A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

neighbor, and a navy suit Doc Newcomb’s wife had worn to their daughter’s high school graduation six or seven years ago.
    That morning she’d put on the entire traveling ensemble for the first time—including the new black pumps and claret-red beret. The rising sun on its way to summer solstice struck a new angle, saturating the bedroom in light. She saw every cobweb and stain in the old paint (money for spring wallpaper had gone for the pumps)—but in the mirror there was a surprisingly young and eager face with inquisitive blue eyes. Her figure was nowhere near the slim silhouettes they were showing in the magazines, but she looked well proportioned in the dress. The beret was … questionable, but what the heck. If she was trying too hard, it was for Sammy. She wanted to look good for Sammy. She wanted him to be proud of his mother.
    Cora was not the only member of Party A concerned with what to wear. The letter she had finally received from Mrs. Katie McConnell, the maid from Dorchester, Massachusetts, made her sure of that:
“I changed places and I guess you maybe couldn’t find me here, but I am glad to have your lovely letter. I work for a lady who is a good lady but I got plenty to do I cannot be Idle. I want to know if France is cold as Ireland and how we are to wash clothes. I am sorry that I do not have my mother’s pearls for the occasion as I had to sell them for passage.”
    But the chatty tone of their exchange had ended when Katie later wrote that the pilgrimage would be doubly hard for her because she’d lost two sons in the war.
“Tim and Dolan. Fifteen months apart, but so different. One was Night and one was Day, but they were bound to be together. Killed a week apart. My heart was broken twice.”
    When they received their official pilgrimage badges, Cora had written first to Mrs. McConnell. From a bronze bar engraved CORA BLAKE, MAINE hung a red, white, and blue ribbon, at the end of which was a heavy bronze medallion with a gold star and the words
Pilgrimage of Mothers and Widows
. The medallion was elaborately decorated with crossed American flags and an eagle surrounded by oak and laurel leaves.
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
Cora wrote, hoping to cheer her up.
“Never mind pearls, we have the most beautiful jewel in the world! The War Department says we must wear this badge in a conspicuous place at all times while on the pilgrimage, so that everybody knows who we are and why we’re over there, and we should be treated special.”
    Mrs. McConnell replied,
“I cried when I saw it. I Promise I will never take it off. I am sure now that our Darling sons are in heaven.”
    Earlier that morning Cora had reverently taken the badge from its velvet box. Considering what was meant by “a conspicuous place,” she smiled to herself and jauntily pinned the badge over her left breast.
    Linwood’s reaction was somber. “That’s very handsome. I’m proud of you, Cora.”
    She blushed. “We’ll see.”
    He stood beside her as they lingered on the porch. It was always hard to give up the view of the harbor, especially on such a rare day of warm sun and high, carefree clouds. The lobster boats were comingin; farther out a double-masted schooner passed under full sail. Cora squeezed his hand.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Butterflies,” she said.
    “It’s the excitement. When you get back it’ll be high season. I’ll take you out to Great Spruce Island and we’ll have some fun.”
    The suggestion meant more than a pleasant half day’s sail, a picnic of macaroni salad and ham sandwiches. Great Spruce Island was where they’d secretly first made love—away from the eyes of scandalmongers who would disapprove of a widow lady shacking up with a man who had just lost his wife. Free at last, Cora had peeled off her clothes and run shrieking through the icy wavelets, plunging into the tide. When she surfaced, a dozen yards from shore, a dark head had poked out of the water just an arm stroke