“Someone you knew well?” he asked her, and she nodded.
“Audrey Parker’s brother. Will,” she added. She wanted to say his name so they could hear it, and she looked up at her father with the shards of her broken heart spilling from her eyes. “I loved him, Daddy. He was a wonderful person.”
“I’m sure he was,” he said sympathetically. “It’ll be hard on his mother. She’s widowed, isn’t she?” Lizzie nodded. They had met at Lizzie and Audrey’s nursing school graduation, so he knew how ill she was.
“Audrey takes care of her.”
“I’m sorry. Let me know if there’s anything we can do, for either of them.” He didn’t react to her telling him she loved Will. He wasn’t sure what she meant by it, but it was no time to ask when she was so upset.
She did the only thing she could think of then. It was the only place she wanted to be, with the family he loved and who loved him. She belonged with them now.
Lizzie packed a bag and went to Pennsylvania Station, and took a train to Annapolis that night. She arrived at the house at eleven o’clock and rang the doorbell. Audrey opened the door and they sank into each other’s arms, mourning the boy they had all loved so much. The boy who wanted to fly and had loved planes all his life. The country was at war and he was one of the first casualties. Audrey wondered if her mother would survive it, if any of them would. He was so young and so handsome and such a good person, brother, and son. He would have been good to Lizzie, if he’d had time to do so. And now he was gone. Audrey couldn’t imagine what life would be like from this day on, without him, and neither could Lizzie. Their lives would be forever changed, more than either of them could even imagine.
Chapter 4
Lizzie spent the week in Annapolis with Audrey and Ellen. She needed to be with them. They all sat in Will’s boyhood room and cried, looking at pictures of him. It was inconceivable to them that he wasn’t coming back, and even more so to his mother. Lizzie could still feel his lips, and his arms around her. It was all so fresh in her mind, and now, three weeks later, he was dead. It had all been so brief and so powerful. She couldn’t imagine life without him, or a future she would care about. What she did now no longer mattered to her. Her father called and reminded her that she had to go back to work at the hospital, but she didn’t care if they fired her. She hated her job anyway. He used his influence to get her a leave of absence. He said he felt very sad for the Parkers, but he told Lizzie she had to be back in Boston by the end of the week to pick up the threads of her own life again. He had no idea how deeply she had loved Will, or what promises they had made each other.
They still had no news of when his body would be returned when she finally left Annapolis on Sunday, a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Everyone was talking about war having been declared, and what it meant. Boys were going to be drafted, since the draft had been instated a year before. Thousands had already enlisted that week as a patriotic gesture, and she suspected that her own brothers would join the army now too. Her older brother, Greg, could go as a doctor in the medical corps, but Henry had only just started medical school, and she had no idea what they would do with him, or where he would be sent. America would join the war in Europe now too. Some men would be sent to the Pacific, and others to Europe. The country was in chaos, waiting to hear what would happen next. Those who had enlisted would be sent to basic training soon.
The atmosphere at the hospital was somber when Lizzie went back to work. Some doctors were talking about enlisting. Others were going to wait to be drafted. Some of the nurses were talking about enlisting too, which surprised Lizzie. She hadn’t thought about the nurses that would be needed too, not just physicians.
She went through the motions at work and barely spoke to her parents at night. She felt as though a part of her had died with Will on the airfield at Pearl Harbor.
Ellen and Audrey didn’t celebrate Christmas, and Lizzie worked on the holiday in Boston. She had nothing to celebrate that year. There was a jubilant mood among those who had enlisted and wanted to celebrate before going off to basic training. Lizzie already knew how it ended, and she couldn’t let herself be swept along. She kept to herself at work, and took care of her patients, but there was nothing she cared about now.
They finally sent Will’s body back shortly after Christmas. There were so many bodies to send home to families all over the country, and others who had gone down with their ships in the harbor and remained there. Divers brought up as many as they could, but there were a vast number they hadn’t reached yet.