We met in the spring. She wore a white dress. The Songbird Diner was busy that night. I was young and mean, fresh home from the war, but I guess she didn't hold it against me. I asked her to dance. It was the luckiest break I ever got.
Over the following weeks, my life changed almost without my noticing-the way the best kinds of change always seem to occur. Years of fighting had put ice in my veins. But each night, after drinks and dancing, we would kiss goodbye and go our separate ways, and molecule by molecule, the ice melted away.
She was younger than me, but the age difference never seemed to bother her. She'd been orphaned as a child, raised by her grandmother until she was old enough to go off and study art at the university. She loved music and she loved dancing. But most of all,
