She couldn’t imagine never seeing him again; she couldn’t release Dawson to become nothing but a memory. Fate—in the form of Tuck—had intervened, and as she started walking toward the cottage she knew there’d been a reason for it. All of this had to mean something. The past was gone, after all, and the future was the only thing they had left.
As Dawson had predicted, the front door was unlocked. Entering the small house, Amanda’s first thought was that this had been Clara’s refuge.
Though it had the same scuffed pine flooring, cedar walls, and general layout as the house in Oriental, here there were brightly colored pillows on the couch and black-and-white photographs artfully arranged on the walls. The cedar planking had been sanded smooth and painted light blue, and the large windows flooded the room with natural light. There were two white built-in bookshelves, filled with books and interspersed with porcelain figurines, something Clara had obviously collected over the years. An intricate handmade quilt lay over the back of an easy chair, and there wasn’t a trace of dust on the country-style end tables. Floor lamps stood on either side of the room, and a smaller version of the anniversary photograph perched near the radio in the corner.
Behind her, she heard Dawson step into the cottage. He stood silently in the doorway, holding his jacket and her bag, seemingly at a loss for words.
She couldn’t hide her own amazement. “It’s something, isn’t it?”
Dawson slowly took in the room. “I’m wondering if I brought us to the wrong house.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, pointing to the picture. “It’s the right place. But it’s pretty obvious that this place was Clara’s, not his. And that he never changed it.”
Dawson folded his jacket over the back of a chair, setting Amanda’s bag alongside it. “I don’t remember Tuck’s house ever being this clean. I figure that Tanner must have hired someone to get the place ready for us.”
Of course he did, Amanda thought. She recalled Tanner mentioning his plans to come here, and his instructions that they wait until the day after their meeting to make the trip. The unlocked door only confirmed her suspicions.
“Have you already seen the rest of the place?” he asked.
“Not yet. I was too busy trying to figure out where Clara let Tuck sit down. It’s pretty obvious she never let him smoke in here.”
He thumbed over his shoulder, in the direction of the open door. “Which explains the chair on the porch. That’s probably where she made him sit.”
“Even after she was gone?”
“He was probably afraid that her ghost would show up and scold him if he lit up inside.”
She smiled, and they set off to tour the cottage, brushing up against each other as they navigated through the living room. Just as in the house in Oriental, the kitchen was at the rear, overlooking the river, but here the kitchen was all about Clara, too, from the white cabinets and intricate scrollwork in the moldings to the blue-and-white tile backsplash above the counters. There was a teapot on the stove and a vase of wildflowers on the counter, obviously plucked from the garden out front. A table nestled beneath the window; on it stood two bottles of wine, red and white, along with two sparkling glasses.
“He’s getting predictable now,” Dawson commented, taking in the bottles.
She shrugged. “There are worse things.”
They admired the view of the Bay River through the window, neither of them saying anything more. As they stood together, Amanda basked in the silence, comforting in its familiarity. She could sense the slight rise and fall of Dawson’s chest as he breathed, and she had to suppress the urge to reach for his hand again. In unspoken agreement they turned from the window and continued their tour.
Across from the kitchen was a bedroom centered by a cozy four-poster bed. The curtains were white and the bureau had none of the dings and scratches of Tuck’s furniture back in Oriental. There were two matching crystal lamps, one on each of the nightstands, and an Impressionist landscape painting hung on the wall opposite the closet.
Connected to the bedroom was a bathroom with a claw-foot tub, the kind that Amanda had always wanted. An antique mirror hung above the sink, and she caught sight of her reflection next to Dawson’s, the first time she’d seen an image of them together since they’d returned to Oriental. It occurred to her that in all the time they’d been teenagers, they’d never once been photographed as a couple. It had been something they’d talked of doing but had never gotten around to.
She regretted it now, but what if she’d had a photo to keep? Would she have tucked it away in a drawer and forgotten it, only to rediscover it every few years? Or would she have stored it somewhere special, a place known only to her? She didn’t know, but seeing Dawson’s face next to hers in the bathroom mirror felt distinctly intimate. It had been a long time since anyone had made her feel attractive, but she felt that way now. She knew that she was drawn to Dawson. She reveled in the way his gaze traveled over her, and the graceful ease of his body; she was acutely aware of their almost primal understanding of each other. Though it had been only a matter of days, she trusted him instinctively and knew she could tell him anything. Yes, they’d argued on that first night over dinner and again about the Bonners, but there’d also been an unvarnished honesty in what they’d said. There were no hidden meanings, no secret attempts to pass judgment; as quickly as their disagreements had flared up, they’d passed.
Amanda continued to study Dawson in the mirror. He turned and caught her gaze in the reflection. Without looking away, he gently reached out to smooth back a stray lock of hair that had fallen across her eyes. And then he was gone, leaving her with the certainty that whatever the consequences, her life had already been irrevocably altered in ways she’d never imagined possible.
After she retrieved her bag from the living room, Amanda found Dawson in the kitchen. He’d opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. He handed one of them to her, and they made their way wordlessly to the porch. Dark clouds at the horizon had rolled in, bringing with them a light mist. On the sloping, wooded bank that led to the river, the foliage took on a deep green vibrancy.
Amanda set her wine aside and rummaged through her bag. She pulled out two of the envelopes, handing the one with Dawson’s name to him and holding the other, the one they were meant to read before the service, in her lap. She watched as Dawson folded his envelope and slipped it into his back pocket.
Amanda offered him the blank envelope. “Are you ready for this yet?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Do you want to open it? We’re supposed to read it prior to the ceremony.”
“No, you go ahead,” he said, moving his chair closer. “I’ll read it from here.”
Amanda lifted the corner of the seal, then gently pried it open. Unfolding the letter, Amanda was struck by the scrawl on the pages. Here and there, words were crossed out, and the uneven lines exhibited a general shakiness, reflecting Tuck’s age. It was long, three pages front and back, making her wonder how long it had taken him to write it. It was dated February 14 of this year. Valentine’s Day. Somehow that seemed appropriate.
“You ready?” she asked.
When Dawson nodded, Amanda leaned in and both of them began to read.
Amanda and Dawson,
Thank you for coming. And thank you for doing this for me. I didn’t know who else to ask.
I’m not much of a writer, so I guess that the best way to start is to tell you that this is a love story. Mine and Clara’s, I mean, and while I suppose I could bore you with all the details of our courtship or the early years of our marriage, our real story—the part that you’ll want to hear—began in 1942. By then, we’d been married three years, and she’d already had her first miscarriage. I knew how much that hurt her, and I hurt, too, because there was nothing I could do. Hardships drive some people apart. Others, like us, grow even closer.
But I’m drifting. Happens a lot when you get older, by the way. Just wait and see.
It was 1942, like I said, and for our anniversary that year, we went to see For Me and My Gal, with Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. It was the first time either of us had ever seen a flicker show, and we had to drive clear to Raleigh to do it. When it was over, we just sat there in the seats after the lights came up, thinking about it. I doubt you’ve ever seen it, and I won’t trouble you with the details, but it’s about a man who maims himself to avoid going off to the Great War, and then has to woo back the woman he loves, a woman who now believes him to be a coward. By then, I’d received my draft notice from the Army, so there were parts of it that hit home a little bit since I didn’t want to leave my girl to go to war, either, but neither of us wanted to think about that. Instead, we talked about the title song, which had the same name as the flicker show. It was the catchiest, prettiest thing either of us had ever heard. On the drive home, we sang it over and over. And a week after that, I enlisted in the Navy.
It’s kind of strange, since, as I said, I was about to be drafted into the Army, and knowing what I do now, the Army probably would have been a better fit, considering what I do with engines and the fact that I didn’t know how to swim. I might have ended up in the motor pool making sure the trucks and jeeps could roll through Europe. Armies can’t do much if vehicles ain’t running, right? But even though I was nothing but a country boy, I did know that the Army puts you where it wants, not where you want to go, and by then folks knew it was only a matter of time before we hit Europe for good. Ike had just gone into North Africa. They needed infantry, men on the ground, and as excited as I was about the thought of taking on Hitler, the thought of joining the infantry just didn’t sit with me.
At the enlistment office, they had this recruiting poster on the wall. For the Navy. Man the Guns, it said. It showed a shirtless seaman loading a shell, and something about it just spoke to me. I can do that, I thought to myself, so I walked over to the Navy desk, not the Army’s, and signed up right there. When I got home, Clara cried for hours. Then she made me promise to come back to her. And I promised her I would.
I went through basic training and ordinance school. Then, in November 1943, I got posted to the USS Johnston, a destroyer out in the Pacific. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that being in the Navy was less dangerous than being in the Army or the marines. Or less terrifying. You’re at the mercy of the ship, not your own wits, because if the ship went down, you died. If you went overboard, you died, because none of the convoys would risk stopping to rescue you. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and the idea that you have no control at all just gets into your head and it sticks there. In my time in the Navy, I was never so scared in my life. Bombs and smoke everywhere, fires on the deck. Meanwhile, the guns are booming and the noise is like nothing you’ve ever heard. Thunder times ten, maybe, but that doesn’t describe it. In the big battles, Japanese Zeros strafed the deck continually, the shots ricocheting all over the place. While this is going on, you’re supposed to keep doing your job, like nothing unusual is happening.
In October 1944, we were cruising near Samar, getting ready to help lead the invasion of the Philippines. We had thirteen ships in our group, which sounds like a lot, but aside from the carrier, it was mainly destroyers and escorts, so we didn’t have much firepower. And then, on the horizon, we saw what seemed like the entire Japanese fleet coming toward us. Four battleships, eight cruisers, eleven destroyers, hell-bent on sending us to the bottom of the sea. I heard later that someone said we were like David against Goliath, except we didn’t even have a slingshot. And that’s about right. Our guns couldn’t even reach them when they opened fire. So what do we do? Knowing we didn’t stand a chance? We engaged. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, they call it now. Went straight for them. We were the first ship to start firing, the first to launch smoke and torpedoes, and we took on both a cruiser and a battleship. Did a lot of damage, too. But because we were out front, we were the first to go dead in the water. A pair of enemy cruisers closed in and began firing, and then we went down. There were 327 men on board, and 186 men, some of them close friends, died that day. I was one of the 141 that made it out alive.
I’ll bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you this—you’re probably thinking I’m drifting again—so I might as well get to it. On the raft, with this big battle raging all around us, I realized that I wasn’t afraid anymore. All of a sudden, I knew I’d be okay because I knew that Clara and I weren’t done yet, and this feeling of peace just came over me. You can call it shell shock if you want, but I know what I know, and right there, under an exploding sky filled with gun smoke, I remembered our anniversary from a couple of years ago and I started singing “For Me and My Gal,” just like Clara and I did on the car ride home from Raleigh. Just boomed it out at the top of my lungs, like I didn’t have a care in the world, because I knew that somehow Clara could hear me, and she’d understand that there was no reason to worry. I’d made her a promise, you see. And nothing, not even going down in the Pacific, was enough to stop me from keeping it.
Crazy, I know. But like I said, I got rescued. I got reassigned to a crew ship and hauled marines to Iwo Jima the next spring. Next thing I knew, the war was over and I was home. I didn’t talk about the war when I got back. I couldn’t. Not a single word. It was just too painful and Clara understood that, so little by little, we settled back into our lives. In 1955, we started building the cottage here. I did most of the work myself. One afternoon, just after I’d finished up for the day, I walked toward Clara, who was knitting in the shade. And I heard her singing “For Me and My Gal.”
I froze, and the memories of the battle came racing back. I hadn’t thought about that song in years, and I’d never told her what happened on the raft that day. But she must have seen something in my expression because she looked up at me.