An online novel by Gillette Edmunds

Mrs. Fisher bit down on her bright dentures.

“Geeze,” Barbara said, “you don’t have to answer that. It was just a dumb question.”

Mrs. Fisher unsnapped her purse, took out a Kleenex and leaned across Barbara to wipe a spot off the window. “Tony Williams was the boy I loved,” she said gently squeaking circles on the glass. “In 1944 he enlisted. Fred was his best friend, but Fred had paralysis on his left side and the army wouldn’t take him. We all worked in Fred’s father’s restaurant. I was a waitress. I was 26 when Tony left. He was 28. Tony was the manager and Fred ran the kitchen. The manager wasn’t supposed to go out with the waitresses but we did.”

She leaned back from the window and snapped the dirty tissue into her gray purse. Looking at the back of the seat in front of her she continued. “The night he left, we did what we shouldn’t have done. I felt I was pregnant the next morning. Fred was the only one I could tell. He and Tony had plans for opening their own restaurant when the war ended. Tony died two days after they landed in Italy. Fred proposed to marry me the day we got the telegram. I shouldn’t have and I did.”

Turning to Barbara with her arthritic fingers pinching her purse top, she continued, “It was a relief when Fred died, Barbara. It’s true. Last year I sold the whole chain of restaurants and now I’m going to travel and have a new life. You’ll be fine without your husband, Barbara.”

Barbara hadn’t looked at Mrs. Fisher while she talked but had stared over the cleaning motions of the shorter woman at the approaching sea and then through the cleaned window.

“Have you ever been to Italy before?” Barbara asked her, beginning to see the white caps on the rolling blue sea.