We spent the hours of the second leg of our journey reminiscing about Ralph and talking about the things that we had appreciated about him.
“He was a good friend, in his own way,” I said quietly. Most of the cabin was asleep and the lights were dim around us. “He really did want to make things right for me. He was the only one who ever said aloud that what happened to me and my family was wrong. He was the only one willing to do something about it.”
Hugh nodded and looked down at my left hand. At the rings Ralph had given me.
“What will you do now?” he asked.
In his voice I heard a thread of desire for me, a fervent hope that I would stay. At least, I wanted to believe that’s what it was. I wouldn’t know for sure until I asked him.
“Do you think I should leave the house? Get my own place?”
He didn’t look up. “Is that what you want?”
“No.”
He inhaled quietly and let the breath out. “Why not?”
What I said next took courage, but I knew this was the time to say it. This was the time to find out if I was right about Hugh and his feelings for me.
“Don’t you know?” I said softly.
Hugh lifted his gaze to look at me.
“Yes,” he whispered, and he took my hand. “I think I do.”
We said nothing more, perhaps because it was too new and Ralph’s death too fresh. But Hugh continued to hold my hand as in this warm silence we got used to the idea that our lives were surely now forever linked. We were still holding hands when sleep finally claimed us and when our plane landed.
* * *
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Hugh had made arrangements at a hotel, a very nice one that had been spared during the Allied bombing. He asked me to wait for him there while he attended to the paperwork and arrangements necessary to positively identify and claim Ralph’s body, to have it fitted for a casket and then kept cool until we left. I was happy to let him do these things. We ate in the hotel’s restaurant that night and went up to our separate rooms early, as we were both exhausted from travel and grief and the force of affection that was tugging on us.
The next day, my parents and Max arrived. Although they looked the same—Max was maybe a little taller—I didn’t feel at all like the Elise who had left them six months earlier. I’m sure I didn’t come across as that same girl. Mama watched me closely from the moment we embraced. I think she could tell I wasn’t devastated by Ralph’s death. I was sad, but not devastated. She didn’t ask why, possibly because I’d suffered so many losses already—for which she still felt largely responsible—and so she was relieved that I wasn’t. Papa, however, was desperate to understand why Ralph had left on his trip barely a month into our marriage. It made no sense to him. I told him that even though the war was over, Ralph still had unfinished business with it, and that I had encouraged him to go to take care of it. The war had changed all of us, was still changing us. This was something I thought my father would understand.
“His wanting to go on this trip had nothing to do with me,” I told my father. “Ralph needed to go, and I understood why. He didn’t know this would happen.”
“But you’re so young. The two of you had barely begun your lives together,” Papa replied sadly, as though mourning the death of yet another dream of mine.
“I’ll be all right, Papa,” I said. He shook his head, as if conflicted. He wanted to believe me, yet he didn’t. He no doubt thought I’d grown too used to dashed dreams.
On our last day, my father told me he had been offered a teaching job in Munich and that he was going to accept. He’d see to it that there would be room for me in Munich if I wanted to move back home, but I think he already knew I wasn’t going to take him up on his offer. I wanted to tell him there was something good and wonderful waiting for me in California, but it was too soon to tell him about Hugh. It was too soon to tell anyone. I told Papa instead that I’d become very close to Ralph’s family, and that with their care, I was finding my way, even through my grief. When I said this, my mother, who was sitting next to Papa, smiled ever so slightly. Knowingly. This time there was no question that she looked relieved. She’d apparently been watching Hugh closely, too. She’d been watching us both.
I promised to try to come to Munich to see them at the holidays or maybe Easter the following year, if I could arrange for it. I had not talked about finances with Hugh or anyone else yet, but I was hoping that Ralph’s death had not drastically changed things for me. On the plane home, with Ralph’s casket in the baggage hold below us, I asked Hugh what I should expect with regard to money to live on.
“Will I need to get a job?” I asked.
“Not if you don’t want to,” he said. “Ralph had to make a will when he left to fight in the war. He left it with me. It was a standard boilerplate document that probably every nineteen-year-old in his platoon signed. It provides for any future spouse and children there might be at time of death. You will inherit his money and the trust fund.”
My initial thought at hearing this was not that I would never have to worry about money ever again, but what Frances would think.
“Will your mother be very angry about that?” I asked.
Hugh took my hand. “If Mother says anything unkind to you about the money, it is only her terrible way of telling you she is grieving the loss of a son. Don’t take what she says right now to heart. I think in her own way, she has grown to care about you, Elise. Irene has, too. And the children. And then of course there’s me.”
And in his sapphire stare I saw the look he gave me on the dance floor on my birthday.
I smiled. “Yes. There is. I’m so glad.”
He leaned toward me then and kissed me. It was the first time I had ever been kissed like that. It was the kiss of romantic love, and that kind of kiss is not like any other. It was both tender and tantalizing, sweet and sensual, simple and complex. When our lips parted, there was no apology from either one of us. He was not sorry he had kissed his brother’s widow, and I was not sorry that I had wanted him to.
“I want you to know something,” he said quietly, our heads close together.
“Yes?”
“I want you to know this before anything else happens so that you can still walk away if you want.”
I waited.
“The woman I was engaged to before, her name was Helen. I really did love her, but it was so very long ago. I want you to know I don’t think of Helen anymore.”
“Okay,” I said, not needing to hear this, but understanding he needed to say it.
“And I want you to know why she broke it off.” He paused a moment. “I have some health issues. My heart . . . my heart is not strong. It’s never been strong. I was born with a defect that no doctor can fix. It has led to other problems that I’ve had to have treatment for. The treatment was harsh, and I’m not altogether sure I can give any woman a child.”
Hugh paused, letting his confession settle on us both.
“Is that why she left you? Because she wanted children?”
“That, and she decided she wanted a healthy husband after all. She was afraid. Afraid I would die young and leave her a widow.”
“Oh.” I glanced down at my hand where my wedding ring from Ralph encircled my finger. I thought of everything that had happened to me before I’d slipped it on. I, too, had been afraid. I knew what fear was. I had lived with it all the months of the war and beyond. It was powerful and resolute. But I also knew what love was. Love was powerful, too. And as stubborn as fear. Love was brave, though. Fear, by virtue of what it was, could never be that. True love didn’t know how to stop loving. Fear was always ready for a break, a distraction, a way out. Love wasn’t. I was done with fear.
I looked up at Hugh. “I’m not afraid,” I said.
“I’m twelve years older than you,” he murmured.
“I’m not afraid.”
He kissed me again.
* * *
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