If Only in My Dreams (31 page)

More specifically, of being in Jed’s bed with Jed. In Jed’s arms.

“No, nothing improper,” she agrees, ducking her head to hide the heated flush she can feel creeping over her cheeks.

After all, men were gentlemen back in 1941.

At least, Jed is.

Although maybe it’s just an act
, pipes a lascivious little voice in her head.
Maybe once you’re alone with him, in private, you can break him out of that
—

“I’ll have to let my mother know to set the table for one more for dinner,” he tells her, and her wanton vision evaporates.

“You live with your mother?” She hopes the question reflects casual interest as opposed to blatant disappointment.

“Not under the same roof… she and my sisters and my grandparents live in the main house. I’ve got a separate apartment over the garage. You can stay there.”

“With you,” she says with a nod, even as she reminds herself that she can’t possibly spend the night. She has an early location call tomorrow.

Then again, maybe she can catch the first southbound train in the morning.

It would be worth it, for the prospect of one precious night with Jed.

“Oh, I’d stay in the house,” he assures her. “On the couch.”

“I can’t put you out of your bed!” she protests.

No, I want to be in it with you. Naked with you, to be specific. One last time for me—for us
.

“Oh, I don’t mind at all. In fact, I won’t take no for an answer. You can stay as long as you like.”

Yeah? How about the next sixty-five years?

She musters a smile and a polite “Thank you. That’s really nice of you.”

“In the meantime… I really can use some help around here. How about it?”

“You want me to work here in the store? For real?”

He nods.

Tell him you’re not sticking around
.

Not longer than one night, anyway
…

She can only hope that will be enough time for her to figure out what she needs to do to keep him from going off to war and getting killed. And maybe even prevent the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

Somehow, after the complicated iPod incident, she senses that a straightforward warning to Jed—or, for that matter, FDR himself—isn’t going to cut it.

“I didn’t come here to work, Jed.”
I came to save you. And the world
.

“I know, but I had to fire my clerk this morning, like I said. And with Christmas and all… well, I can’t swing it by myself.”

“Of course I’ll help you,” Clara hears herself saying.

“That would be swell. Let’s go up front and I’ll find an apron for you.”

“Some shoes would be good, too,” she says ruefully, glancing down at her stocking feet. “I seem to have forgotten to pack mine, and I can’t wear those with a dress.”

“No, you can’t,” he says in a tone that tells her exactly what he thinks of her sneakers. “I’ve got a shoe rack over by the ladies’ coats. You can pick out any pair you like—my gift.”

“Thank you.” She starts back out into the store.

“Oh, wait, Clara? One thing…”

Uh-oh
. “What is it?”

“Mind if I hear the rest of the song?” he asks, already inserting the iPod earphones with the agile expertise of a twenty-first-century tween. “This Frankie kid isn’t half bad.”

CHAPTER 14

T
his is it,” Jed informs Clara, leading the way up the snow-packed sidewalk to his childhood home nestled in a row of two-story wood-frame houses.

He’s glad Doris talked him into putting up the Christmas lights the other night.

After a two-year dearth, the Landrys’ house blends in with the gleaming festivity up and down the snow-blanketed block, just as it always did when Pop was alive. Strings of fat, oval, multicolored bulbs underscore the eaves, and the spotlit front door is festooned with a wreath and shiny gold tinsel garland. Pop would be pleased.

Jed watches Clara giving the house a thorough once-over, as charmed by her childlike red mittens—her late grandmother made them, she explained—as he is by her rapt expression.

He’s noticed, as they worked together in the store all afternoon, that she has a quirky way of intently absorbing even the most ordinary details. She acts as though she’s seeing
the most mundane everyday thing—whether it be a candy bar, or a pair of shoes, or even just a coin—for the very first time.

“This is a beautiful house,” she pronounces. “Have you lived here all your life?”

“Well, until I moved to the garage apartment out back,” he reminds her. “That’s where you’ll be staying. But my mother probably has dinner waiting, so I’ll take you out there after we eat.”

“That would be good,” she murmurs, teetering a bit in her high-heeled shoes on the uneven surface as she resumes heading up the walk.

“Are you all right?” He shifts her suitcase to his other hand and takes her arm to steady her.

“It’s just hard to walk in these shoes in the snow.”

“I should have given you a pair of galoshes before we left.”

At least he did think to loan her a warm wool coat to wear in place of her strange, slippery parka, along with a stylish brimmed hat. She once again looks the part of the elegant beauty, even without lipstick or her hair done up.

He catches her sneaking a curious peek at the lamp-lit windows as they climb the shoveled front steps. Beyond the drawn shades, he knows, Mother and the girls are bustling to prepare a dinner fit for unexpected company.

“Who is this gal, Jed?” Mother asked when he called home to say he was bringing an impromptu houseguest.

“An old friend—from college,” he improvised.

He was worried that Clara wouldn’t want to go along with that, but she took it in stride when he mentioned it
just now as they walked the few blocks from the store to Chestnut Street.

Perhaps it should bother him that she seems willing to be anyone he wants her to be—newly hired store clerk, old college friend…

But it doesn’t.

Just as long as she isn’t the person he
doesn’t
want her to be: a spy.

He still presumes that she’s lying about the bruise on her head and perhaps even about being married.

But that hasn’t stopped him from repeatedly reliving the intense kiss they shared out on the street today… and longing for another one. In private.

That will have to wait awhile, though.

Opening the door, he calls, “Mother? I’m home.”

Swing music, crackling with slight static, greets Clara as she crosses the threshold, along with a wave of savory-scented warmth.

Looking around the entry hall as she stomps the snow from her shoes on the mat, she takes in the living room to the left, the dining room to the right, and the garland-draped stairway straight ahead, bordered by ascending picture frames on the wall. Beneath it is a low telephone table with a built-in bench. The black rotary-dial phone rests on the table beside a thin bound booklet labeled
Glenhaven Park Telephone Directory
.

Clara discerns at a glance that this house is a home in the truest sense of the word. The rooms glow with cozy lamplight and flickering firelight, burnished woodwork, amber-toned vintage wallpaper, and floor-length gold draperies. The
hardwood floors and area rugs are comfortably worn with use, as is the chintz furniture in the living room. The dining room is formal, with built-in cabinets displaying rows of fine china. Bric-a-brac seems to cover every available surface, including the tall wooden radio cabinet.

Clara makes sure that her money and keys are securely tucked into the bottom of her red mittens before slipping them into the pocket of her coat. Jed helps her take it off and hangs it, along with his overcoat, in a crowded closet beneath the stairs.

“Mother?” he calls again.

A pot lid clatters somewhere in the back of the house, and heels clack their way toward the front hall.

A woman appears. She has sad blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair pulled severely back from a haggard face that, judging by her delicate bone structure, must once have been beautiful. From the neck down, she might have stepped out of a fashion magazine ad as opposed to a suburban kitchen. That’s because she’s wearing a dress and pearls and stockings and heels—a far cry from the terry-cloth tracksuit and slippers that make up Clara’s own mother’s household uniform.

Even more disconcerting, Mrs. Landry is smoking.

Well, of course. Back in 1941, nobody knew that cigarettes are carcinogenic.

“Mother, this is my friend Clara, visiting from Cambridge.”

“It’s wonderful to meet you.” The woman politely extends her right hand.

Clara shakes it, noting the ironic juxtaposition of the gold wedding band she still wears on the same hand that holds the cigarette aloft.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Landry,” she says politely, trying to block out the memory of the archived newspaper headline.

COMMUNITY PILLAR SUCCUMBS TO LUNG CANCER

“Hi, I’m Doris.”

Startled by the nearby voice, Clara turns to find a freckle-faced girl with red pigtails standing right at her elbow. She looks to be about twelve and is wearing jeans and an oversized blue sweater that must once have belonged to Jed or his father. Her eyes are the same deep shade of blue as her big brother’s.

“Where did you come from?” Clara asks with a laugh as she shakes Doris’s extended hand.

“Oh, Doris is always sneaking up on people,” Jed says, ruffling his kid sister’s hair affectionately. “Aren’t you, toots?”

“Yes, she is, and it really gripes my middle kidney,” another voice announces from overhead.

“Oh, ish kabibble,” Doris retorts, looking up at the stairs.

Clara follows her gaze to see a pretty, slender teenager starting down the flight. Directly on her heels is a look-alike, a few inches shorter.

Both girls have shiny auburn hair curled in pompadours above their foreheads and falling past their shoulders in careful waves. They’re wearing similar knee-length wool skirts, white blouses with rounded collars, cardigans, dark-colored cuffed socks, and oxfords.

“That’s Penny, and that’s Mary Ann,” Jed tells Clara. “Did I mention I’ve got three sisters? How lucky am I?”

“Really lucky, actually. I don’t have any sisters. Brothers, either.”

“Well, I’ve got one, and you can have him, too.”

“Jed, you know that isn’t kind.”

“I’m just teasing, Mother. You know that I love Gilbert. It’s Mary Ann that I’d give away to the first taker.”

Arriving at the base of the stairs, his middle sister swats his arm and sticks out her tongue. He grabs her hand and holds it behind her back as she squirms, giggling, refusing to say
Uncle
on her big brother’s command.

“Why don’t you have any brothers and sisters, Clara?” Doris asks.

“Doris, don’t be nosy,” Penny scolds.

“I’m not being nosy. I’m being friendly.”

“All right, that’s enough,” Mrs. Landry declares, as Clara wistfully contrasts Jed’s household to her own quiet, unorthodox urban upbringing. As much as she has always lamented her parents’ divorce, as much as she has always craved domestic stability, never until this moment did she entirely grasp all that was missing from her life as an only child in a small city apartment.

“Supper is ready,” Jed’s mother declares. “Come on. Grandma and Granddad are already sitting down.”

“In the kitchen?” Doris is blatantly disappointed. “But we have company, Mother!”

“I’d have set up in the dining room,” Jed’s mother tells Clara somewhat apologetically, “but I need Jed’s help getting the extra leaf into the table. And anyway, we have an extra seat with Gilbert away.”

“Where is your brother?” Clara asks Jed as they all head down a dimly lit hall toward the kitchen.

“College. Penn State. He graduates this spring, then he’ll be home to take over here with the store and the family.”

He says it in a low voice, almost as though he doesn’t want his mother and sisters to overhear.

“What about you?” she asks, wishing she didn’t already know. A sick feeling twists in her gut.

“Well, I was thinking I’d join the army once Gilbert’s back home, but…” He shrugs, shooting her a meaningful glance, slowing his pace as the others disappear around the corner into the bright kitchen.

“But… what?”

“That was my plan when I didn’t think I had anything to stick around here for.”

Clara’s heart skips a beat. Is he hinting that he might change his plans… because of her?

She knows, based on the movie’s true-to-life script, that Jed wasn’t drafted; he enlisted. It was his own choice.

What if she can influence that?

“What about now?” she dares to ask him, and holds her breath for the answer. “Do you think there might be some reason to stick around?”

“Now… who knows?”

“Jed? Can you help me to lift this roaster out of the oven?” his mother calls.

“Coming, Mother.” Jed looks at Clara. “We’ll talk later.”

Not certain whether to be relieved or dismayed at the interruption, Clara follows him.

The kitchen is large by Manhattan standards, but smaller, she supposes, than a modern suburban kitchen would be. The floor is speckled aqua linoleum. The cabinets are white metal with long silver handles. The white enamel stove is enormous, particularly in contrast to the icebox across from
it. The low double sink stands alone, rather than set into a countertop the way sinks are today.