The diamond seemed to shoot angry sparks at him.
He looked up at her, his face lined and drawn.
"Keep it," he said curtly and walked out.
She stood there until she heard his car pull out of the driveway.
Then she turned out the light and walked upstairs, leaving the ring on the table and the film, like confetti after a party, on the floor.
She lay wide-eyed on her bed staring up into the night.
If she could only cry she would feel better.
But she was empty inside, eaten away by her sins.
There was nothing left for her to give anyone. She had used up her ration of love.
Once, long ago, she had loved and been loved. But Tom Denton was dead, lost forever, beyond recall.
She cried out into the darkness,
"Daddy, help me!
Please!
I don't know what to do."
If she could only go back and begin again. Back to the familiar Sunday smell of corned beef and cabbage, to the gentle sound of a whispered morning Mass in her ears, to the sisters and the hospital, to the inner satisfaction of being a part of God's work.
Then her father's voice came whispering to her out of the gray light of the morning,
"Do you really want to go, Jennie Bear?"
She lay very still for a moment thinking, remembering.
Was that time forever gone?
If she were to withhold from confession that part of her life which no longer seemed to belong to her it need not be. They would not know.
It was her one real transgression.
The rest of her life they already knew about.
To do so would be a sin. A sin of omission.
It would invalidate any future confession that she might make.
But she had so much to give and without giving it she was denying not only herself but others who would have need of her help.
Which was the greater sin?
For a moment she was frightened, then decided that this was a matter between her and her Maker.
The decision was hers, and she alone could be held responsible, both now and at any future time.
Suddenly she made her mind up and she was no longer afraid.
"Yes, Daddy," she whispered.
His soft voice came echoing back on the wind.
"Then get dressed, Jennie, and I'll go with you."
16.
It was almost two years from the night of the party before Rosa heard from Jennie again.
It was almost six months from the time she received the dreaded impersonal message from the War Department that David had been killed at the Anzio beachhead in May of 1944.
No more dreams, no more big deals, no more struggles and plans to build a giant monument of incorporation that would span the earth, linked by thin and gossamer strands of celluloid.
They had come to a final stop for him, just as they had for a thousand others, in the crashing, thundering fire of an early Italian morning.
The dreams had stopped for her, too.
The whisper of love in the night, the creaking of the floor beneath the footsteps on the other side of the bed, the excitement and warmth of shared confidences and plans for tomorrow.
For once, Rosa was grateful for her work.
It used her mind and taxed her energy and consumed her with the day-to-day responsibilities.
In time, the hurt was pushed back into the corner recesses of her mind, to be felt only when she was alone.
Then, bit by bit, the understanding came to her, as it always must to the survivors, that only a part of the dreams had been buried with him.
His son was growing and one day, as she saw him running across the green lawn in the front of their home, she heard the birds begin to sing again.
She looked up at the blue sky, at the white sun above her head, and knew that once again she was a living, breathing human being with the full, rich blood of life in her body.
And the guilt that had been in her, because she had remained while he had gone, disappeared.
It all happened that day after she read Jennie's letter.
It was addressed to her in a small, feminine script that she did not recognize.
At first, she thought it another solicitation when she saw the imprimatur on the letterhead. † Sisters of Mercy Burlingame, California
October 10, 1944