Her Lost Love by Jina Bacarr

Author:Jina Bacarr [Bacarr, Jina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

‘I saw you kissing Jeffrey Rushbrooke,’ my kid sister blurts out the minute I come through the front door. ‘Are you crazy, Kate?’

‘So?’ I say quickly. ‘We’re getting married.’

‘I don’t understand you. You were so secretive before, now you’re kissing the man right outside our front door.’ She peeks through the curtains. ‘You know that snoopy Mrs Widget never closes her drapes.’

‘Girls, set the table for supper.’ Ma shoos us into the kitchen. ‘Kate will tell us about it when she’s ready.’ She smiles at me with the biggest twinkle in her eyes, one I haven’t seen since she won the blue ribbon for her geraniums before the war.

‘Thanks, Ma.’ I hug her.

She lets out a sigh. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Katie Marie.’

I wince. Now Ma is using my nickname. That means she isn’t as easygoing about me marrying Jeff as she pretends. I see the corners of her eyes wrinkling into deep creases.

‘I do, Ma. You’ll see.’

‘How come you’re so easy on Kate, Ma?’ Lucy huffs and puffs, getting the silverware. ‘When I want something like my own face powder or get my hair done up, you say I’m too young. Whatever Kate wants, she gets.’

‘Your time will come, child,’ Ma says, fretting. I see how upset she is, something she never shows. Do her instincts tell her that her elder daughter is in over her head?

‘When, Ma?’ Lucy insists. ‘Girls my age are getting engaged every day. Sometimes to more than one soldier.’

Ma sets the dinner plates down on the table so hard, they rattle.

‘Lucy Arden, do you think this is a game you’re playing? Pulling on the heartstrings of these fine young men like a siren with a harp?’ Ma sits her down on the kitchen stool like she used to make us do when we were little and our feet couldn’t touch the floor. I keep quiet. I had no idea my mother has such thoughts. ‘It’s time we had a talk, young lady.’

Lucy and I both groan. Now that we’re grown up, it doesn’t mean we’re too big for one of her lectures. It’s a doozy.

‘I’m proud of my girls, how you put up the jams for the soldiers and greet those boys and girls serving our country. Tonight I’m ashamed, Lucy. The holiest of nights will soon be upon us and when those men are camped out under the stars, their rifles by their side, their God in their hearts, they’ll be thinking of the girl back home. Seeing her face in the stars like she’s an angel of victory. Seeing your face.’

‘Ma—’

‘I’m not saying don’t write to these young men. They need letters from home to comfort them. They don’t need false promises from girls who have no intention of keeping them.’

‘I do,’ she protests. ‘Then I meet another soldier, and I like him, too.’ She stares at Ma, puzzled. ‘What am I going to do?’

Ma smiles. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up, Lucy. Be the girl next door, their friend.

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