At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [61]
Then Amy McClellan had flown to Guam to join her husband on leave, and had returned home pregnant. That was much the way it had happened for Marilee, only for her and Jeff it had been four glorious weeks in Hawaii, the best time of her life. Neither woman had pretended her pregnancy was an accident. Even though they knew it would mean leaving Blackwell House before their babies were born, they were among the rare and lucky ones who had had the opportunity to seize new life from the hovering shadow of death. They did not waste it.
Amy had gone home to her parents in Indiana to await the birth of her child, and had later written to gush about her baby girl. Her husband was still serving in Europe. But Marilee, who was due in a mere ten weeks, was going to San Diego, where Jeff would be permanently stationed at the end of the month. She was the luckiest woman in the world.
“You’re the luckiest woman in the world. You know that, don’t you?”
Marilee grinned to hear her own thoughts echoed out loud, and she turned to see Penny standing at the door of the room, her arms and white cotton sock-clad ankles crossed, leaning against the jamb. Penny, so called because of her bright copper hair, was one of the three women with whom Marilee had shared this room for the past year, and it hadn’t taken long for them to become fast friends. Penny’s husband Bill was fighting in the South Pacific, too, just like Jeff. But Penny hadn’t seen her husband in eighteen months.
“First you get to go gallivanting off to Hawaii on an all-expenses-paid honeymoon courtesy of the United States government,” Penny went on, feigning annoyance, “and you stay there just long enough to make sure there’s a bun in the oven, mind you, then you come traipsing back here and expect us to welcome you home like nothing ever happened. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we barely get used to your snoring again before you’re off to San Diego.” She sighed elaborately. “Baby. Husband. White picket fence. What did you ever do to deserve all that?”
Marilee pinched off a wilting blossom from the bouquet of black-eyed Susans on the desk and playfully tossed it at Penny. “Comes from clean living and hard praying,” she returned. “Besides”—she sealed the envelope on her thank-you note, and tucked it carefully beneath the grosgrain ribbon with which she had wrapped the gift to Mrs. Blackwell—“I don’t think there are many picket fences in military housing.”
“That makes me feel ever so much better.” Penny picked up the tossed blossom and crossed the room to drop it into the wastebasket. “All packed? You didn’t forget the stationery, did you?”
The night before, the girls had given her a going-away party, using up almost all the sugar rations for the cake they’d baked, and even opening a purloined bottle of scuppernong wine. Mrs. Blackwell had pretended not to notice. Their going-away gift to her had been a box of scented writing paper delicately decorated with pansies in each corner, and they had made her promise to use it to write to them. Marilee had cried and hugged their necks, one by one, and told them she would never forget them, not ever. And it was true.
“I just wrote my first letter on it.” Marilee smiled as she carefully closed the box of stationery and rearranged the lavender ribbon with which it had been wrapped. “A thank-you