The Soldier’s Bride

1. The Music Box

1

The Music Box

March 1943 — EvelynEvelyn stood in the one-bedroom apartment looking at a music box on the kitchen table. Slightly larger than a shoebox, constructed of pressed paperboard, and covered with ivory parchment, a narrow line of embossed gold decorated its outer edge. It wasn’t extravagant or expensive, but Evelyn held it close—it was her most precious gift in the world.

“Oh, Jim, it’s beautiful! Is this to celebrate—”

“Our five month anniversary.” Jim finished her sentence.

“You remembered.” Evelyn touched his cheek.

“Always.” He kissed her, and then bent over the jewelry box. “Look at these compartments.” He lifted the lids of the two side compartments, each lined in cheap red-velvet paper.

“I like the color,” she said. She brushed aside the foreboding gloom that haunted her as she counted down the time they had together. Five days left.

“I hoped you would. Push this lever over.” Jim pointed to the center of the jewelry box and let his fingers glide over her hand.

When Evelyn pushed the metal button on the raised middle compartment, the center of the jewelry box clicked open to reveal a narrow chamber with padded ridges to hold rings and other precious treasures—things that nineteen-year-old Evelyn did not own. A tiny ballerina on a dais near the back popped up and began dancing an elegant pirouette in front of a mirror attached to the inside of the lid.

“Oh, it plays music. Jim, where did you find this?” Evelyn located the brass windup key at the side of the box as it busily churned out a melody she’d never heard before. The music climbed tentatively up the scale and then scattered down with a resonance as deep as Jim’s voice. The wind seemed to listen, too. It took the tune and carried it on a lilting breeze out the window above the kitchen sink.

“Now, that’s my secret,” he replied.

“You and your secrets.” She put her arms around her husband and kissed him, then pulled back to look into his clear blue eyes, seeing the love he felt for her. “I love it. Thank you.” They swayed to the music and listened, and she wished that time could stop in that moment.

“Now you’ll have a place to keep that locket and know my heart is with you.” Jim held her close and hummed along with the tune. He’d given her the heart-shaped locket with his tiny portrait inside on their wedding day. They’d started their life together in the shabby apartment in Colorado Springs with hopes of a bright future, but the war had changed their plans.

Evelyn swallowed her tears as she felt the rumbling of his bass voice against her cheek. She leaned back to look at him. “You keep your heart right in your chest beating strong and come home to me.”

Jim chuckled. “But don’t you know? I gave my heart to you for safekeeping the day we met.”

She laughed, determined to hold on to the echoes of their happiness blending with the melody. She thought of her good husband, the man who made her a cup of peppermint tea every evening, kissed her first thing in the morning, and sang with her in the church choir. Jim wanted to be a father, and he would be a great one, but he was leaving, and Evelyn felt like they were running out of time even though their life together had just begun.

Maybe the war would end soon. She rested her head on his chest. Her hair fell in soft auburn waves over his hands. “My mama told me not to believe everything you read in romance novels ’cause there ain’t a man off the paper that comes close.’ But she didn’t count on a flesh and blood, real-life hero like you, Jim Patterson.”

Her words blended with the music drifting on the sweet sounds of spring. The words were what Evelyn’s romance novels called true love, like two pieces of a puzzle coming together to form a perfect picture. Evelyn loved how Jim could nearly finish her thoughts and almost read her mind by the expression on her face. She knew he loved her—mind, body, soul—the same way she loved him.

Nearly two months later, Evelyn woke up with her stomach full of the turbulence Jim had often described from his flight training. She counted back the days on the calendar and trembled with the news she would write to Jim—that he would be a father. Good news she would send that there would now be two people in the Patterson household loving and praying for him while he was away. Her heart rose into her throat.

She was alone and scared of the future, but she wouldn’t write those words. She’d always pictured a complete family when she’d thought about her future as a wife and mother. Evelyn put a hand to her stomach and squeezed her eyes shut. She would bring this baby into the world by herself, but one day they would be a complete family.

Evelyn opened her eyes and pushed herself to do something absolutely normal, like scrubbing the kitchen sink. Trying to get used to Jim’s absence was like wearing shoes a size too small. It pinched at the edges of her life and made everything feel tight and cramped. Staying busy didn’t help—walking in too-tight shoes only caused blisters.

She had a cool cloth on her face when she heard a knock at the door. Rising on shaky legs, she breathed in and the edges of her mouth turned up in a hopeful smile. Maybe it was Lucy from the post office. She was always the first to hear the news. Evelyn put a hand to her stomach thinking of her own developing news. She opened the door. The world tilted when she saw the messenger—not Lucy—holding a yellow card. A telegram. Not bright yellow like welcome-home ribbons. Dark yellow. Like death.

The laces of those too-tight shoes wound, wound, wound around her body. They hardened the hollow spaces of her heart into one deep cavern. They pulled her nightmares of losing Jim into focus. They choked the breath caught in her throat. The melody of her life went silent, and Evelyn’s world went dark.

*December 1943*Evelyn sat on the loveseat in the fading light of her parent’s front room. She’d moved from her apartment near Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs to live with her mom and dad in the secluded town of Aspen Falls, Colorado. The reports said Jim’s body hadn’t been recovered, but nearly everyone in his company had been killed. Evelyn shuddered, remembering details she wanted to forget. Her fist tightened around the slip of paper that held her happiness hostage. Jim’s captain had sent a letter written in her husband’s familiar script. It said, “I love you, Evelyn. If I don’t come back, look in the music box. I left you one of my secrets.”

She had looked inside and listened to the tune several times since reading Jim’s letter, each time watching the graceful ballerina with its tiny bit of tulle swirling. She hadn’t found anything—maybe he wanted her to remember he had given her his heart for safekeeping, and she still held it in the locket she wore.

She did remember it—all of it—and when his voice began to fade from her mind, she wound up the music box and listened. The memory came back with the tune they’d danced to, and she could almost hear his hum, feel it vibrating in his chest against her cheek. But she still hadn’t discovered the secret.

Thirty-nine weeks after Jim left full of life and courage on his way to fight the Germans, Evelyn gave birth to their son. She cried when she held him and recognized Jim’s strong chin and confident brow—or maybe she just wanted to see those things—features that would keep Jim alive in their new son. She named him Daniel, but everyone called him Danny.

Her arms were no longer empty, and Danny began filling up the cracked spaces in her broken heart. She held on and listened to the memory of Jim coming from the music box. When the melody swelled higher and the petite ballerina danced, Evelyn let her heart believe that Jim would come back to her—maybe that was his secret. She nursed the hope of her lost love and cuddled her baby boy in the hollow space in her neck. Danny rested there as she hummed the tune, and her teardrops fell on the dark crown of his head.

Living with her parents in the same house she grew up in provided some distraction from her heartache. Endless days of nursing and rocking her infant replaced the time she had spent staring at the dust particles in the air, thinking of all she had lost when Jim died.

During one of Danny’s naps, Evelyn took a cloth and dusted all of the compartments of the music box. Every time she heard the melody, it took her back to that day when Jim held her in his strong arms. She slid her finger over the fuzzy lining. She felt a connection to Jim whenever she opened the padded chambers. The box held keepsakes—a lock of Danny’s baby hair, the tarnished key that went with her first roller skates, the bottle caps from her first date with Jim. In the bottom drawer, she kept the few letters Jim had written. She rubbed the cloth along the inside of the right compartment and it caught on a piece of the red velvet paper, pulling it back.

Her hand shook and she dropped the dust cloth. Silently berating herself for her carelessness, she pressed the corner back down, hoping it would stay in place. It curled up stubbornly, and she noticed something beneath the lining. A piece of her favorite stationery—light blue with tiny silver birds embossed on the edges. Curious, she peeled back the corner to reveal her name printed in bold caps—Jim’s handwriting. She pulled it free and sank to the floor.

Evelyn,

I wanted to come back to you. I hope you know if you’re reading this that I’m so angry at myself for failing you by not coming home. Believe me, I did everything I could to make it back to you. Still, life has a purpose and people live or die for a reason. I don’t know those reasons. I only know that I love you. I hope you never have to read this, but if you do, please, will you do something for me?

Be happy. Give my things away or sell them. Even the music box. There’s a secret to this music box, but you’ll only find it by passing it on. Give your heart a second chance. You’ll always remember me, but you don’t need anything but your own heart to do it by.

I’m sorry we never had much money or time, but I hope you’ll have more of both those things in the future. I’m so sorry, Evelyn. Please don’t let me be the reason people don’t see your beautiful smile or hear your sweet laughter. Please don’t die with me.

Forever loving you,

Jim

Evelyn pondered Jim’s words for several weeks. The silver birds were all but worn down from reading his letter over and over. She didn’t want to give the music box away. She couldn’t do it, and the tears came in torrents when she listened to the music play. She didn’t understand why Jim would ask her to give away the last gift he’d given her.

In February when Danny was three months old, Evelyn took him to the new memorial Aspen Falls had dedicated to fallen soldiers. The chilly air carried the scent of winter on its back. Wrapped tightly in layers of clothing and blankets, her son whimpered when Evelyn bent closer to the stone representing Jim’s empty grave in Colorado Springs. She pressed her cheek to the shock of dark hair covering Danny’s warm head.

“Daddy’s not coming home.” She cried and rocked her baby while humming the tune that reminded her of his father. An icy blast lifted Danny’s blanket. Evelyn heard something and stopped rocking.

“Hello?” Evelyn listened for an answer. The wind sang through the trees, and although she knew no one would believe it if she told, it whispered something to her. Don’t die with me. And she heard the tune, Jim’s music—his voice—a song on the wind.

Evelyn clutched Danny and hurried back to their home. She climbed the steps to the front door and walked inside. She stood with her crying infant in the entryway. Her feet throbbed, but not from the cold. The winter in her heart refused to let the blood pump to her extremities. It stopped her frozen soul from feeling. It halted her steps across the thin ice leading up to each new day. If her heart wasn’t so heavy, she could take a step forward, cross the ice, and find safety. She closed her eyes and felt a warm breath of air brush the tendrils of hair from her face, repeating those words—Jim’s haunting words. A tingling in her feet drew her attention. Evelyn looked down at the puddle of water dripping from her boots, steam rising from the melted ice. It was time. Time to live—really live—for Jim and for Danny.