I did not mean to do them harm. I’ve never meant that. I’ve had many friends. I’ve saved many lives. I should have kept a record of all the lives I’ve saved.
Lately I go beyond standing beside the pond and imagining Virginia Woolf. Lately I fill my pockets with stones. Then I walk slowly back toward the house, tossing them out as I go. I won’t do it. There is Lucy, who may yet come visit, and now there is Zoe, who says she wants to visit, too. She has a friend she might bring down, someone who likes to hike. I think perhaps, if Zoe needs one, I might offer her a job for the summer. Her duties would be minimal. She could stay in the guest room, be there just in case. It would make Sue the librarian happy. We all get older by the day. Each breath, and we are older.
I stand at the edge of the water but I don’t ever wade in.
I will live until the last possible minute. I will have every second.
I am not sorry.
Acknowledgments
For more than fifteen years I tried and failed to write a novel based on the experience of my late grandmother, born Nina Jean Riley, in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Though Margaret’s story bears only minimal resemblance to my grandmother’s, much of my information about what it was like to be a field-hospital nurse in the ETO came from conversations we had, as well as her scrapbook and her letters home to her parents. Kate Moore was also indispensable, in describing to me her time as a nurse with the Army Reserve in Iraq and helping me imagine what it’s like when casualties arrive. I read widely in WWII histories and found the following books particularly useful: Women Were Not Expected by Marjorie Peto; G.I. Nightingale by Theresa Archard; Bedpan Commando by June Wandrey; And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II by Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee; and No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II by Diane B. Fessler.
My thanks to Susan Autran for lessons on dancing and Suzanne Smith for lessons on massage; to Detective Jennifer Mitsch for invaluable advice; to Leigh Anne Couch for prompting my memory of Sewanee landmarks (I took some liberties); to Carmen Toussaint Thompson and the Rivendell Writers’ Colony for allowing me to stay there while I revised this book; and to Cheri Peters, Wyatt Prunty, and John and Elizabeth Grammer for bringing me there in the first place. I’m grateful for the support of UC’s Taft Research Center and my colleagues Jay Twomey, Michael Griffith, and Chris Bachelder.
My editor, Sally Kim, is all a writer could hope for: she always guides me toward a better version of the novel I’m trying to write. I’m so lucky to be working with her on a fourth book, and I’m grateful to her and to the other people at Touchstone, particularly Etinosa Agbonlahor. I’m equally lucky to have the fabulous Gail Hochman as my agent; she is a marvel of energy and insight. For early reads, my thanks to Holly Goddard Jones and Amanda Eyre Ward. My husband, Matt O’Keefe, line edited the manuscript, giving thoughtful consideration to every sentence, and the book is much better for his time and attention.
To my children, Eliza and Simon, thank you for letting me steal your funniest lines.