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  “Jane? Christine?”

  “That’s right,” Ding said. “Mr. Plunkett.”

  “That’ll be me.”

  He opened the trunk and put their luggage inside, waving off would-be tagalongs as the girls climbed into the back seat.

  “I would give you the tour, but you know how it is with gasoline,” he apologized as they set off.

  “Oh, that’s more than all right, Mr. Plunkett. We so appreciate your taking us in,” Ding said. Jane found herself still speechless from the shock of the station.

  “Well, I could certainly use the company,” Mr. Plunkett said. “It’s my own way of helping with the war effort.”

  A short drive later, Mr. Plunkett parked the Ambassador in front of a row house, and the engine puttered to a stop. “Welcome to C Street.”

  They got out, Mr. Plunkett helped with the luggage, and the girls followed him up several steps to the front door. “Now, it isn’t much, but I’ve done my best to make it comfortable for you,” Mr. Plunkett said, setting the suitcases down on either side of his loafers and inserting the key. The door swung open, he gathered the bags, and they followed him in. “I hope you’ll make yourselves at home.”

  Inside, it was clear that Mr. Plunkett’s green clothes and car were not a simple coincidence. The kitchen was entirely green—from the cabinetry to the shelves to the window frames. The shamrock room was something out of the Sears catalog. Two chairs—green, of course—were tucked neatly around a table with the wings folded down. The place was immaculately decorated. Flowers perched perfectly in their vases. Pristine china glimmered in an elaborate hutch. Jane had not realized that rooms this modern actually existed in the world.

  A small space between the kitchen and the living room was cordoned off with curtains. Mr. Plunkett led them by, motioning to the makeshift room. “This is where I’ll sleep.” Jane realized he was giving them his room.

  Mr. Plunkett squeezed up the narrow stairway, and the girls followed close behind. He puffed and heaved as he climbed. At the top of the stairs he paused and caught his breath before a large bathroom.

  Jane and Ding gawked at the enormous soaking tub. There would be no more hauling buckets of boiling water out to the washtub, no more running back to the house like wet rats. Jane nearly moaned as she pictured herself in it, submerged to her chin in hot water straight from the tap. She looked at Ding, whose eyes were as large as saucers, and knew her cousin was imagining the same.

  “I’m sorry the room is so small,” Mr. Plunkett said as he opened the door to the right of the bathroom. “But you won’t have to worry about sharing it with any other girls. I’m not taking in any more boarders.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Plunkett. We know how lucky we are to find something so private for forty-five dollars,” Ding said.

  “Let me know if there’s anything you need, girls,” Mr. Plunkett said before leaving them. Jane heard him breathing heavily as he descended the stairs.

  Ding jumped into the bed, shoes and all, crossing one leg over the other and examining her heels. She lay back, arms behind her hatted head, the picture of luxury. Jane laughed and noticed the lamp on the night table. Electricity. Of course there would be electricity here! Jane nearly cried with the realization that she could read herself to sleep without fear of setting the house on fire.

  “Let’s go explore!” Ding said, sitting up.

  “We should unpack and get some rest.” Jane could hardly wait to get into that tub.

  “And the Nazis should all be dead already,” Ding said, dragging her down the steps, from the row house, and out into the street.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Anywhere! That’s the point!”

  They walked and they walked. They walked so much that Jane rubbed blisters on both little toes. Pained pinkies or not, she was enamored. Washington was alive—as bubbling with life as its mighty Potomac. All over, people were going somewhere, doing something. There was nothing static in the city.

  Girls everywhere, loads of them from all over the country, bustled and hustled down the streets and avenues. That first day, they met girls from Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Missouri, even one from California—all here for Civil Service jobs. They moved around the city in pairs and packs, the click of their heels on the sidewalks running together to create one long drone—a buzzing undercurrent to the honking horns and shouting bureaucrats, an overpowering, distinctly feminine hum.

  It was true, what they said, Jane thought, about there being eight girls for every guy. The fact had reassured Arzella when Philip had read it to her from the paper. What the fact didn’t convey, though, was the electricity of that dynamic in a place where there were boys at all.

  Oh, it was wonderful to see boys again. Servicemen swaggered down sidewalks, cocky but awkward, and though the women fought over their affection, it was still the men who fawned. They looked handsome, every one. Even the ones who Jane could tell weren’t really handsome seemed to be, in their heroes’ uniforms.

  As Jane and Ding passed a pair of sailors, there was a sudden swell—Jane felt herself lifted in a tide of flirtatious giggling. Before she knew what was happening, she watched Ding kiss one of the men on the cheek. His face turned red, Ding skipped back to Jane, and they kept walking, the boys carrying on in the other direction.

  Outside, the sun rose and the room filled again with light, illuminating that wretched blanket. “Do you need help dressing?” A woman stood in her doorway. “Eggs and bacon for breakfast today. You don’t want to miss it.”

  “Oh, no, thank you,” Jane said. She had forgotten. She didn’t need to catch the train. She was already in Washington and would be late for her first day of work if she didn’t hurry. She needed her lipstick. Ding was to go to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and she was to report to the Department of Justice Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “Have you seen my Revlon?”

  “Lipstick for breakfast? Who are you courting, lady?”

  Jane blinked. She was back in West Virginia. She was old. “No, never mind. No lipstick. No breakfast for me.”

  “Would you like it in your room?”

  “Of course. That will be fine.”

  Jane shuffled to the chair and sat down. The chaos of that first day had been terrifying.

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for Room 5517,” she had asked a passing worker, but the girl pushed past her without acknowledgment.

  “Could you help me find Room 5517?” she tried again, and again she was ignored.

  A man brushed past in a dark suit and slick hair. “Excuse me, sir.” He walked by with long strides. Jane dodged the other passersby and found a spot against the wall to collect herself, staring at the rush of legs.

  “Are you new, too?” The question startled her, and Jane looked up to find a petite woman with neat brown curls before her, clutching her small pocketbook tightly with both hands. Jane nodded, and the girl extended her right hand. Jane took it. “Where are you going?”

  “The chief clerk of the FBI.” Jane wondered if this was allowed; her letter had noted that its contents were strictly confidential.

  She was relieved when the girl said, “Me too.” They shook hands. “I’m Mary Sintsink, from Washington state.”

  “Singsing?” Jane asked.

  “Sintsink,” Mary corrected cheerily. “But don’t worry about it. That’s what everyone thinks when they first hear it.”

  Though she looked mousy, Mary was confident, and Jane happily followed her to the fifth floor, where they found a line of thirty other girls—the new recruits of the day.

  Mary Sintsink took her turn in the office first and Jane listened to her report as she waited to be called in. “We don’t stay here,” Mary told her. “It’s just for your oath of office. They’ll give you an assignment afterward.”

  “What’s yours?” Jane
asked.

  “Can’t say.” Mary winked. “It’s a job of the hush-hush sort.”

  The clerk was a bored woman who barely looked at Jane as she administered her oath. “Identification Division,” she said. “Armory, third floor.”

  “How am I to get there?” Jane asked.

  “Promptly,” the woman said, sending her on her way.

  She arrived at the Armory tired but proud of her proficiency with maps. A clerk on the third floor poked her head out of a doorway and greeted Jane. “First day?” she asked. Jane nodded. “We’ll need your prints, dear.” Jane followed her into the small office, where the woman took all four of the fingers of Jane’s right hand, pressed them onto a black ink pad, and then rolled them onto a card. Holding Jane’s thumb, she did the same, then repeated the process on the left. She had clearly done this hundreds of times.

  What if her prints matched a criminal’s? The thought was silly, she knew. Fingerprints were as unique as a signature, but still she could feel the sweat under her arms. The clerk placed the card into a metal handcart along with several others.

  Jane was beginning to realize just how serious this all was. She had just been fingerprinted to work for the FBI—the FBI, who helped ensure only those with the country’s interests at heart could work for its government. She, Jane Walls, might stop a spy. Or her mistake could cost the world its war.

  History had always felt to Jane like fate. Looking back, it seemed obvious that each war had ended in its own particular way. Each decade seemed a chapter in a book, written purposefully with its own styles, its own peculiarities, and its own happenings. Jane thought of free will as an invention of the present. As she listened to the clerk now, Jane saw for the first time that this era, too, would soon be past. Her dress, her shoes, this war would all fit neatly into the chapter, concluded one way or another, of now.

  The clerk did not seem to notice Jane’s trembling. She led Jane down a long hallway and opened one of many identical doors. “Ms. Bruce. You have a new classification girl.”

  Ms. Bruce, nearly six feet tall, smiled a toothy grin and motioned for Jane to come in. “Come along, love,” she said, and the clerk left. Jane followed Ms. Bruce into the room. Inside were thirty identical desks lined up in long rows from wall to wall. In the corner of each identical desk sat an identical green banker’s lamp. Under each lamp was the bowed head of a girl that looked nearly identical in the yellow light to the head of the girl beside her. Several of the girls looked briefly up at Jane and smiled, though most stayed hunched over their work.

  Ms. Bruce spoke to Jane softly. “This is the largest fingerprint clearinghouse in the world. Helping it to function effectively and efficiently requires the finest caliber of personnel available. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jane said. This was her war job, not being a homemaker.

  Ms. Bruce handed Jane a small magnifying glass on a gold ball chain and directed her to her own brown desk with its own green lamp, where she was given her own stack of cards and a freshly sharpened pencil. It seemed wholly irresponsible that they trusted her so quickly. Jane lifted the magnifying glass and looked down at the card. The smudged ink took shape, forming intricate patterns. Ms. Bruce showed her how to classify them according to their arches, loops, and whorls, and soon Jane was cooking with gas. A girl came by periodically to collect the classified cards on her metal cart.

  After half an hour, the lines on the prints started to blur. What at first looked like a loop whorled back around at the last moment. Jane seemed to be finding lots of arches, which she remembered Ms. Bruce had said were present in only 5 percent of the population. She began to second-guess each thing she wrote. The pressure seemed enormous. Jane squinted harder and traced the lines with her fingernail.

  Though it was grueling, the absorbing work made the day pass quickly. Jane forgot everything else as her world narrowed to the little desk and the cards in front of her.

  Jane’s eyes were crossing by lunchtime, and she sat in the grass alone and unwrapped her jam sandwich from its grease paper. All around her the other girls gossiped. Someone was getting married. Someone had baked a cake for someone else. The afternoon was just as exhausting but just as distracting, and soon it was time to go home. On the walk back to C Street, she saw fingerprint patterns in the sidewalk, the bricks of buildings, the leaves of the red maples and pin oaks that lined the streets.

  When Jane climbed the stairs at Mr. Plunkett’s, ready to sink into the bed, she found her cousin already there, sobbing.

  “Oh, Ding! What is it?” Jane sat beside her. “Is it awful writing all those letters home to wives and families? Oh, it must be just awful.”

  Jane’s shoulders ached. Her neck ached. Her bottom was sore from sitting, and her feet throbbed from the walk. It was nothing, though, compared to what Ding must have been through.

  “No.” Ding sat up and rubbed her puffy eyes. “That isn’t it. The Pentagon is miserably hot, and the construction is loud. But really, it’s the WAVES.”

  “What about the WAVES?” Jane asked.

  “I’m the only civilian girl at the office and they can’t stand it. Well, you know what? I think they’re the active crops. Free with their favors, is what I think. You should see the way they cozy up to the officers.”

  “You mean to tell me you wouldn’t cozy up to an officer if you had the chance?”

  “That’s not the point, Jane. There isn’t an officer in the place to cozy up to. The WAVES have taken them all.” She wailed, collapsing again among the pillows. Jane felt for her magnifying glass in her pocketbook, clinking up against her tube of lipstick. She rolled its metal handle between her fingertips and sat with Ding, waiting for her sobbing to cease.

  “Breakfast is served.” The woman entered with a kind smile and set the plate on the tray of Jane’s walker.

  “Is Ding okay? She was crying.”

  “Is that your grandbaby’s name?” the aide asked. “I’m so sorry. This is so hard. He’s in a better place now, honey.”

  Oh yes. It was not Ding she had comforted earlier in the day. She was remembering ages ago. It was Cassidy, her granddaughter. Oh yes. Her granddaughter. Oh yes. Ken.

  Cassidy

  Route 20 toward the farm wound through tree-covered hills that darkened the midday road and through bright open valleys that were corn-studded in the summer but now stood stark and empty. Noeli and Cassidy passed a shack with old tires piled up outside, then sped past Turkey Run Road. Cassidy had ridden her bike up Turkey Run as a kid—it looped the back way around to Shumaker Hill, but she’d never been on the roads branching off of it. She had classmates who lived off of them, but none of them had ever invited her over. These routes were so real, and yet the specifics of them so unimaginable that to Cassidy they felt almost mythical.

  They passed an antique shop with a wagon wheel out front and then Mt. Lebanon Church, where her great-grandparents had been married, on the left. Then, they sailed down the hill. “Right at the green sign at the bottom. There.” Cassidy pointed. The trees on either side bent above them in a protective, supplicating arc. “The first left. Here, this driveway.”

  The gravel crunched under the SUV’s tires and Cassidy’s stomach rose into her throat. Her father hadn’t designed the winding narrow driveway for cars this big. They passed over Sugar Fork Creek, where cattails had once towered and leaned from its soggy bottom. Cassidy, like Ken, had caught crawdads here, had watched tadpoles grow legs. Now it was little more than a muddy trickle, wet leaves from overgrown brush clogging its flow. Branches thin as pencils clawed at the windows.

  Cassidy held her breath as they rounded the bend near the old chestnut stump, and willed the tires not to slide as they climbed the hill beside the pond. She could feel stones slipping from under them, spraying out behind. She concentrated on the dock she’d helped her dad build and then, as they mounted the hill and its bl
ack sandpaper rafters appeared, on the house she’d grown up in—its wraparound porch hugging its two broad stories, its wooden sides, untreated at her dad’s insistence, water-stained, moss reaching up the sides like long fuzzy fingers.

  Her grief highlighted its corners—its edges sharp against the background of the bare trees. She sucked in a breath.

  Beside the house was her mother’s garden, where Paloma grew tomatoes, pole beans, snap peas, and other vegetables. By contrast, the wood of the garden fence was stained and sanded—perfectly maintained. Beyond the house and garden, thick trees and grasses blocked the view of the old strip mine at the top of the hill.

  Noeli parked the SUV in the place usually reserved for Ken’s silver Malibu, which was conspicuously absent. They got out and climbed the three steps to the open screen door, Cassidy’s legs shaking.

  “Come in,” Paloma called from the kitchen. As they entered, she abandoned the cheesecloth she’d been squeezing on a scratched wooden cutting board and wiped her hands on her red-checked cotton apron.

  Cassidy stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the coatrack where her dad’s jacket and brown snowsuit hung casually on the hooks as always. His gold watch lay on the shoe bench, still ticking.

  Cassidy turned to look at her mother, whose walnut hair frizzed around her head. How could she go on, doing the regular farmwork? Paloma’s sharp features softened at the sight of her daughter and a sad smile rose to her lips.

  “Come here, sweetheart.”

  Cassidy went to her, let Paloma wrap small arms around her, breathed in her lavender lotion, the rosemary essential oil she added to her laundry, the nag champa smoke that lingered in her hair. Paloma was so herself that Cassidy at once felt like a little girl. She let her mom stroke the back of her head, rub her back, and whisper in her ear. “I’m so sorry.” Her breath was as hot and sweet as the steam rising from the stove. “I’m so sorry you have to do this.”

  Cassidy tried to remember her father’s smells, but couldn’t. Paloma’s overpowered everything. Cassidy pulled away. When she had kids, she decided, she would plant associations intentionally. She’d pick the most beautiful smells, and the most moving music for them to associate with their childhood.