She wouldn’t have thought Roy’s smile could grow any wider, but it did. “That’s the best part. I don’t know how to describe this. Call it luck. Call it coincidence. Call it whatever you like, but I think it’s pretty darn close to divine intervention.”
Mack’s eyebrows gathered. “What do you mean?”
“Jacob Dennison is living here. In Cedar Cove.”
Mary Jo gasped.
“Get out of here!” Mack said exultantly.
Mary Jo couldn’t believe their luck. “He must be…how old now?” she asked.
“Mid-eighties for sure, maybe older,” Mack said.
“Where is he?”
“Reveille,” Roy told them.
“The veterans’ home on the hill?” All this time Jacob Dennison had been practically under their noses!
“He’d like to meet you.”
Mary Jo nearly fell out of her chair. “You mean you’ve already talked to him?”
“No,” Roy said. “I called their office to be sure I had the right Jacob Dennison. The manager confirmed it and she gave me some useful information. From what she said, he’s only been at Reveille House since March. Before that he lived in Seattle and his three children are still there.” Roy shook his head. “I learned that he’s a widower but I don’t have any details.”
“Oh, no…” Mary Jo was saddened by that. “I’m so sorry.” It felt as if she’d just learned that a close friend had died.
“He doesn’t know about the letters?” Mack asked.
“No, no,” Roy assured them. “I told the manager, a Ms. Roberts, but she promised not to say a word about that to him. Besides, you two found those letters and the diary. You should be the ones to tell him.”
“Do you think we should bring them with us?”
“I do,” Mack said, answering for his father. “It’s what we’ve wanted to do from the moment we read them.”
Mary Jo agreed.
“We’ll get them and head up to Reveille now,” Mack told his father.
“Roy,” Mary Jo said, coming to her feet. “Thank you, thank you very, very much.” She walked around the big desk and hugged her soon-to-be father-in-law. He’d managed what she’d thought was impossible—and with apparent ease.
They stopped at the duplex first, then drove toward Reveille House, a few miles away. The winding road to the facility went up a steep hill that overlooked the cove. The view of Bremerton and the naval shipyard against the backdrop of the Olympic Mountains was breathtaking, but for once Mary Jo barely noticed.
The receptionist met them, and Mack explained that they were there to see Jacob Dennison. They were asked to wait and paced anxiously in the reception room until the woman reappeared ten long minutes later. “Mr. Dennison will be with you shortly,” she said. She led them down the hall to a cozy lounge, fortunately not in use at the moment.
There were bookshelves and a fireplace that looked inviting. A piano stood in one corner, while a number of upholstered chairs and a sofa in matching fabric occupied the middle of the room.
They sat down, Mary Jo perched on the edge of her chair, with the cigar box resting in her lap. It held the diary as well as the letters.
About five minutes later, a young male attendant wheeled in a white-haired man. “Here we go, Mr. Dennison,” he said cheerfully as he settled the wheelchair between Mack and Mary Jo, then left the room. The elderly man regarded them both with faded blue eyes.
He looked from Mack to Mary Jo and smiled. “Do I know you?” he asked shakily.
“No,” Mack answered. “But we know you.”
“How’s that, young man?”
“We’ve read your letters,” he explained.
“Your letters to Joan Manry,” Mary Jo added. “From the war years.”
Jacob frowned. “Where did you find those?”
Mack moved closer to the end of the sofa. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said. “I’m Mack McAfee and this is my fiancée, Mary Jo Wyse. We’re thrilled to meet you, by the way.”
“Thank you,” Jacob said. “It isn’t often I have a beautiful young woman come to visit.” He clasped her hand between both of his. “That is, unless it’s one of my granddaughters.” He chuckled softly. “Now tell me about those letters. I have to admit you’ve piqued my curiosity. You say they were written during the war years? By me?”
Mary Jo nodded. “Mack and I live in a duplex on Evergreen Place in Cedar Cove,” she said.
“Evergreen Place,” he repeated.
“I believe that’s the house where Joan once lived with her sister.”
“You wrote Joan letters at that address,” Mack told him. “Only it isn’t a single house anymore, but a duplex.”
“Evergreen Place,” Jacob said again, and it seemed that the address had disappeared from his memory.
Mary Jo didn’t know where to start, there was so much to tell. “I noticed a loose board in the closet one day. When I went to investigate, I discovered a cigar box full of letters hidden under the floorboards.”
“My letters?” Jacob hardly seemed able to take it in. “From the war?”
“Yes.” With infinite pleasure Mary Jo gave Jacob the box. She placed it on his lap and, as she started to move away, the old man reached for her hand and kissed it. Tears spilled from his eyes; embarrassed, he wiped them away, but his emotion brought tears to her eyes, too.
“I always wondered where these ended up. Joan never said. She wasn’t close to her sister, and the two of them shared that house. Elaine was jealous of her, I think. At any rate they were estranged until near the end of Elaine’s life, and then Joan went to her and they made their peace.”
Mary Jo was interested to hear this and relieved that the two sisters had finally settled their differences.
“Joan’s diary was hidden in there, too,” Mack told him.
“What happened to Joan?” Mary Jo asked, anxious now for more of the details. “We know she died, but…”
Jacob opened the box and reverently pulled out the diary. “After the liberation of Europe, Joan and I were married.” Jacob looked up from the treasure in his hands and shook his head sadly. “She died far too young. She was seventy-one. We had three children, a boy and two girls. Mark, Margaret and Marianne….” He paused as the reminiscence, the grief, overcame him. He withdrew a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and dabbed at his eyes again.
“Would you tell us about your experiences on D-day?” Mack asked.
“There’s not much to tell. I was one of the fortunate ones. I was herded, along with other Americans, onto a train. It took us to a POW camp in central Germany, where I spent the rest of the war.”
“That couldn’t have been an easy time.”
Jacob sighed. “War is never easy, young man.”
“When were you released?” Mary Jo asked. His imprisonment was clearly a painful memory he’d rather not discuss.
“May 1945. American paratroopers dropped onto the field outside the prison camp,” he said with a far-off look. “Those of us who’d survived were afraid the German soldiers would kill us rather than expose the conditions under which we’d been held.”
“They didn’t, thank God,” Mary Jo whispered.
“No. Instead, they threw down their weapons and ran. Many of them were just boys, fighting a war they didn’t want to fight. Like me, all they wanted was to go home to their families.”
His attitude was one of forgiveness and generosity, which impressed Mary Jo and moved her deeply. “Did Joan know you’d been taken prisoner?”
Jacob nodded. “Not for several weeks, though. She assumed I was dead. She’d moved back to the family home in Spokane to help with her younger brothers and sisters. Apparently her mother had taken ill and she was needed there.”
“How long before you saw her again?”
Jacob sat up a bit straighter. “Far longer than I wanted. When I was rescued I weighed less than ninety pounds. The army sent me home in a hospital ship.” He chuckled hoarsely. “I would’ve gotten well much faster if they’d just flown me back to my family. My mother was the best cook in the world.”
Mack exchanged a smile with Mary Jo.
“At nights, back in the camp, I used to go to sleep thinking about my mother’s apple pie. The first meal she cooked for me was fried chicken. I ate almost an entire bowl of mashed potatoes by myself.” Again, tears filled his eyes. “That was one of the happiest days of my life.”
Mary Jo could well imagine. “Do you know why Joan hid the letters?” She asked the question that had haunted her all these weeks. Now she might finally learn the answer.
“Not really, other than the fact that Joan and her sister never got along.”
Mary Jo was disappointed that this part of the mystery would probably never be solved. For whatever reason, Joan’s relationship with her sister was difficult and that was as much of an explanation as they were likely to get.
“Not only that,” Jacob said, “she wasn’t keen on me, either.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. She just wasn’t. Felt it was up to her to say what Joan should do and who she could see.”
“Tell me more about Joan,” Mary Jo said.
Jacob leaned back in his wheelchair. “She was a beauty. We met at a soda fountain here in Cedar Cove. I came over from Fort Lewis for a USO dance and stopped at the drugstore. She was working behind the counter and caught my eye. I had a soda and asked if she’d be at the dance. At the time, her sister worked there, too. It was later that they got jobs at the shipyard. Her sister told me to stay away from Joan.”
“Clearly you didn’t heed her advice,” Mack said.
“Wild horses wouldn’t have kept me away. I was smitten the first time I laid eyes on her.”
Mack looked at Mary Jo as if to say he understood the feeling.
“We met up at the dance and then again the following day. Joan had to sneak away from her sister and they had words afterward. It was too bad that Elaine and I started off on the wrong foot, but honestly, I don’t think it would’ve mattered. Elaine wasn’t a happy person. She tried to control Joan and to thwart our romance, not that it did much good.”
It occurred to Mary Jo that maybe Joan hadn’t hidden the letters all at one time but had kept them—and her diary—in the closet to prevent her sister from finding them.
“How did Joan die?” Mack asked.
“Cancer. I don’t think I’ll ever recover from losing her.” He paused. “But we had almost fifty years together. And my children are good to me. They visit when they can and the grandchildren, as well.”
Mary Jo could see that the old man was tiring. “We should go,” she said. “I’ll get someone to take you back to your room.”
“Would it be okay if we stopped by and visited every now and then?” Mack asked.