Francine’s voice came back over the line. “I think you should talk to this guy, Kate.” She lowered her voice. “I know I’d be ready to listen to his story if I was the reporter.”
“Good-looking guy, huh?” Francine didn’t have a fellow, but she wanted to.
“He’s wearing a uniform.”
“A soldier?” Again she heard the deeper tones of a man’s voice. Even though Kate couldn’t make out any words, a tremble started up in her.
Francine’s smile was easy to hear in her voice. “He says to tell you that maybe his story isn’t right for a big-city newspaper after all. Maybe he needs to go find a Rosey Corner reporter. One who likes to dance.”
Kate dropped the phone and took off for the stairs.
“Whoa, Kate. Where’s the fire?” Tommy yelled after her.
“In my heart.”
Her heart was on fire. She fought her way down the steps that were holding her back from Jay. It had to be Jay. Earlier than she expected. But never too early.
She’d planned to put on her fanciest dress, pin up her hair, and look her best when she met the train. But what difference did any of that make? Not when, if she could only move faster, he might be right in front of her eyes. Now!
She swept around a corner and bumped into Wilma, Gus Black’s secretary. The jostle knocked the file folder out of the woman’s hands. Papers scattered all over the floor.
“My word, Kate. Slow down.” She frowned and grabbed Kate’s arm.
“Can’t. Big story.” Kate jerked away from her. “Sorry. Really.” The door was in sight at the end of the corridor. Jay was on the other side of that door. She knew he was.
“Something I can let Gus know about when I tell him why his letters have footprints on them? So he can get the big headline type ready?” Wilma called after Kate with a good measure of sarcasm.
“The biggest,” Kate said over her shoulder. “Jay’s here.”
Wilma’s frown disappeared. “Then why are you moving so slow? Get out there, girl, and chase that headline.” Her laugh followed Kate down the hallway.
Kate pulled open the door, and across the lobby beside Francine’s desk, a soldier turned toward her. Her soldier. A smile, the smile she knew so well, lit up his face. He took a step toward her as she practically flew across the floor and into his arms.
Kissing must be something a person didn’t forget how to do. Like riding a bicycle. Three long years since the last kiss, but their lips hadn’t forgotten. A warm feeling soaked through Kate until she thought she might simply melt in Jay’s arms. But she wanted to see him too, to let her eyes feast on his face. She wanted his voice in her ears.
She was so wrapped up in the joy of Jay’s arms around her that it was a minute before she heard the applause. Kate pulled back from Jay to look around. Francine was jumping up and down, clapping like a kid. Wilma joined in from the doorway behind Kate. Some guys from upstairs had paused on their way out the door to add their applause. Even a man and woman she’d never seen were cheering them on. They must have come in off the street to pick up a paper.
Jay kept his eyes on Kate. “I think they want an encore.”
“Definitely.”
Another kiss and then he lifted her up and spun her around. Happiness sparked off them to light up the room.
“I knew the promise of a big story would get you down here fast.” He set her back on her feet and stared down into her eyes. “Are you ready to go take some notes?”
“Ready,” she whispered. “Very ready. I’ve wanted to follow up on this story for a long time.”
“So, where’s your notebook?” His eyes were teasing her. The same Jay. The Jay she loved.
“Who needs a notebook? These notes will be written on my heart.”
Jay stared down into her eyes. “You are so beautiful.”
She felt beautiful with his eyes caressing her. Everything around them was forgotten as they stood there, wrapped in love.
“I love you, Jay Tanner.” She remembered how hard it had been for her to admit that before they married, but now the words bubbled out of her with ease.
“Let’s get out of here, Mrs. Tanner. We’ve got a story to chase.” Jay kept one arm around her as he picked up his duffel bag.
They waved as they went out the door, and more applause followed them out on the street.
Right on cue, a few snowflakes drifted down. Once before the war, they had danced in snow much like this, so now the snow seemed to be falling just for them.
“Do you hear the music?” Jay dropped his bag and reached for her hand.
“Oh yes. I hear it.”
He pulled her close and with fat snowflakes falling around them, they danced as if they owned the sidewalk. Snow caught in their hair and melted on their cheeks.
A kid ran up with Jay’s duffel bag to break the spell over them.
Jay laughed, tossed the boy a nickel, and grabbed Kate’s hand. “Let’s go home.”
Kate led the way down the street. Home, what a beautiful word. In all the time she’d lived in her apartment, she’d never once thought of it as home, only a place to sleep. But now with Jay climbing the stairs behind her, home awaited. And the music played on.
8
Something woke Jay. It didn’t take much. A man slept light on a battlefield. He started up and reached for his gun. Instead of hard metal, his hand touched soft hair on the pillow beside him. He wasn’t on a battlefield or even in a barracks. He was home. With Kate.
His heart slowed as he pulled in a deep breath and let the memories of war slide back into that black wasteland in his head where he willed them to stay. His fingers played through Kate’s hair as he stared down at her sleeping face. She had the blanket pulled up to her chin, gripping it for all she was worth. Once asleep, she didn’t share covers. He remembered that from their brief weeks together before he shipped out.
He smiled. As long as she shared everything else the way she had tonight. He folded his arms across his chest to keep from touching her face. He didn’t want to wake her. It was enough to feast his eyes on her lying there.
His homecoming had been everything he’d dreamed it would be. They belonged together. So what if they’d had to dodge a few obstacles in their path of love before they realized that. They did realize it now. The years apart didn’t matter. Her letters had let him get to know her in ways he might not have if they’d sat across the table from one another every morning.
He doubted she’d be able to say the same. Even if he had been as fluent with his pen, his letters couldn’t be like hers. The censors hadn’t let him say what he was doing or even where he was. All he could do was tell her how much he loved her and dreamed of home.
That was all he could tell her now. No need dragging the war back to America with him. He wanted to leave it over there. All of it.
A shaft of moonlight through the window fell on Kate’s face, and he wished for his camera to capture the sight of her there to keep forever. Then, in spite of his best efforts, the memories of the images he had caught forever on film for the Army poked him. Things too horrible to believe true, except the camera didn’t lie.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. He needed to move. Funny how he still felt strange without his gun slung over his shoulder and the camera around his neck. Both had been part of him for so long. When he stood up, he glanced back at Kate, wishing her eyes would open, but her breath whispered in and out, her sleep undisturbed by his movement.
Jay pulled on his pants and went to peer out the window at the street below, quiet in the deep of night. His bare feet made no sound on the wooden floor. Quiet was good, but he wasn’t used to it. Perhaps what had wakened him was the very quiet instead of a noise. He’d get used to it. Back in Rosey Corner, quiet was a nightly occurrence. Moonlight and quiet and Kate.
With his hands in his pockets, he leaned against the facing of the tall window and took in the spare furnishings of the room. He hadn’t noticed much but Kate and how she f
elt in his arms when he’d first bounded up the stairs behind her. Later they sat at the rickety card table and finished off every bit of food she had. That wasn’t much. A few apples. Crackers. Cheese. Some beans and peaches they ate straight from the can. She’d intended to stock up before his train came in, even planned to pick up a pie at the restaurant down the street. But all that was forgotten when he showed up early. Even then as they downed the food, he could barely tear his eyes away from her. Nothing else mattered. Not the food. Not the place. Not the hour of the day. Just her.
But now with her sleeping, he blocked out the leftover dregs of war by checking out her place. A lot of bare space. Nothing on the walls. No curtains. Obviously not somewhere she planned to stay long. The tiny kitchen barely had room for a two burner stove and a half-size refrigerator. The bathroom was even smaller, but the essential equipment was squeezed into it. The rest was one big room, bedroom and sitting room combined. Not that Kate had much in the way of sitting furniture. A couple of folding chairs, a wooden chair in front of a desk piled with books and papers. The bed, just a rail frame with mattress, dominated the room.
That was his Kate. No frills necessary. She was too busy chasing after life to care about frills in her surroundings. Books were her decorations. Plenty of those filled a bookcase fashioned out of bricks and unpainted planks. That was the first thing he’d noticed about her house in Rosey Corner. The books. And family.
Now, because of her, he had family. She was his family. Could be that even tonight they had made a baby. She wanted a baby. She told him he wanted a baby, but he wasn’t as sure about that. He wasn’t sure about anything except how very much he loved Kate Merritt Tanner and how glad he was to be her husband. The rest he’d figure out with time. The job. The place to live. Whether he had what it took to be a decent father.
Her eyes flickered open and she snaked a hand out from under the blanket toward his side of the bed. When he wasn’t there, she bolted up off her pillow. “Jay?”
“I’m here,” he said.
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“As right as right can be.” He stayed where he was by the window. “Just admiring the beauty in the moonlight.”
A smile played across her face. “I knew you were a charmer the first time I met you.”
“No fooling Kate Merritt. Best I remember, you were determined to not let me charm you.”
“I was. Very determined.”
“Of course, you were in love with Mike.”
She laughed. “The fantasies of youth. I had no idea what real love was then.”
“Do you now?”
“I’m learning,” she said. “How about you? Do you?”
“Maybe once you learn, you can teach me.”
“I’ve got an idea.” She held her arms out to him. “Maybe you can help me with my homework.”
Together in the bare little apartment with the street noises drifting up to them, Friday and Saturday passed in a breathless rush. They talked. They laughed. They bumped elbows in the tiny kitchen, cooking eggs and bacon. They ate apples and cheese in bed while reading aloud to one another. They shopped for Christmas presents to take to Rosey Corner and gave a man selling Christmas trees fifty cents for a skinny cedar tree.
“Wait until Graham hears we paid good money for a cedar tree.” Kate laughed as they propped the tree up in the window. “We’ll never hear the last of it.”
“But it smells like Christmas, doesn’t it?” Jay shook one of the branches to release some of the fragrance, and a shower of needles fell. “Might need a little water.”
“And a few thicker branches.” Kate stood back and studied the tree through narrowed eyes. “I’m not sure we got our money’s worth.”
“Four bits? Sure, we did,” Jay said. “Our first Christmas tree. Cheap at any price.”
They decked out the tree with a string of lights and shiny red balls. Kate popped popcorn and sat down with a needle and thread. Jay lay on the bed and watched as she tediously strung the popped kernels together. After fifteen minutes, two stuck fingers, and only about a foot of popcorn garland to show for her efforts, he got up and stuffed a handful of the popcorn in his mouth.
“Hey, you’re eating the decorations.” Kate laughed and reached for the bowl.
He grabbed it first. “The tree doesn’t need popcorn.” He held his hand out to her. “But I’ve always wanted to eat popcorn in bed by the light of a Christmas tree while the most beautiful girl in the world tells me what she wants for Christmas.”
Kate stuck the needle into the spool of thread and took his hand. “Popcorn in bed. Mama would tell us we might have mice in bed with us too after that.”
“I’ve slept with worse.” He pulled her close. “But never with better than my gorgeous wife. Now what is it you want to find under the tree on Christmas morning?” Jay kept the ring he’d bought in Virginia secret in his pocket, glad he’d gotten something for her then, because now he couldn’t bear to let Kate out of his sight long enough to shop.
“You,” Kate whispered. “Only you.”
“But you’ve already got me.”
“Sometimes Christmas comes early.”
Jay pulled the string on the light in the kitchen to turn it off. Outside the streetlights kept darkness at bay while inside the red lights on the Christmas tree cast a rosy glow over the room. “It does indeed, Mrs. Tanner. It does indeed.”
Sunday morning they got up early to drive to Rosey Corner in time for church. As much as he wanted to have his feet on Rosey Corner ground again, Jay regretted the end of their private time together. For two days they’d been totally wrapped up in one another. Now they were going to let others in. Life would be poking them with decisions to be made about what next.
Even sliding behind the wheel of his old car and wrapping his hands around the familiar steering wheel changed things. It felt good, but it made him realize how long he’d been gone. The fenders were rusty and the motor smoked a little when he pushed on the gas. “I wasn’t sure the old heap would still be running.”
“All the old heaps had to keep running since they weren’t making any new cars.” Kate ran her hand along the dash. “But they will now.”
“So that’s what you want for Christmas? A new car?”
“Shh.” Kate put her finger to her lips. “She might hear you. Sonny at the garage back home says he doesn’t know how she keeps running. He’s worked on her a few times when she got contrary.”
“Gone from horseshoeing to car repair in Rosey Corner. Who would have thought it?” Jay pulled out onto the road.
“Not Dad. He loved shaping iron, but he doesn’t fire up the forge these days. No reason to.”
“Right. You wrote he was shoeing people now.” Jay smiled over at her but she didn’t smile back. She was staring out at the road. “Is he all right?”
“He has this awful cough. He gets winded just walking home from the shop.”
Jay reached over to squeeze her hand. “He’ll feel better in the spring.”
“It’s a long time until spring.”
“I feel like it’s spring now with you beside me.” He looked over at her.
That made her smile. “Maybe you’d better watch the road instead.”
“If I have to.” He squeezed her hand again before putting it back on the steering wheel. “But what about Aunt Hattie? Doesn’t she have a magic elixir to fix him up?”
“She needs a magic elixir herself. Her rheumatism is working on her.” Kate sighed.
“How old is she now?”
“She turned eighty this year.”
“Fern still living with her or has she gone back to the woods?”
“Fern’s changed like everybody else. You’ll see. Mama likes to say everything changes except the Lord. And Daddy says war changes everybody.”
“You think it’s changed me?” Jay tightened his hands on the steering wheel, not sure how she’d answer. But whatever she said, there wasn’t a
ny doubt the war had changed him.
“Of course. You’re even more handsome than you were when you left.” She scooted across the seat to kiss his cheek. “How about me? How have I changed?”
“Let’s see.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. “You wear your skirts shorter, your lipstick brighter, your hair longer. Can’t say that you cook any better.”
She whacked his arm. “I can cook.”
“Popcorn, maybe.” He put his arm around her. He could drive with one hand fine out on the open road until time to shift gears. “But other than that, you haven’t changed a bit from the girl I fell in love with at my best friend’s wedding.”
“You didn’t fall in love with me that day.”
“Sure, I did. Don’t you remember I asked you to elope? And don’t you remember wanting to take me up on it?”
“In your dreams.”
“That we can agree on. You’ve always been in my dreams.”
Kate leaned her head on his shoulder. “I wish we could just keep driving forever.”
“You don’t want to go home?” Her words surprised him.
“I do. Yes, of course I do, but I’m not sure I’m ready to share you. Everybody will want to talk to you and I’ll have to help Mama in the kitchen.”
“We can turn around and go back to Lexington.” He could wait to put his feet on Rosey Corner ground. It wouldn’t go anywhere.
“No, no. Lorena is too excited about you coming home. And I’m sure Mama was up early this morning baking you a brown sugar pie.”
“I dreamed about those pies. Your mother is an angel.” Jay licked his lips. “Oh wait, that’s what Birdie says you are. Her angel sister.”
“She might not be so ready to call me that today after I’ve kept you to myself since Thursday. I’m surprised she didn’t find a way to get to Lexington to see you. She probably would have if Mama had let her. She thinks you hung the moon.”
“It will be fun to see her. To see all your family.”
“Your family too.” Kate poked a finger at his chest.
Love Comes Home Page 5