For the first time, I wondered if he’d had anything to do with my promotion.
“And you enjoy writing?” Mum asked. “Molly always loved to write.”
Ian looked fondly at me across the table. “She’s a natural, my girl. From the first day our editor asked me to show her around, she impressed me.”
“You were a good teacher,” I told him.
“We’ve taught each other, I think,” he replied gently, and his voice felt like a caress.
Mum leaned in. “How do you like the casserole?”
“Mrs. Ryan, I believe this is the best noodle casserole I’ve ever had.”
By the end of supper, Ian was the golden boy in my parents’ eyes, and he gave me a big wink after Dad turned to the living room and invited him to join him.
“Brandy?”
“That sounds just right,” Ian said, squeezing my hand on his way out.
“He’s perfect, Molly,” Mum said softly, after he’d left.
“I knew you’d like him,” I said, picking up the drying towel.
She looked up from the sudsy dishwater. “And you seem happy.”
I held her gaze. “I am.”
We cleaned the dishes in quiet, then Mum wiped her face.
“What’s wrong, Mum?”
“I’m just being silly,” she said. “Thinking about things. Like how fast you all grew up. Oh, the noise in this house. You remember. Now it’s so quiet.”
That was the hardest part for me about being home. For so many years I’d come home to the chaos of my family, my brothers all going in different directions, my parents trying to herd us to the table. Now all of it was gone. Richie would never walk through that door again, though Barbara brought his little daughters over when she could. Liam was still afraid to step outside most of the time, despite the thick, grey scarf he insisted on wearing year round. Mark and Jimmy were still gone, fighting somewhere far away.
“Jimmy and Mark will be home soon, Mum.”
“Of course they will. But still.” She flashed a weak smile. “You remember all those ball games we went to? Cheering on your brothers until we lost our voices? Life’s thrown us a few curveballs these past few years, hasn’t it?”
I set the dry plate aside. “Game’s not over. We can still win.”
“I know. And you and Ian are giving us a chance to have joy in our lives again.” She put her hand on my arm. “Maybe someday you’ll have a daughter, and she’ll come see her grandmother, and I’ll tell her stories so she can write them all down.”
My heart ached, remembering Seanmháthair. “Do you think she would have liked Ian, Mum?”
“She would have loved him.”
“How do you know?” Then I asked the real question. “How will I know?”
Her face softened with memory. “Your grandmother was a wise, wise woman. She told me something once, a long time ago. It was the day I was to marry your father, and I was filled with doubt as every young bride is. I asked her just what you asked me, and she told me, the thing about love is that you can never know until you know.”
“What does that mean?”
“Tell me, Molly, when you look into Ian’s eyes, what do you see? Do you see a friend? A lover? Someone who will always stand behind you?”
From the corner of my eye I spotted Ian poking his head into the kitchen. “Excuse me, ladies, but do you need help in here? Or if you’re done, can you come sit with us? I think I’m boring your dad.”
Mum smiled. “Oh, I doubt that, but yes. We’re done in here.” Ian turned back to the living room, and her eyes sparkled at me. “Come on, Molly. Let’s go enjoy ourselves.”
Dad poured each of us a glass of brandy, filling his and Ian’s back up as he did so, then he raised his in a toast.
“I’m glad to know you, Ian. Thank you for making Molly happy.”
Ian grinned, then wrapped one arm around my waist. “It has been my pleasure.”
“Got an extra glass? It sounds like a celebration down here.”
I spun around at the sound of Liam’s voice. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, small and quiet, his scars shining with the candlelight in the room. In the next instant, Mum had placed a brandy glass in his hand.
“I’m so glad you came down,” I told him. “I wanted you to meet—”
Ian held out his left hand, and I caught my breath, loving him so much in that moment. He’d remembered that Liam’s right hand was useless and had offered him respect without hesitation. I saw a flicker of appreciation cross Liam’s face as he took Ian’s hand in his.
“Ian Collins,” Ian said. “It’s a privilege to meet you.”
“And you,” Liam replied, then he turned slightly, so only I could see, and he gave me a wink.
After an hour or so of warm, spirited conversation about politics and the war, always keeping Liam’s sensitivities in mind, Ian thanked my parents profusely for the dinner, and I went to collect his coat and hat.
At the door, he paused, his eyes on mine. “Would you care to walk with me?”
“You’ll need galoshes,” Mum said out of habit. She and Dad were watching me like hawks.
I slipped them on, and Ian helped me into my coat.
The temperature outside was pleasant, but I shivered in spite of myself as we stepped down the walk toward the street, the snow sinking gently beneath our boots.
“I thought that went well,” Ian said, taking my arm.
“It went very well. They loved you.”
He stopped, studied my face, his own full of affection. “And what about you?”
“I love you too,” I told him, and I meant it.
“You know what I’m gonna ask,” he said.
“You aren’t very good at secrets,” I replied, then I lifted my chin a little. “But I won’t give you an answer until you ask me properly.”
“That’s my girl,” he said, then he knelt before me, right there on the snowy sidewalk, the streetlight shining down on him.
I laughed. “Not in the snow, you silly man!”
“Why not?” He grinned. Then he held out a gold ring, looking up at me through sky blue eyes while snowflakes caught on his lashes. “Molly Ryan, you’re the most incredible girl I’ve ever met. You’re smart and beautiful, and despite all your brains, you still put up with me. My favourite sound in the world is your laugh, and I promise to do everything I can to keep hearing it. So tell me, Molly, will you do me the honour of marrying me?”
I hesitated for only a heartbeat, and I didn’t think he noticed. It was time. I held out my hand so he could slip the ring onto my finger. “Yes, Ian. I will marry you.”
With a look of pure joy on his face, he rose, gathered me up in his arms, then kissed me with a bold, confident strength I’d never felt before. His passion swept through me, and my heart raced, keeping up to his.
“Woohoo!” he yelled into the night, our arms still around each other. “She said yes!”
He squeezed me tight against him, and as I looked over his shoulder at my house, I caught the shadows of my parents watching me. I raised my hand to wave, and as I did, the gold of my new ring shone in the pale light of the snow, and I blinked at the unfamiliar sight of it.
“I’m gonna make you happy,” he whispered into my ear. “I promise.”
The thing about love, Mum’s voice reminded me, is that you can never know until you know.
“I know,” I said, telling both him and myself. “I know.”
July 1944
Dear Molly,
I thought you might like to know that this will be my final letter to you from jolly old England. That’s right. I’m on my way home soon. After Normandy, when that pesky German gunner decided I no longer needed my leg, the Army decided they didn’t need me. What a surprise! I guess there’s not much market for a one-legged soldier these days. It’s just as well, I suppose, because you have a shiny gold band on your finger now, and I haven’t given this man my official stamp of approval yet. Hardly fair of you to go
and do that without my say so, Big Sister.
Helen and I would like to welcome you both for a congratulatory dinner once I’m home and settled. I’m learning to get around with the crutches, and I’ve been told I’m up for a new leg when I get home, so you can come and tease me while I stagger around, even clumsier than usual.
Jokes aside, I was very happy to hear of your engagement, and I know we shall love this man as much as you do—almost! I cannot wait to get home and see you.
All my best, your loving little brother, Mark
PART FOUR — 1945 —
twenty MOLLY
I glanced up at the clock, my eyes burning from staring at paperwork all day long. Already 8:35 p.m. I’d wanted to leave hours ago, but Mr. Hindmarsh had asked all of us to stay late because he’d heard that Prime Minister Mackenzie King was going to make an announcement. No one had balked, because we all had a pretty good idea what this announcement was going to be about. Or at least we hoped we did. The news had broken about Hitler’s suicide a week ago, and now it was like watching the very last leaf on a tree, waiting for it to drop.
I leaned over my desk, scanning the recent statistics about homelessness in the city, then scribbled more notes into my notebook. The number of men living on the streets had eased since the Depression had ended almost a decade ago, but I worried. With the number of veterans returning from Europe in various conditions, that issue could easily balloon again. The government had recently proposed plans to help reintegrate these men into the everyday world, so I’d calculated some of the social programme costs, hoping to come up with a substantial article that might forecast what would happen when our surviving men returned at the end of the war, whenever that might be.
I ran my finger down the column I needed and was just writing down the number I’d been searching for when Mr. Hindmarsh stepped out of his office in his usual plodding manner, his arms folded. The rest of us could read him like a battalion reads a general, so we all dropped what we were doing.
“Please turn up the radio,” he said in his deliberate voice. “In about thirty seconds, Prime Minister Mackenzie King would like to speak to you all.”
The blink of silence was followed by a ruckus of chairs being pushed back as everyone flocked to the big radio at the side of the room. This had to be it: the announcement we’d all been waiting for. Seconds later, the prime minister’s voice crackled out of the speaker, his words rising and falling like a minister’s sermon.
“In the name of our country, I ask the people of Canada at this hour to join with me in expressing our gratitude as a nation for the deliverance from the evil forces of Nazi Germany. We unite in humble and reverent thanksgiving to God, for his mercy thus vouchsafed to the peoples of our own and other lands. Let us rejoice in the victory for which we have waited so long, and which has been won at so great a price.”
The war was over. The newsroom burst into applause, and I sank onto the desk, relief flooding my chest and tears burning my vision. The nightmare was over. Our men would finally be coming home.
Ian swept me off the desk and kissed me in front of the entire room, just like in the movies. Everyone cheered louder, and I laughed against his mouth. “Let me go, you brute.”
“Come with me,” he said, grabbing my hand and leading me to the window.
The street below was filling with people, cheering, banging pots, making noise with whatever they could find.
Mr. Hindmarsh came to stand beside us, watching the crowds, a rare smile on his lips. After a while he turned away. “All right, all right,” he said in his trademark monotone. “Back to business. I’ll need pieces right away on the treaty, the ships coming back, what’s happening with the wounded—”
Al Jones, one of our salesmen, suddenly jumped on his chair. “I just got a call from the mayor’s office,” he announced, waving a paper like a flag. “They’ve taken out a full-page ad to announce tomorrow’s public holiday!”
As the room erupted, Mr. Hindmarsh leaned closer to Ian. “Mark my words,” he said. “He’ll ask church groups and synagogues and other community organizations to run their own parties. The less on his plate the better. He thinks that by closing liquor stores for the day and banning places from serving alcohol he’s going to keep control.”
Ian snorted. “Sure. Let’s all celebrate the end of six years of war with a nice hot cup of tea.”
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER was to be the headline on the front page, Mr. Hindmarsh said. Surrendered last night at 8:41 Toronto time would be printed beneath that, just above a summary of the official signing of the surrender in a schoolhouse in Reims, France. On the bottom right corner of the front page was a column beneath another headline:
40,000,000 CASUALTIES AS EUROPE WAR ENDED
I knew too many of them.
Ian, his hair mussed and a pencil tucked behind his ear, paused by my desk a while later and set a coffee in front of me. “Looks like you could use this.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” I told him, wrapping my fingers around the cup.
“I have to look after my fiancée,” he said, winking.
“I’m surprised you have the time to even pour coffee,” I teased. “What does Mr. Hindmarsh have you working on?”
“I’m waiting on a call from the prime minister’s office. Get his statement. What are you going to write?” he asked. “Something that elicits tears, I imagine.”
“I wouldn’t have to do anything if I wanted to do that, just underline the forty-million-casualties headline.”
He winced. “You’re not writing more about the Japanese, I hope.”
Lately I’d been educating myself more and more about events happening in the Far East. Germany always led the news, but I wanted to tell the world about what was happening because of Japan. Despite today’s momentous announcement, we were still at war.
“Not this time,” I told him. “I’m gonna write about Liam, Mark, and the other returning veterans.”
His lips tightened slightly. “Yeah, okay. But the rest of the world will be celebrating, you know. You don’t always have to play the guilt card and bring everyone down.”
I bristled. “It’s not guilt, Ian. It’s reality.”
He shrugged, then walked across the room to his own desk. Watching him go, I was more sure than ever that I’d picked the right topic. Ian might be in denial, not wanting to talk about it, but thousands of men were already returning here after unimaginable experiences. We needed to understand that.
I thought of Mr. Rabinowitz and his painful memories of the Great War, how they still lingered in his pale eyes decades later. So many veterans like him had wandered helplessly through life when they’d returned, never the same as before. Now another generation of survivors was coming home, and I was trying to learn everything I could about how to help them. They’d fought for us, and I planned to fight for them.
I thought of Liam. Of the permanent black line he had developed under his one good eye. Of the foot that never stopped tapping.
I thought of Mark. Of his empty trouser leg.
I thought of Jimmy, still out there somewhere. We hadn’t heard from him in weeks, and I tried not to think about why.
Both Mark and Jimmy had been in Normandy—Mark joked that Jimmy had buzzed right over his head and never stopped to say hello. Mark had lost his leg on the beach, and just thinking about that made me dizzy with sorrow for him. But Mark had always been the most practical of us all, and he was determined not to let a little thing like a missing leg get to him. He was a master on his crutches by the time he was released from his convalescence at the Toronto General Hospital, and he’d had no trouble making himself at home in our kitchen when he and Helen had come over for dinner that first time.
I remembered the moment he’d walked into the house, with Helen behind him, practically glowing with happiness. I stood behind my parents, waiting for my turn to greet my brother, and when his eyes touched on me, I thought I might burst. First, though, he went to Dad. I knew Dad
was unsure of how to approach his son; we’d had such a difficult time of it with Liam, and we were afraid to step past any boundaries we hadn’t figured out yet. So Dad stepped stiffly toward him, holding out his hand.
But Mark wasn’t put off. He reached for Dad’s hand then gestured to his cane. “Is that a new cane? I like it. Maybe I can get one like it when I’m done with these crutches.”
Ice broken, Mum moved to hug him, and when she pulled, back her cheeks were wet. She couldn’t look away from the space where Mark’s leg used to be.
“I’m all right, Mum,” Mark said. I could see how hard he was trying to keep things light, worried for our feelings. He amazed me. “It’s gonna save us some money, you know. I can use one pair of socks for twice as long.”
“Oh, you,” she cried, letting herself smile.
Then Mark turned to me, arms outstretched. “My big sister getting married. I thought I’d never live to see the day.”
I rushed to hold him while Mum and Dad ushered Helen in. “I had to wait until you were home,” I blubbered.
“I’m happy for you,” he whispered in my ear.
I studied his face, needing to know. “Are you?”
“Helen and I are taking it all in stride,” he said, a sad little twinkle in his eye. “Hey, where’s my baby brother?”
“I’m here,” Liam said, appearing in the doorway.
I saw the initial shock flash across Mark’s face, but he covered it swiftly, using his crutches to take a step forward. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? Come here. It’s still easier for you to come to me than for me to come to you,” he said.
Letters Across the Sea Page 21
