While You Were Mine by Creel Ann Howard

Author:Creel, Ann Howard [Creel, Ann Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503953345
Published: 2016-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

After the dismal failure of my night on the town with John, I spent the next evening with Dot, Mary, and the miserable company of Dennis. Mary had the beginnings of a cold so John was not coming over, although he had called to inquire about how I was feeling. I was relieved to have an excuse not to see him for a few days. I was still reeling from that promising night that had not delivered anything but a short conversation, one exciting dance, and then jealousy and pain. My self-confidence had been socked in the stomach.

Dennis was drinking whiskey. At times he had slowed down or stopped drinking. The dry days seemed to follow nothing in particular, no unusual bad occurrences or good ones, and they seemed to have no relation to the nightmares I still heard at night. Out of the blue, he put the stuff away for a day, and I could see Dot’s hopes soar that maybe he’d snapped out of it. For a while it looked as though he’d drunk the grief away.

But it always came back.

I could scarcely remember the days of their courtship. It had been such a romantic and exciting beginning. They had spent every possible moment together, and Dennis had splurged on everything in that short time. He took her out for fine dining, and then to the hippest clubs for dancing. He swept her off her feet with excitement, extravagance, and fun. It didn’t hurt that he looked like a Viking king all spruced up in modern-day, stylish clothes. Dot had been sure she was standing at the open door of a charmed life.

I remembered the day when he came to take her for a ferry ride to Sandy Hook. Dennis was wearing his uniform with his jacket flung over his shoulder. He looked so lovely in those days—sometimes I could still see the handsome man Dot had dated beneath the bitterness—his strong Norseman’s face, his satiny hair and deep-set eyes. I could see him smiling at her on their wedding day, his teeth a gleaming white band across his tanned face.

During the bad days, Dot did everything she could to reach out to him, and they no longer even tried to hide what was transpiring between them. Many times they argued with the bedroom door open, and then the arguments moved into the living room and the kitchen, too.

One particularly pitiful exchange started when Dot said to Dennis, “I want to help you.” They were in the bedroom sitting on the edge of the bed next to each other. The door was open, and I was feeding Mary in the kitchen, only a few feet away.

He said, “You can’t help.”

Dot said nothing for a moment, and I could only imagine how she must have felt slapped by his words. Finally she asked, “What happened to you in the war?”

“I wonder.”

“What happened to change you so much?”

He laughed. “We killed people.”

It did seem unfathomable.

Dot said, “But you were supposed to kill people.

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