As Bright as Heaven(66)
Maggie sat on her bed and patted the space next to her. I walked over and sat down.
She opened the box. All of Mama’s pretty things were in there. Necklaces, brooches, earbobs, hair combs, bracelets.
“Which one do you want for Christmas?” Maggie said.
At first I wanted to say that those were all Mama’s. But Mama is in heaven, where you don’t need jewelry.
I had always liked the hat pin with the blue butterfly. It has a sharp point at the bottom, though, so Mama never let me touch it. That was what I wanted. The butterfly hat pin. I pointed to it.
“It’s yours, Willa. Merry Christmas.”
I felt a smile tug at me, and I lifted the hat pin from the velvety place where it had been lying. It felt warm in my hands. And not dangerous at all. I ran my finger across the butterfly’s silvery blue wings. Each side looked like half a heart.
I looked up at Maggie. “Which one do you want?”
Maggie looked into the box. She took out a cameo pin. The little lady made of white had pretty hair, all piled on her head like a queen. Mama told me once her grandmother had given her that pin.
“And Evie?” I said.
“Which one do you think Evie would like?” Maggie said.
I pointed to a hair comb with pale roses on it. I knew Evie had just gotten two new hair combs, but they weren’t like this one. This one had been Mama’s.
“Perfect,” Maggie said, and she handed it to me. “Let’s go put it by her bed so she will see it when she comes upstairs tonight. You can take some of your drawing paper and color a little Christmas tree and I’ll write, ‘Merry Christmas, Evie. With love, from Mama,’ on it.”
So we did.
Then I took the hat pin to my room. I sat with it for a while. I got my new doll out from under my bed, and I slid the pin into her curls. So now she has a sparkly butterfly in her hair. And she looks beautiful.
CHAPTER 44
? January 1919 ?
Maggie
Finally, finally, I’ve a new letter from Jamie. It’s been so long since the last one, so very long. I’d hoped Jamie might write home right after the armistice or after he got the notice about Charlie, but it wasn’t until nearly Christmas that he finally wrote to his parents. Dora Sutcliff showed me that letter. It was short. Jamie had gotten word that Charlie had died and he was so very sorry and he wished he could have been there when his brother was laid to rest.
He didn’t say much of anything else in that letter. Not how he was. Not where he had been when the Germans surrendered. Not why he hadn’t written anybody in weeks and weeks. Not even when he was coming home. He didn’t seem like he was himself. It was like someone else had written that letter. And he didn’t write one to me.
“You’re still writing to him, aren’t you?” Mrs. Sutcliff had said, when she took the letter from me after I’d finished reading it. I told her I was.
I had in fact gone back home and written him that very day. I had already written him about what Philadelphia was like when the war ended—the parades, the noise, the celebrations. And that I missed my mother but that I had a good friend in Ruby now. That time, though, I decided to write that I’m doing the hair in the embalming room now that the flu is gone, just like Mama had done. I didn’t know if he would find that bizarre. I was hoping he wouldn’t. Ruby thinks it’s bizarre. I also told him how much Alex likes being over at Jamie’s house when we’re all in school and that his mama, “Auntie Dora,” as she calls herself, spoils him. I wrote that Alex is going to be our permanent foster child when all the papers come through and after the city people make sure sufficient time has gone by for any of Alex’s extended family to inquire about him.
I’d sent it off the next afternoon, and I’d written him twice more since.
But today is the first time I’ve received a letter in return since just before the Liberty Loan Parade back in September.
I come inside from having spent the afternoon at Ruby’s and there it is on the table inside the front door with the rest of the day’s mail. I can’t get my mittens off fast enough. I tear the envelope open and I stand there reading the letter in the foyer with my boots dripping melted snow all over the rug.
Jamie’s letter to me fits on just one side of the thin piece of paper:
Dear Maggie:
I am very grateful for what you have done for my family even in the midst of your own loss. Mother has written to me about how much she loves caring for your orphan child during the day. Thank you, too, for the special attention you gave Charlie, before he died and afterward. I still can’t believe he is gone. I fear I’ll be coming home in the spring to a different world. I wonder if it will even seem like home.
I wish the war had never come, but I am grateful for all your letters.
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Jamie Sutcliff
When I finish reading, my eyes travel back to the line “I wonder if it will even seem like home.”
I’m glad he is grateful for all my letters, but that line pokes at me. And the one before it, too. The one about coming home to a different world, which somehow makes it sound like it’s not a good thing. Different doesn’t have to mean things can’t be made good again, does it?
Besides. Home isn’t a place where everything stays the same; it’s a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same. Change always happens. Always. Surely Jamie knows that.