Baby It's Cold Outside (3 page)

The community center bustled with activity as she pressed inside, shaking off her umbrella. Members of the Ladies Auxiliary, her mother somewhere leading the charge, worked to transform the old dance hall into the annual Frost Christmas celebration. Miriam Wilkes wrapped the middle cement pole with greenery, a battalion of women that included two of her sisters-in-law dressed the long punch table with a crimson tablecloth, crystal punch glasses, and trays of brownies and cookies. Soon, the members of the Hungry Five Band would arrive to set up on the stage at the far end of the room. The place smelled of the new decade—balsam and pine, sugar cookies, nutmeg, and cinnamon-spiced cider. A promising decade of celebration, free of war and sacrifice.

Violet shucked off her jacket and hung it in the coatroom. She found her newest sister-in-law, Hattie Grace, kneeling on the floor by the kitchen entrance, plugging in a stringer of colored bulbs that ran along the ceiling. “I can’t believe this entire string of lights won’t work. I just wasted an hour.”

She sat back, ran her hand behind her head to tuck up a wayward loop of blond hair. “I just want to go home and take a nap.”

Violet gave her a grin, holding out her hand to lift her off the floor. “A nap? You’re not supposed to be tired. You’re only nineteen. Talk to me when you hit twenty-nine.” Or thirty. She could barely think it. Two weeks and, well, she’d be an official spinster, wouldn’t she?

Return to Sender
.

Right.

“Oh, it’s just the baby. I’ve been so tired since…” Hattie pressed her hand over her mouth. “Violet, I’m sorry. I forgot you don’t know yet.”

Violet had stopped moving, although somehow she managed to keep breathing. Baby? Hattie Grace, her kid brother’s wife, was already expecting? But they only married three months ago. But perhaps, like everyone else, they felt the urgency to start their family, join in on the celebration of life.

“No, of course, that’s wonderful.” And Violet even made it sound that way. She reached out, embraced Hattie. The girl would have to gain some weight if she wanted to keep her baby healthy.

Hattie hung onto her arms. “Johnny was going to tell you tonight when we were together. Really. At the dance, with the whole family. Only your mother knows.” Hattie pressed her hand to her mouth again, this time to hide a smile, a little giggle.

Truly, Violet could be happy for Hattie, for Johnny. He’d barely seen war, had enlisted a day after his eighteenth birthday, dropping out of school and entering basic two weeks before D-Day. He hadn’t made it to Omaha Beach but managed to tromp about Europe for the cleanup fourteen months later. As far as she knew, he hadn’t even fired his weapon.

Not that she’d even been issued a weapon, but she’d seen more action changing tires for officers in London, France, and Berlin than Johnny ever had acting as an MP for starved Germans. She hadn’t even had a furlough, not once, in four years. That should count for at least an acknowledgment on the Fourth of July.

Hattie reached down, unplugged the lights. “I guess I’ll have to find a new strand.”

“Wait one moment.” Violet walked over to a table by the door and removed a lamp from it. Then she plugged it into the outlet near Hattie and turned it on.

Nothing. “I think this outlet isn’t working.”

“I tried the strand in the outlet by the stage. It didn’t work there either.”

“Could be the breaker is blown for these outlets. Let me see what I can do.”

Violet plugged the colored lights back in, returned the lamp, then headed for the utility closet near the kitchen. Snapping on the overhead light, she moved back beyond the mops, the buckets, and the brooms, and found the utility box. Yes, one of the fuses had blown. She unscrewed it, found a new fuse from the cardboard box on the shelf nearby, and screwed it in.

“It’s on!” Hattie yelled from the dance hall.

“Violet? When did you get here? What are you doing?”

She didn’t have to turn to know the owner of the voice. She could nearly see her mother standing in the hallway, probably carrying a tray of cookies, wearing one of her old homemade checkered aprons over her black party dress, her graying hair rolled back from her face, her red lipstick perfectly applied.

No dour widowhood mourning for Frances Hart.

Violet closed the box and turned to answer her mother as she pried herself from the closet. “The fuse was blown for the Christmas bulbs.”

“And of course you had to fix it. Why didn’t you ask Roger, or even Johnny?”

“Because Roger and Johnny aren’t here, and I’m perfectly capable of fixing a fuse, Mother.”

Violet accepted the tray of brownies her mother settled in her arms.

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re always perfectly capable. You don’t need a man.”

Violet ignored her and headed to the serving table. Probably she wouldn’t make it home to change before the dance tonight. Not that it mattered, anyway. She could count on one hand the remaining eligible bachelors in Frost. Clyde, from the feed store, and Tony, the janitor at the school. And don’t forget Father O’Donnell, in his midforties. But he was a priest, so that really didn’t count.

She set the tray on the table, did some rearranging.

The band members began to arrive—Lew and Bobby, toting their trumpets, Howard lugging in an upright bass. Another man she didn’t recognize tromped in behind them, stomping his feet. He carried what looked like a suitcase, although maybe it fit a saxophone.

Perhaps the Hungry Five had added a hungry sixth. Oh, see, life wasn’t so despairing when she could laugh at herself. She would survive Alex’s
Return to Sender.

“I can’t believe it’s raining, three days before Christmas.” June, her oldest sister-in-law, the one married to Thomas, corralled her seven-year-old with a grab at the back of his shirt. She and Thomas married right after high school, a year before he shipped out. “So much for the Christmas spirit.”

“We don’t need snow to have Christmas, or Christmas spirit.”

“It would help. Poor kids, it’s not the same as when we grew up. With sleighs and horses mushing up and down Main Street and kids skating on Silver Lake and story hour at the library.”

“And the star. I miss the star.” This from Sara, the tall, elegant daughter of the town doctor, married to Roger. Violet felt short and dour next to her lanky blond sister-in-law. Sara had served as a navy nurse, stationed in London. When Violet returned, she’d thought they’d share that kinship.

Apparently, serving Uncle Sam as a nurse held a different prestige. And Sara’s return to town heralded a parade of men to her door. Roger had fought them all off to win her heart.

Sara ran her hands over her extended belly. “When I was young, I could see the star from my bedroom window, like it had been plucked from the night sky and set right in the middle of Frost.”

“Dottie and Nelson made that star when Nelson was about five, I think.” Frances added a batch of Krumkake to the table.

“The tree seems so dark without it,” Sara said.

“Where is it now?”

“Well, I suppose Mrs. Morgan has it, somewhere in that creepy house of hers,” June said. “She stopped putting it up the year after Nelson—”

“Shh. Not today, Junie,” Frances said. “Today is a day of hope.”

“All the more reason to put the star up.” Sara arranged the punch cups on the table. “Maybe we could get another one.”

“Oh no, Sara. That’s just not right,” Frances said, moving the napkins for the addition of the punch bowl.

Sarah turned to Violet. “You know Mrs. Morgan—can you go ask her for it?”

Ask Dottie for her son’s star? “I don’t think—”

“It’s a great idea,” June said. “Don’t you think so, Tripp?”

Perfect. Violet’s nephew had to nod, to grin at her with that gap-toothed smile.

“Listen, Dottie just wants to be left alone. Trust me on this. I know you all remember her as the woman who made books come to life, but frankly, she’s not that woman anymore. She’s…well, she’s…” Violet didn’t want to use the word
dead
, not today, but—

“She used to be a real firecracker.” Frances had moved around the table, begun arranging the napkins. “Highfalutin—her daddy owned most of the town back then. She had suitors lining up on her doorstep. And then TJ Morgan motored into town the summer after she graduated from teachers college in his bumblebeeyellow Studebaker roadster. She took one look at that gangster, with his dark wavy hair, hypnotizing blue eyes, and dangerous swagger, and turned into a flapper right before our eyes. Cut off her hair and ran away with him.”

“Mother!” June said, putting her hands over Tripp’s ears. He wriggled away.

Frances shrugged. “It’s true. I guess we all should have expected it. Dottie was always so independent, so feisty. She even played women’s basketball at Mankato State Teachers college. But six months later, when TJ landed in prison and she returned home pregnant, I can assure you we thanked the good Lord we’d missed that bullet. Of course, she asked for it, behaving the way she did, but no one can deny she had a blessing out of that Nelson.” She smiled at Violet. “I had hoped Nelson might fancy you.”

“Oh please, Mother.” If she could, Violet would run from the building at top speed.

“It’s true. You remind me, in a way, of Dottie. She and you are both such free spirits.” Frances patted her cheek. “It’s difficult to catch a man when you’re flitting about, I suppose.”

“I was hardly
flitting about
, Mother. I was serving my country.”

“You were changing tires. Let’s not over-glamorize your role in the war effort.” Frances sighed. “Sweetheart, no man is going to marry a gal who can change her own tires. Men need to feel needed.” She looked at June and winked. “Even if we know the truth.”

Right now.
The earth could open right now, gobble her whole, and Violet would go to glory with joy.

But Frances hadn’t quite finished. “And it wouldn’t hurt you to wear a clean dress, a little lipstick, perhaps. You could put some effort into your appearance. We Hart women have to work at it a little harder than the rest.”

Hardly. Her mother had a natural, shapely beauty at age fifty that turned the heads of the widowers in town. But yes, Violet, a true Hart, had inherited her father’s wide lips, dull mud-brown hair, strong hands, and less than womanly silhouette. She had to work at femininity doubly hard.

Return to Sender.
Perhaps Alex had simply remembered her in her greasy uniform, her hair pulled back with a scarf, her unpainted face, and realized that, back then, the air of desperation could cloud a man’s mind. With so many women single after the war, he could certainly do better than plain and even mannish Violet Hart.

“I’ll try to change before the dance, Mother,” Violet said quietly.

“That would be wonderful. Now, can you grab a broom, sweep up some of the drying mud? We need a clean dance floor.”

But Violet slowed on her way back to the utility closet, her gaze falling on the naked treetop outside in the square. She saw Dottie, sitting night after night in the puddle of her office light, alone. Eating a piece of cold chicken for lunch, muscling that old truck into gear as she pulled away from city hall.

She used to be a real firecracker.

Even when Violet was a child, Dottie intrigued her, the murmurs surrounding her circumstances always just a little unintelligible, a woman of mystery and adventure.

Night fell upon Frost like coal dust, the sleet swirling now, lighter. They could use the lighted star as a beacon to draw townspeople to the dance.

If she headed out to Dottie’s, Violet might escape, at least for an hour, to gather her fortifications for tonight’s predicted loneliness.

And…what if she could talk Dottie into joining them at the dance?

Violet caught a glimpse of herself in the pane of glass, her dark hair wet and bedraggled with the storm. Yes, she might need some spiffing up before the dance, but who was she kidding? Every man in town, eligible or not, knew she was the girl who spent more time under the hood of her father’s tractor than learning to waltz. She didn’t even know how to dance.

Still, she reached back, pulled the bobby pins from her bun, shook out her hair. Then she grabbed her coat, her plastic rain hat, her umbrella.

“Mother, I’m taking Father’s car out to Dottie’s place.” She was the only one, besides Johnny, who knew how to drive it anyway. She opened the door and noticed that the ice had turned to thick, fluffy flakes, hurtling down from the heavens, accumulating in a light layer.

“I’m going to get the star.”

* * * * *

Jacob Ramsey III always had an answer for disaster, a way to untangle life, a word of hope to solve any problem.

But today, he had to arrive before the daily mail if he hoped to save the day.

He set down his suitcase—still packed for Davenport—and stepped aside to avoid being skewered by the umbrella the pretty dark brunette wielded. He swept off his hat, held open the door, but she barely seemed to notice him as she called out to someone behind her.

Jake did register it as odd that she might be driving, but then again, his mother had taken the Stearns Runabout for a tour around Lake Michigan a few times. Nearly killed an apple man, but still, she’d managed the wheel, the brake. He’d heard of women driving during the war also.

In fact, most likely Violet knew how to drive, what with her ability to fix army trucks, jeeps, and other vehicles in the army motor pool.

He’d like to see that—a woman with a wrench in her hand.

But first he had to find her.

Jake drew in a breath and picked up his suitcase, approaching a group of women at the punch table arranging pastries. The older one wore her years on her face, in her stern features, her dark hair dappled with just the barest threads of gray. Red lips and a black party dress suggested she refused to surrender to the onslaught of age. He glanced at the others then said, “Hello, I’m looking for someone and I’m wondering if you could help me.”

The older woman looked up at him, wiping her hands on her apron. “I hope so—I know everyone in Frost. Are you visiting for the holidays?”