by Ryan Byrnes
In the coming months, the sugar-fed giggling of the three girls bounced off the walls of the sweet shop. Santa dolls accumulated on the chocolate-bar shelves, and when the bells jingled over the door, happy customers asked me if they could try the best truffles in Europe. And when closing time came, I would lock up the door, clean the counters, and Lavinia would stroll by with the girls.
Lavinia, who was never able to have children, jumped at the chance to offer a room to the girls and quickly became a mother figure to them. We both did our best to make sure they felt at home, although Lavinia did her best to spoil them.
Jim returned to the frontlines shortly after Christmas, where he delivered mail to the troops for another three years. On the day he returned from France, he locked his uniform in a case under his bed and never opened it. Using his savings from his service, he moved into a brown-brick apartment in Warwick. The apartment had two bedrooms—one for him and one for Celeste to share with her sisters when they visited. There were no social services or adoption laws in those days, especially in the chaos of war.
Life was still plenty hard, and Jim was out of a job a number of years and the girls shed many tears over their loss and adjustment to England. But Luther was always able to make them laugh. Always.
Every Christmas after that, we would meet at my house to exchange gifts and reflect on all we'd survived. Occasionally, Ethyl Brand would be in the country and stop by to see us. And always, at the end of the evening, I would sit with Luther and eat sweets until his snores echoed through the house, and then I would guide him to bed.
“Love you sweet, Luther,” I would tell him. “Love you sweet.”
“Love Mum,” he would whisper back. “Love Mum.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my family—Steve, Anne, Adam, Julia, and Erin—for congregating around Mom and Dad’s bed in 2005 to marvel at a paragraph I had scribbled about a green alien. I’d misspelled almost every word. “Maybe he’ll grow up to be an author,” one of you suggested.
Thanks to the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri for access to their unparalleled research library.
Thanks to my godmother, Robin Kaye, for lending me her knowledge of the publishing world.
Thanks to publisher Jennifer Geist for the opportunity to learn what makes a book marketable and to Grace Carlson for her graphic design input.
Thanks to publishers Brenda Bradshaw, Ph.D. and Ryan Crawford for initially voicing their enthusiasm for my manuscript.
Thanks to publishers Kristina Makansi and Lisa Miller for their experience and professionalism throughout the editing and design process.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryan Byrnes is a St. Louis native. His first foray into writing was founding the publishing imprint, Avency Press, where he wrote one illustrated chapter book, The Adventures of Wheatail, and four young adult fantasy novels in the Son of Time series. Since then, he has worked with a publishing company, a literary agency, and various aspiring writers seeking to self-publish. Ryan now lives in Iowa and is a college student studying mechanical engineering and English. Between work hours, he builds Mars Rovers with his roommates, plays with cats, and watches Wes Anderson movies.
