Mr. Baumeister’s favor; it was a complete and total victory.
Delia had no one to celebrate the victory with. Wesley went home to his daughter, Delia to the dining hall of her apartmentbuilding. In a restaurant crowded with hundreds of women, she ate alone.
The Martha Washington Apartments were designed for single women who might otherwise have difficulty finding a respectable place in which to live in Manhattan. When it opened in 1903, its twelve stories were immediately filled to capacity with five hundred female teachers, stenographers, nurses, and other professional women who could afford the rent. The first floor had an ice cream parlor, a library, and the dining hall where residents took their meals. Delia used to enjoy long, chatty dinners late into the evening, but that was all over. Now she ate as quickly as possible before heading up to her eighth-floor apartment to curl up with a good book.
She took another sip of tomato soup. Clattering utensils mingled with gossip and laughter from the women at nearby tables while Delia read the current issue of theSaturday Evening Postand pretended not to mind eating alone.
Hilde Wallace, with a clipboard propped in the crook of her arm, approached the neighboring table filled with schoolteachers.
Delia stiffened. With her cool, blond good looks and sharp features, Hilde was both pretty and mean. She was tall too. Was that why Hilde assumed leadership wherever she went? She certainly seemed to have a following at the Martha Washington. A gaggle of other women trailed after Hilde as she approached the teachers.
Delia returned to her magazine to study the advertisement for the newest Mary Pickford movie. Wesley once told Delia she resembled Mary Pickford, which was flattering given Pickford’s heart-shaped face and sparkling eyes. She was still studying the magazine when Hilde and her entourage arrived at Delia’s table. She set the spoon down and braced herself.
“Hello, Delia,” Hilde said. “Care to donate to the war bond drive? Everyone else I’ve spoken to is chipping in.”
War bonds were used to manufacture machine guns, battleships, and bombs. All across America, people like Hilde wereshaking down civilians to collect funds. Contributing to the manufacture of weapons to murder people was abhorrent, but Delia kept her tone polite.
“No, thank you.”
Hilde smirked. “Oh, yes, Delia the pacifist. You’re obviously so much better than us. If you’re too pure and holy to donate to the war, perhaps you can bring yourself to give something to the Red Cross. Blanche will be happy to take your donation.”
Blanche Nesbit stood right behind Hilde. Blanche was the overnight desk clerk at the apartment building. Seeing her march in lockstep behind Hilde hurt because Blanche used to be Delia’s friend. Now she was one of many who’d turned frosty over the political divide.
Delia met Blanche’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve been donating everything I can spare to the CRB since the first month of the war.”
“What’s the CRB?” Hilde asked in a challenging voice.
“The Commission for the Relief of Belgium,” Delia answered. “When Germany attacked Belgium—”
“They didn’t attack Belgium,” Hilde interrupted. “If Belgium would have allowed German troops to cross through their land on the way to France, Germany wouldn’t have had to attack them at all.”
Delia tried not to roll her eyes at the contradictory statement. Belgium had the bad luck to be located between two warring nations. They tried to remain neutral, but two days after Germany declared war on France, the Germans started rolling through Belgium in a stampede of plunder and destruction. Belgium had been living under the boot of German occupation ever since.
“Belgium is starving,” Delia added calmly. “Before the war they imported almost all of their food supply, but the German blockade put an end to that. They have no way of feeding themselves unless relief supplies are sent in from abroad.”
Hilde’s mouth thinned. “Why don’t they just grow some crops like any hardworking American would do?”
Because Belgium was the most heavily industrialized nation in the world. Belgium had factories, shipyards, electrical plants, and steel mills, but those industries didn’t produce food. As a densely populated nation with scant farmland, famine set in soon after Germany blockaded the nation. This wasn’t the time or place to educate Hilde about the economic constraints of Belgium, so Delia moved straight to her point.
“The Commission for the Relief of Belgium is keeping nine million people from starvation. It costs a fortune to keep sending ships filled with relief supplies to them. Anything I can afford to donate goes to the CRB.”
Hilde tossed her clipboard onto the table, sloshing tomato soup on the snowy-white linen. “So you’re too holier-than-thou to spare a few pennies for the Red Cross?”
Others at neighboring tables had quieted to listen. They only heard Hilde’s loud statement that Delia refused to support the universally admired Red Cross, nothing about the valiant cause of the struggling CRB.
“Hilde, if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never learn to be as cleverly mean as you. Congratulations! You’ve won the day.”
“Let’s move on,” Blanche said, for once standing up to Hilde.
“Yes, let’s see if we can find someone who doesn’t hate their country.”
