Nancy managed to keep the tears back. She managed it through opening the box, through the sudden painful stop of her heart at the words he'd written. Words like war and gone and afraid and heartsick and die. She managed to shove it all down tight and keep it contained until she pulled the roadster into the driveway at Ned's parents' house and scrambled out, not caring that her skirts had risen to an undignified inch above her knee, that the box he'd sent her was still clutched tight in her right hand, the corner sharp against her palm.

His mother opened the door with a sheet of ragged paper in one hand and a handkerchief tight in the other, but by then Nancy's cheeks were wet. So were Edith's.

"You got it too," Nancy gasped back another sob, and Edith nodded, and then pulled her into her arms.

Eventually the tears had to stop, and in the lull Edith made them both small strong cups of tea and they sat at the kitchen table, not quite looking at each other. Nancy had refolded the letter and put it back into its torn envelope. No eyes but hers were allowed to see those letters. She kept glancing at the sheet of paper at Edith's own elbow, each time feeling the small start of her heart at recognizing Ned's handwriting again.

"I realized," Nancy said, looking down at the fine creamy cap of foam on her tea as it grew cooler, "that I—it's so stupid," she said, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, willing a fresh wave of tears back. "Part of me believed that he would never really go. That he'd be in training and then they would announce that it was all over, and I thought, I thought I was almost okay with him being gone, but at least he was safe. And now." She shook her head.

"I know," Edith said softly. "He's our only son. He wasn't, it wasn't supposed to happen like this."

Nancy smiled as she remembered Ned's words, Edith asking when she'd become their daughter in law. "He's special to me," Nancy whispered. "I don't know... if you ever knew that."

"I knew," Edith said quietly. "I just wasn't sure if you did."

The shadows grew longer and Edith began her preparations for dinner, but Nancy's head was pounding so with the headache borne of hard tears that she couldn't bring herself to attempt the drive home. "Go lay down, child," Edith told her, and Nancy went upstairs to where the heat moved in thick waves over her skin and his was just another in the line of closed doors.

Her heartbeat matched the pounding in her head when she very quietly turned the doorknob and very quietly stepped into his still bedroom. Just for a second. If the scent of him had faded, if the comfort she had found here had only been the drowsed hallucination of a waking dream, she wasn't sure she could take it. Slowly she sat on the edge of his bed, on the unwrinkled comforter, slipped out of her shoes,

take off your shoes

and pushed her bent elbow under the cool smooth weight of his pillow.

She could still smell him there.

She cried again, so hard, so very hard. She cried into the pillow, against the palm she had sandwiched between to keep the smear of her lipstick off his linens and away from his mother's curious eyes. She cried until her head pounded even harder and her lungs ached with the force of it and she felt swelled and aching and exhausted.

Distantly she heard his father come home, heard Edith's muted greeting. She curled her fingers under the collar of her dress and pulled out a heavy gold chain, sliding down to the weight of the ring which had lain just over her heart.

The gift he had promised in his last letter.

She wrapped her fingers around it and held it tight, pulling her knees up to her chest. His ring. She jealously guarded the handkerchief he had given her that first afternoon, it was still streaked a rust-red with their mingled blood, but this.

She knew what it was to wear his ring. She knew what it would mean, if his parents, her father and Hannah, Bess and George, saw it. She wasn't ready for the questions in their eyes, the assumptions of the depth of their relationship when they had barely admitted it to each other...

She sat up, her heels dangling just above the floor, and looked around the room with her eyes swimming. Every second she remained here was another that his parents could walk in and find her, but she couldn't make herself leave just yet. She tucked the ring back under her dress and let her gaze trail over the pennants and trophies.

A newsprint photo in a gold-plated frame caught her eye.

She hated publicity. If she could find any way to shift the credit to someone else, she always did. But that case had found her with Ned in front of the newspaper photographers, and before she could protest or hide, the flashbulbs had been going off. Local detective solves baffling case. Ned had been caught in the middle of a grin, his head bent toward hers, in grainy black and white.

That's where you belong, by my side, she thought, resting her fingertip just above the glass. Ned, please, please, come back to me.

"We'd be happy to have you stay for dinner, Nancy," his mother said, after a brisk face wash and reapplication of her lipstick and her return to his parents' company.

"If it's not too much trouble..."

James smiled. "It's never too much trouble to have you here."

Even though she called Hannah and her father and told them that she would be staying late, when Nancy pulled up at her father's house, the porch light was still burning, and through the open screen she could see the light still on in the kitchen. In the shadows of the porch she pulled out Ned's ring and held it in her clenched fist, then tucked it back under her dress and walked inside.

"Nancy?"

"Hi Dad," she called back, locking the door behind her, flipping off the porch light. "I told you that you didn't have to wait for me."

"Humor your father," he said, appearing in the doorway in his blue bathrobe, a mug in his hand. "So you had dinner with Ned's parents?"

She nodded, pulling off her gloves finger by finger, folding them and slipping them into her purse, hanging up her coat. "I made sure to call Hannah in plenty of time, though."

"Don't worry about that." Mr. Drew walked over to the couch and settled at one end, patting the cushion next to him. "Hannah said you seemed upset earlier."

Nancy sat down beside her father and folded her hands in her lap and stared at them, unable to lift her head and look at her father. "I'm okay now," she said.

"What happened?"

"Ned sent me a letter, and," she cleared her throat, willing the ache to go away. "He finished his training and... he's probably already over there right now. Tonight."

Her father slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. "Are you all right?"

She sniffed. "I don't know," she whispered.

"Nancy... I know that you and Ned were spending a lot of time together, just before he went to training... and we talked about your... relationship with him."

Nancy felt the ring pressing against her breastbone. "We did," she agreed, fighting to keep her voice even.

"Did something change?"

I'm in love with him, he's in love with me, I swore that I'd wait for him to come back. He sent me his ring, the ring his father passed down to him, when he knew that he might never see me again, but I'm afraid to wear it in front of you and I'm afraid of what you'll say.

She forced a smile, and turned to look at her father. "I just... I've realized that I care for him. More than any of the other escorts I've had."

"You know, Bess came over here today, and as heartbroken as you look right now, I think she almost looked worse."

"Bess came over here today?"

"While you were over at the Nickersons'. Nancy... did you..."

She lifted her hand and smoothed her hair back before she turned to him with a smile. "Yes?"

He met her gaze for a moment, then shook his head. "Never mind," he murmured, then patted her shoulder. "It'll be okay, Nancy. You know that."

She sat on the couch for a long time after he went to bed, her eyes gleaming, and when she dreamed, she dreamed of him.

"Is Bess home?"

Nancy remembered too late the admonishment and her best friend's new name, but Mrs. Marvin was far too distracted to correct Nancy. "Come on in, Nancy. Would you like something to drink?"

"Water's fine, ma'am."

Nancy had not been able to force herself to leave her bed until Hannah actually came upstairs, pulled back the curtains, and told her that life wasn't going to stop just because she wanted it to. They had fruit and vegetables to can, and Nancy had already promised to help.

She had begged off for an hour to go see Bess, and now, under the thin calico, she could feel the ring pressing into her skin every time she took another breath.

She hadn't yet been able to sit down and write an answering letter to Ned. Mostly because when she thought about what he had written and where he was, and why his ring was resting against her skin, she couldn't breathe, and her head was filled with the high thin keening of grief. But Bess—

Elizabeth, Elizabeth, she corrected herself in the privacy of her own head,

had the ring, even if she had never had the luxury of thinking that she and Tommy had all the time in the world to be together.

She had never thought she would wake up one morning this way, with Ned so far away from her. He'd always been there, she had never questioned it, had never doubted it. He had joked that he would marry her one day, that she was the only girl he'd ever wanted, but that life, that level of commitment, was years away.

At least, she had thought it was. Until he had taken her arm in his hand and drawn the blade across her skin.

She hadn't even been able to tell Bess and George, her best friends, what had happened between them. It was beyond speech, beyond explanation, and even now, thinking of it, her cheeks burned, her skin burned where it remembered the touch of his.

"Nancy?"

Nancy startled, her lips parted, and turned to see Mrs. Marvin's tired smile.

"She's feeling a bit under the weather, dear, but she wants to see you."

Nancy read the restrained worry in Mrs. Marvin's eyes, and gave her a reassuring smile. "I won't keep her long."

Bess was in her bed, tucked in securely, her face as white as the pillowcase under her straw-blonde hair. Nancy looked around the room, the same space she and Bess and George had lay on their stomachs listening to the radio, playing with paper dolls and telling each other's futures.

"Hey," Nancy said gently, and Bess turned to her, managing a wan smile with a curve of her pale lips.

"Hey," Bess returned, shifting, then winced. "I'm sorry. I was feeling better yesterday, and I came to see you..."

"Dad told me, and I was sorry to have missed you." Nancy sat down on the side of Bess's bed, looking down at her friend. "You haven't felt well for a while now."

Bess shook her head and winced. "Mother's worried about me. I think tomorrow she'll probably call the doctor and have him come here."

"I'm so sorry."

"Will you do me a favor?" Bess asked, her voice weak and feeble, and almost immediately Nancy answered.

"Of course. I'll do anything."

Bess's hand moved against the sheet. "I've been trying to write Tommy for a few days now, but I have a dizzy spell every time I pick up a pen. Would you mind terribly writing him for me?"

Nancy wrote the letter Bess dictated, and when Mrs. Marvin came to linger in the doorway, the air of a mother hen about her, Nancy made her goodbyes and walked slowly back to her own house and the promise of Hannah on the back porch, in her apron, sorting through the vegetables, her fingers worn red and sore.

Instead, Hannah was taking a break, fanning herself on the other side of the screen, and Nancy brought her the second glass of lemonade she had poured without even asking.

"Bless you, child."

Nancy sat down in the other rocking chair, the heat close as a second skin, her fingers sliding cool down the chilled edge of the glass. She watched Hannah rock from the corner of her eye.

"I'll be upstairs for a minute."

"So I should come get you when I'm ready to start again?"

Nancy smiled faintly. "Yes. Please do."

When she reached her room, Nancy locked the door behind her, then drew the chain up and freed the ring, still warm from resting against her skin. She looked down at it for a long moment before she slipped it onto her finger, and held it tight with her fist as she went over to her desk.

This time the words came easy, and she wrote until the light began to fail, until she could smell dinner from downstairs and hear her father's footsteps on the front porch.

"Nancy!"

She threaded the chain back through the ring, tucking it under her dress before she called back.

"I'll be right there."

The last thing she saw before closing her bedroom door was the portrait she prayed over every night, standing on her bedside table, the smiling face of the man she loved.