Once a Warrior by Fran Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

baked and decorated herself.
    “Oh, how pretty!”  Daisy leaped to her feet, almost overturning her chair, then managed to step on Mike’s toes in her rush to take a picture of Agnes’s culinary masterpiece.
    Charlie, who was slower to rise and even slower to follow her across the room, had lost his sad-sack face and was wearing the look of a well-loved man.
    The small party gathered around the serving cart, trying to make the occasion as festive as possible. Neither the bride nor the groom could muster much of a smile for their wedding picture, though. With both sets of parents conspicuous by their absence, it was hard to keep up the pretense.
    After the reception, John and Kitty were taking the one o’clock train to St. Louis. They’d reserved a hotel room and were going to live out of their suitcases until it was time for him to leave for Chatham Field. She would return to Kansas City then to await the birth of their baby.
    Mike had driven John to the church, so Charlie and Daisy, who were having lunch with her parents in hopes of discussing his going to work in her family’s appliance store after the war, had offered to drop off the newlyweds at Union Station.
    Out in the parking lot, John loaded Kitty’s and his luggage in Charlie’s trunk. Then, while the others were busy saying goodbye, he drew Mike aside and said, “I want you to do me a favor.”
    “You name it, you’ve got it.”
    “Promise me.”
    Mike felt John’s fingers close on his wrist. “Say, what is this?” he laughed. “You need money?”  He reached into his pocket with his free hand. “It’s yours.”
    John waved away the small wad of bills he’d pulled out. “I want you to promise me that if I’m killed in combat—”
    “Don’t even think that, much less—”
    “—you’ll keep an eye on Kitty and the baby. She’ll have my life insurance policy and a pension, so she’ll be okay financially. But between her folks and mine, I’m afraid she won’t have the kind of family support she’ll need.”
    Mike sighed. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might be the one who doesn’t make it?”
    “You will. You’re a survivor.”  John’s earnest brown eyes bored into his. “Now just promise me, okay?”
    Mike felt both honored and humbled by his friend’s request. He looked away, wondering if he would really be able to keep the promise he was being asked to make. But if the tables were turned, he reminded himself, and he were leaving a family behind, the first person he would ask to watch over them would be John Brown.
    “I promise,” he said, and proffered his hand.
    “Hey, you two, get over here!” Charlie hollered. “Daisy wants to take a picture of the three of us in uniform.”
    They posed in front of his parents’ Chrysler. Charlie, being the shortest, stood between Mike and John. Their arms rested companionably on each other’s shoulders.
    “Smile!” Daisy instructed before she captured their image for posterity.
    The party ended then with a few tears, a flurry of hugs and handshakes, and reminders to write. John and Kitty climbed into the backseat, Charlie and Daisy into the front. The old tin cans that Mike had dug up and tied to the bumper jangled out “Just Married” to everyone within earshot as the Chrysler pulled away.
    “How about giving me a ride home?”
    Mike had completely forgotten about the redhead, who was standing beside the passenger door of his Buick and smiling expectantly at him. She’d been introduced to him as Kitty’s roommate during the reception but he’d let her name slide by for the simple reason that she was married. He’d figured there was no sense in rocking a boat—even a dreamboat—that he couldn’t row.
    Now he squared her in his sights. “Call your husband.”
    She tucked a stray wisp of flame-colored hair into the luxuriant pageboy roll that fell at the nape of her neck. “He’s stationed at Parris Island, South Carolina.”
    “A Marine, huh?”
    “The