together and fell asleep. They were tired, but they didn’t want to go their separate ways. They felt at home with each other. And when they did wake up, they made love, and it was Anne’s first time, and it felt just right.
But she had certainly not set her cap for Herb Wheelwright. She’d had no idea that he was so wealthy or that his family owned a bank in Boston, and when she did find out she didn’t care. Why should she? Her family owned half the stockyards in Kansas City. She knew, if she married him, she’d have to move to Boston after the war, but while that didn’t bother her, it didn’t excite her either. She didn’t care whether they had ten children or none, whether he went into politics like his parents were hoping or not, whether they lived on Beacon Hill or in a tent in the middle of the Public Garden. She just wanted to be with him, and he wanted to be with her.
After two weeks, Herb asked her to marry him. She threw her arms around him and kissed the word yes all over his face. They wanted to marry right away.
Anne telephoned her parents, who gave her their preoccupied blessing and said they’d try to come east for the wedding, but they couldn’t promise. Anne wasn’t surprised. Her father had turned executive control of the stockyards over to his wife so that he could direct his attention to the management of a factory producing and packaging meat “products” that were compressed in twelve-ounce gold-tone tin cans and shipped to the overseas troops. Augustus—Gus—Anderson was everywhere at once in the factory, working day and night, scrutinizing the quality of production like an eagle—this food was going to the boys fighting overseas. Even on the telephone, Anne could hear the exhaustion in her parents’ voices.
“Darling girl,” her mother said, “we’re so happy to hear good news during this horrible time. I’m glad you’ve found this man, and I hope you’ll both be very happy.”
“And we will all meet up as soon as possible, God willing,” her father added.
Herb also phoned his parents, who were ensconced in their summer home on the island of Nantucket, and today he and Anne had taken the stately old steamer from Woods Hole to Nantucket so that Anne could meet his family. They’ll be aloof, Herb warned Anne. Judgmental. But it was important for the future that Herb and Anne do this, now. It was the right thing to do.
So here she stood, at the top of the stairs, eavesdropping.
Not for the first time, Anne missed her own father. If he were with her now, he’d take her arm in his and tap beneath her chin until she lifted her head proudly. He’d sweep into the living room with Anne beside him, and he’d beam his welcoming, expansive, generous, Midwestern smile, and even Herb’s mother would gawk, because Anne’s handsome father, Gus, radiated the natural-born charm of an optimist. Herb’s father would like him, too. Gus would shake Herb’s father’s hand with his own large, muscular work-toughened paw, and Herb would know at once that Gus was an ally.
Anne had once exuded a similar relaxed and easy charm, but she quickly discovered that here in the East, because she was young and untried, she appeared to people as simply naïve and even a little silly, more like a girl than the woman she was. So here at the Wheelwrights’ summer home, she had to monitor her own wide smile. She had to tamp down her natural enthusiasm. She had to summon up some kind of dignity. She had to act, for heaven’s sake, with decorum , and if Gail knew, she’d fall out of her chair laughing.
But this was important. Herb’s family was important to him. Anne’s family was important to her too, but they’d recognized her as an adult long ago. They’d turned her loose. She knew that after the war she would be living in Boston with Herb and coming here to this very house in the summers, where Wheelwrights had come every year since the 1800s.
“You going to turn and run, honey?”
Anne squeaked