1022 Evergreen Place - Debbie Macomber [48]
Mack turned the page, silently read the entry, then glanced up. “‘I scrubbed the house. No letter from Jacob. I’m so afraid….’”
“Keep reading,” Mary Jo whispered. She had to know, and yet, at the same time, she didn’t think she could bear it if this man had died.
“For June 10 and 11, 1944, all it says is, ‘No letter.’” He flipped over the page.
“What about June 12?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Where does it pick up again?”
Mack started flipping pages again and then set the diary aside. “The rest of the book is blank,” he said.
“She wrote nothing more?” Mary Jo murmured. “He died, then. Jacob must’ve been killed on D-day.”
“We don’t know that for sure. Maybe we can access military records.”
“Maybe. Or what about looking for Elaine Manry?” she suggested. They might not find Joan, but they might be able to locate her sister.
“Did she mention Elaine’s married name?” Mack asked.
Mary Jo exhaled in frustration. “No, but then there wouldn’t be any reason to in her journal, would there?”
She knew she was overreacting, but she couldn’t help it. After reading Jacob’s beautiful love letters and Joan’s diary so full of longing and angst, she’d come to care deeply about these people. They weren’t just names on a page; they were real people who’d lived through a hellish time.
“I…I have to believe Jacob was killed,” she murmured, hardly able to say the words aloud. “It makes sense that if Joan didn’t hear anything after June 6, 1944, something happened to him. Why else would she leave the pages blank?”
“I still don’t think we should make that assumption,” Mack said.
“Jacob was a paratrooper,” she went on.
Mack nodded.
“The airborne units suffered tremendous losses.” She’d read about troops who parachuted behind enemy lines. One entire unit was mowed down when they landed in a town swarming with German troops. The thought of Jacob’s death felt like a personal loss.
“True, but—”
“I think I made the right assumption,” she said, close to tears. That was why she hadn’t read ahead in the diary. Because she knew. Deep down, she knew. This must be why Joan had hidden his love letters. It was too painful for her to see them.
“We’re just guessing here,” Mack reminded her.
“But how can we find out?” she asked.
Mack looked perplexed. “I don’t know, but I’ll work on it.”
“Maybe there’s a record of all the men buried in France.” Mary Jo had seen pictures of acre upon acre of white crosses on the rolling hills of Normandy. If Jacob had died in France, there was a good chance he’d been buried there.
“I’ll try to get that information,” Mack said. “We might also discover he’s not there.”
He seemed so optimistic, so eager to believe Jacob had survived the invasion.
“He might’ve been wounded,” Mary Jo said.
“Yeah. We wondered about that earlier, remember?”
She nodded. “Communication took a long time, so it could’ve been weeks before Joan learned what had happened to him.”
“Exactly,” Mack said.
She nodded, but the possibility that Jacob had never come back from the war was still very real to her.
Noelle began to cry, and before Mary Jo could reach for her, Mack stood and took her out of the infant seat.
“She’s teething,” Mary Jo said. “That’s why she’s been fussing lately. Plus it’s seven-thirty—time for bed.”
Mack rocked Noelle in his arms and soon the baby girl was smiling, drool dripping off her chin and onto her pink sleeper. “I should get her into her crib,” she said, feeling slightly guilty that she’d ignored her daughter this long, caught up in the drama of World War II.
“I’ll take care of the dishes,” he told her. They’d piled everything in the sink and on the counters.
Getting her brothers to help in the kitchen had always been a struggle, although they paid lip service to the concept of doing their share. Mack’s volunteering was a pleasant surprise.
“You don’t need to do that,” she said.
“Sure I do. My mom said if she cooked, she shouldn’t have to do the dishes. Dad agreed, so Linnette and I had kitchen duty every night.” He grinned wickedly. “Then Linnette and I left home,