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"As for the rest, yes, she was popular. She was admired and respected not only by students and faculty but also by men in the community. I'll never forget the time she gave me a tour of the newsroom of the
Sun
. The male editors and reporters treated her with the kind of deference that was rare in those days. I think they knew that she was going to amount to something someday."

"What about Tom?" Cindy asked.

"Has Joel told you much about him?"

"No. He's kept to himself about the past. I think he wants to protect me from things that might prove upsetting but, as you can see, I'm more than capable of handling the truth."

"Tom Carter was a good man," Grace said. "He was kind and funny and generous and he loved Ginny even more than I did, which is saying a lot. But he was also troubled. He fretted constantly about the war and being drafted. He was afraid that if he were ever called to fight he would not measure up to other men. He didn't want to let Ginny down."

"I understand he was friends with Joel."

"They were best friends," Grace said. "Joel saved Tom from some bullies his first day in Seattle and Tom rewarded him by taking him home. Mel Carter gave him a job and a place to stay. Before long, Joel and Tom were inseparable. They were a joy to watch."

Grace put a hand on Cindy's knee.

"Tom Carter was more than just a decent man and Ginny's fiancé. He was the glue that kept our circle of friends together," Grace said. "He's the person who introduced me to your son, Mrs. Smith. He's the reason I'm here."

CHAPTER 24: GRACE

Sunday, August 20, 2000

They left the little house with loaded stomachs and expanded minds, thanks in part to Penelope Price. The old woman had served a delicious roast to Grace and Joel and then talked their heads off for more than two hours on the subjects of politics, baseball, and street crime.

Grace smiled to herself as she thought of her new friend, employer, landlord, and cousin. Penelope had been good to her, very good to her. She wondered how she would ever repay a stranger who had kindly and needlessly kept her off the streets.

"I like her," Joel said. "I see why
you
like her too. She reminds me a lot of Ginny just before she died. Nobody fusses over food like that anymore."

"She's lonely," Grace said. "She sees her daughter several times a week, but it's not enough. She needs daily contact. She needs someone living in her house. That's why I came back. I
wanted
to take care of her. I wanted to repay her for the kindness she'd shown me."

Joel threw his arm around Grace as they stopped on a street corner and waited for traffic to pass. Having come directly to Penelope's from church, each was overdressed for a long walk through the university district. Joel wore a button-down shirt and khaki slacks, Grace a pink dress she had picked up in Portland.

"Where do you want to go?" Joel asked.

"Let's just wander. I like not knowing how a walk will end."

"Then let's do what Katie liked to do in college. Let's go north and east and then south. Let's walk through the campus and see if we can scare up a few ghosts."

The stroll through the university did indeed bring back memories. When she approached the education building a half hour into the walk, Grace thought of all the friends and acquaintances she had made studying to be a teacher. She had loved her time here, even if that time now seemed impossibly distant and largely irrelevant to her present circumstances.

She knew that if she wanted to become a teacher in the twenty-first century, she would have to start college from scratch. She doubted that she would be able to credibly claim credit for coursework completed during the Roosevelt Administration.

"Do you miss it?" Joel asked.

"Do you mean the campus?"

"I mean all of it: the campus, your classes, your friends, 1941."

Grace grabbed his hand and pulled him next to a large oak tree, a tree that towered above the sidewalk and provided much-needed shade on a day when the mercury climbed above eighty. When they reached the base of the oak, she put a hand to his face.

"I miss familiar things," she said. "I miss people I knew, people I loved. I miss the slower pace. I miss a world where people actually talked to each other and didn't spend most of their day interacting on electronic devices that I'll probably never understand. But I don't regret leaving. Following you was the best decision I ever made."

Grace studied Joel's reaction and saw that he was pleased.

He smiled, kissed her gently, and held her tightly under the tree for fifteen blissful minutes. He seemed as happy and contented as she had ever seen him.

As they continued their stroll through the campus, however, Grace noticed subtle changes. Joel smiled less and spoke less. He started to fidget. He displayed little interest in the buildings, shops, and public places they had often visited – even the Phoenician Theater.

Grace found this surprising. The Phoenician, a Prohibition-era colossus that occupied nearly an entire block on the Ave, had been the source of many pleasant memories. They had gone on several dates here and seen movies ranging from
Road to Zanzibar
to
Citizen Kane
.

It was here, in the now dilapidated theater's balcony, that they had escaped their troubles and judgmental minds and fallen in love. This is where a friendship had taken a wonderful turn.

"This is another thing I miss: the movies," Grace said. "I can't tell you how much I enjoyed coming here. This place isn't much now, but it holds so many memories."

"It does," Joel said, increasing his verbal output of the past five minutes by two words.

As they walked northward along The Ave, toward the corner with Forty-Seventh Street, Grace again noticed that Joel seemed withdrawn. She watched his face, which bore a serious expression, and then his right hand, which he had stuck in his pants pocket. He moved his hand in and out of the pocket, as if reaching for something that had fallen through a hole.

Grace grabbed his left hand and led him toward a bench near a corner that was all but sacred ground. She had first laid eyes on him here, as a college junior celebrating her twenty-first birthday with Katie and a group of sorority sisters.

She had greeted the unkempt stranger with a friendly wave as she waited to cross the busy street. He had responded by touching his hat. Within weeks, the unlikely pair from different eras and backgrounds would be inseparable.

"Let's sit," Grace said. "I'm tired and could use a rest, particularly a rest on a bench that has such sentimental value."

Grace sat down on the bench, dropped her purse to the side, and turned her head when she heard a car honk in the background. Leave it to an impatient cab driver, she thought, to spoil the tranquility of a near-perfect summer afternoon.

Sensing that Joel had not yet joined her on the bench, Grace asked him to sit even before turning away from the honk-happy cabbie on Forty-Seventh. She blindly reached for him, fully expecting to place her hand on the tall, dark-haired man who had escorted her through the streets of northeast Seattle. But instead of a handful of Joel, she got a handful of air.

When she turned to face the missing man, she found him not on the bench or standing in front of her but rather down on one knee. He wore the face of a man on a mission.

Joel reached into his right pants pocket and retrieved a gray velvet box. He opened the box and pushed it toward Grace as if offering her some sort of compensation for nearly an hour of what some women might call emotional neglect.

Grace knew, however, that this was more than a spur of the moment gesture. She had been a participant in a similar scene once before, on May 31, 1941, when a Navy ensign named Paul McEwan had dropped to the same knee. She smiled at Joel but didn't get a chance to speak. He cut her off the second her mouth opened.

"Don't say a word, Grace – not yet."

Tipping slightly to one side, Joel put his free hand to the ground to regain his balance. He then placed the same hand on Grace's knee and resumed where he had left off. Two college-age couples watched and smiled in the distance.

"You know the importance of this bench, Grace. This is where we met. This is where my life changed. This is where we started, and it's where I want to start again."

Grace glanced quickly at the four witnesses in the background. One of the young women covered her mouth with arched hands. The other pointed toward the bench with her eyes and then glared at her male companion, as if to tell him, "This is how it's done." The young men simply nodded and smiled. When she returned to Joel, he was in full proposal mode.

"I can't promise you perfection. I can't promise you riches. Hell, I can't even promise I'll make my car payment next month. But I can promise you one thing: I will love you, I will honor you, and I will cherish you until the day I die."

Joel took a deep breath and gazed at Grace with eyes that she had never seen. They were not the eyes of the boy who had flirted with her through 1941 or who had left her on a rainy doorstep or even taken her to church that morning. These eyes belonged to someone else.

"You're all I want, Grace. You're all I've ever wanted. Will you marry me?"

Grace glanced once more at the spectators to see if they were still enjoying the show. They were. The men held the women close. The women looked on through watery eyes.

Grace put both of her hands on Joel's face, smiled softly, and then dropped her hands to the velvet box. She took it out of his hand and gently placed it to her side.

"You don't need to promise a thing or even ask the question," she said as her own tears began to flow. "You already know my answer."

CHAPTER 25: JOEL

Waimea, Hawaii – Tuesday, October 3, 2000

"I, Grace, take thee, Joel, to be my husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, for as long as we both shall live . . ."

Joel looked at the vision holding his hands and then the ocean behind her and wondered again whether he had won a cosmic lottery.
Saints
didn't deserve beach weddings in Kauai, much less spoiled, cocky frat boys who cheated on their taxes, dumped law students who looked like models, and gambled on horses and greyhounds at least twice a month.

He looked at Grace with unbridled awe. Wearing a strapless, short-hemmed wedding dress and a crown of plumeria, she looked every bit the angel in white. He could not imagine a more beautiful bride, a more perfect moment, and a more promising future than the one that awaited him as the husband of the fetching Miss Vandenberg.

Joel glanced at his best man Adam Levy, who gave him a thumbs-up, and then his parents, who stood a few feet away. Cindy blubbered away. He had expected as much. Mothers cried at weddings, particularly mothers who had grown attached to their future daughters-in-law. But fathers usually held back. Military men almost always held back. On this occasion, however, Frank Smith was no better than his wife. Joel nodded to the old man as he wiped away a tear.

The groom then turned from Frank to Franklin, as in Franklin Powell, the family minister the Smiths had flown in from Seattle to do the honors. Joel thought old Frank, the one in the collar, had a sweet gig. For the price of uniting two lovebirds, he could have all the sunshine and poi he wanted for a week.

Joel took a ring from Adam, placed it on a slender finger he held in his hand, and once again focused on the main attraction. What a road they had traveled. What a road
he
had traveled. He had gone from an unemployed college senior in an unsatisfactory relationship to the happiest man on the planet in just a few months.

Joel gazed at Grace and tried to read her smile. He knew she was happy. She had told him as much on countless occasions. But he didn't know what was swirling through her mind now. Did she want more than a life as his wife? Did she want children? A career? She had been conspicuously silent on the latter, despite his attempts to introduce her to the possibilities that awaited women in 2000. He guessed that he would find out soon enough.

Joel glanced again at the assembled witnesses and counted quite a few heads. His brother Patrick and sister Abby had come, of course, but so had their families, three aunts, two uncles, six cousins, ten fraternity brothers, Penelope Price, and Rachel Jakubowski. Rachel had taken a week of unpaid leave from a new job to serve as the maid of honor.

All had had the opportunity to meet Grace before the wedding. All were oblivious to her time-traveling past. Joel and Grace had decided after the contentious meeting with his parents that knowledge of their recent adventures was best entrusted to a few.

Katherine and Walter Saito, the de facto parents of the bride, had arrived on Kauai ahead of everyone to take care of the particulars. Katie had planned the reception with the help of a daughter who ran a catering service in Waimea. Walter had handled nearly everything else, including walking Grace down the aisle – or what amounted to an aisle on a sandy beach.

Joel lost himself in happy thoughts and then returned his attention to Pastor Powell, a man who had once sprinkled baptismal water on his forehead and later removed him from a confirmation class for flirting with his daughter. The reverend had moved past the platitudes to the words that marked the end of most weddings.

"By the authority invested in me by God and the State of Hawaii, I pronounce you husband and wife," Powell said. "You may kiss your bride."

Joel smiled at Grace and then looked away at the assembled. He saw crying relatives, fist-pumping fraternity brothers, and a few others who seemed more interested in the wedding's venue than its participants. This was as cool as cool got, he thought.

Pastor Powell did not appear eager to join Joel on a detour down Sentimental Street. After several seconds of inactivity at the surfside altar, he raised an eyebrow and gave his former problem student a look of annoyance the problem student had seen before.