Blue Skies Tomorrow Read online

  The reception? Just what she needed. Work—not to cure her or make her worthy, but to help her sort out her emotions. “Mrs. Novak, if you’d like, I could set things up.”

  “Would you? You’re such a dear.”

  Helen took Jay-Jay’s hand and headed up the aisle.

  “Helen,” Ray called. “I need to talk to you.”

  She waved and smiled. “I’ll see you at the reception.”

  Betty asked her to wait up, but Helen forged ahead at a speed her heavily pregnant sister couldn’t maintain. Betty would ask blunt questions Helen couldn’t handle, not with Ray’s dreamy look fogging her mind.

  Yes, dreamy. The look of a man who didn’t want to renew their friendship, but their romance. Thinking of his kindness woven through with a new thread of boldness, thinking of the man she loved returning her love—it wreaked havoc with her heart.

  47

  Grandpa Novak shifted on the couch in the living room. “So, boy, tell us again how you blew up that tanker.”

  The retired gentlemen gathered around Ray nodded in agreement.

  Ray launched into his story. So much for only having to tell it once.

  The house throbbed with activity. In the parlor, Walt and Jack took turns pounding out tunes on the piano while children danced. Sometimes Jay-Jay’s squeal rose above the crowd. He probably didn’t say daff anymore.

  Helen burst out of the kitchen with a tray, exchanged it with one on the dining room table, and returned to the kitchen with a cute bump of her hip to the door.

  She was avoiding him. Either he’d made his love too obvious and she didn’t welcome it, or she was using work to deal with her feelings. Ray had to find out which and soon. He wouldn’t let her leave town tomorrow unless he was certain she had no interest in him.

  Something in her eyes when they talked in church said some interest remained.

  He finished his story with a ka-boom, and the men grinned and laughed and slapped knees. Any one of them would have enjoyed his adventures more than he had.

  Ray scooted forward in the armchair. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I need more coffee.”

  Allie passed by with a stack of plates. “I’ll bring you a fresh cup.”

  That’s how it had been for the past hour and a half. Everyone brought him food and drink and trapped him in storytelling.

  No more. Ray stood. “Need to stretch my legs.”

  He entered the kitchen and groaned. Helen and four other women bustled about. How could he get her alone?

  Helen gasped. “Oh dear. Did we run out of something?”

  “No. I thought I’d—I’d like some milk.” He pulled a glass from the cupboard and opened the icebox. How could he get the other women to leave?

  “You should rest. Go sit down. I’ll bring you some.” She reached for the bottle.

  Ray poured milk into the glass. “I’m a big boy. I can do it myself.”

  She leaned her hip against the counter and smiled. “You can’t avoid the party in here forever.”

  He took a sip and raised his eyebrows at her. “Neither can you.”

  Her lips parted, and she squinted at him. “Ruth dear, why don’t you escort your patient back to his seat of honor?”

  Ruth took him by the elbow and guided him out of the kitchen. “That’s her polite way of saying you’re in her way. She’s a busy one, isn’t she?”

  “Oh yeah.” Busy avoiding him, but he grinned. Something remained between them, and he planned to stir it to life.

  Ruth led him to the armchair. “Sit and rest. Nurse’s orders.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ray sat, gulped down the milk, and got up again. “That was good. I’ll get some more.”

  “No, you don’t. I’ll get it.”

  “Wait. It’s your first day here. Shouldn’t you be with Jack, meeting his friends? Send Helen out with it.”

  She studied him with a little smile. “I thought Jack was the manipulative one in this family.”

  “He is. I’m the nice one.”

  “Oh brother. You’re all hopeless. I’ll send her out.”

  Ray settled into the armchair and listened partway to the men’s discussion of last week’s prison riot on Alcatraz that required Marine intervention. As if the Marines didn’t already have a war to fight.

  Helen emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of milk. She stood in front of Ray’s chair, eyebrows arched. “You rang?”

  “Yes, ma’am. May I please have some more?” He held his glass low, so she’d have to come closer.

  “Thirsty, aren’t you?” She leaned over to pour, and blonde curls spilled over her shoulder.

  “Mm-hmm.” He wanted to weave his fingers into her hair and pull her down to his lap for a long kiss. “Martha, Martha.”

  She paused and looked at him with those delicious eyes. “Martha?”

  He didn’t want milk anymore. He wanted tea and lots of it. “Sit and talk with your brother Lazarus.”

  Helen straightened up and tilted him a smile. “No, thank you. Remember what Martha said after Jesus raised her brother? Lazarus stank.” She waved her hand in front of her pretty little nose and whirled away.

  All the men laughed and joshed Ray and slapped his scrawny shoulders.

  Ray smiled like a fool, but he didn’t care. Something remained, all right, and he intended to claim it. He stood and set his milk, untouched, on the coffee table. “Excuse me, men, but I have an important mission.”

  Helen’s hands trembled as she set a handful of strawberries on the cutting board. The banter with Ray rattled and drained her.

  Her chest heaved, and she muffled a sob, mindful of the other ladies in the kitchen.

  It was too much to handle, too much for one day—Ray alive and home and interested in her. The mutual attraction hummed with life, and she could practically taste his kisses. But if he touched her, she’d turn into a blubbering idiot.

  What next? She didn’t want to leave town now, but Ray would reclaim his room, and where would she live? And if she stayed, wouldn’t everyone think she was pining over Ray? What if he wasn’t interested in her romantically? What if she’d misinterpreted everything?

  But no. He wanted to stop her from marrying Vic. The way he looked at her, the way he teased her, the way he sent for her—it was too wonderful.

  Helen lifted the knife over the strawberries, but it shook in a silver blur, and she set it down. She was in no state to use a knife.

  The kitchen door swung open. Oh goodness, Ray again.

  “Excuse me, ladies.” He strode through the kitchen, pushed open the door to the backyard, and faced Helen. “Since you won’t sit and talk, we’ll go outside. In the fresh air you won’t notice my odor.” He dropped her a wink.

  Under the force of his humor and determination, she had to clutch the counter for support.

  “Go, Helen.” Esther nudged her from behind.

  Betty put one hand where her hip used to be. “If you don’t go, we’ll drag you out there.”

  “No need for violence.” Helen fumbled with her apron, untied it, and set it aside. She headed for the door as if this would be a casual conversation, an everyday occurrence, but as she brushed past Ray’s warmth in the doorway, she crossed another threshold—from the claustrophobia of expectations and performances to open, verdant, genuine life.

  She forced breath over tingling lips as she walked with Ray across the yard, weaving among trees in full leaf, blossoms shed and replaced with embryonic green fruit.

  At the back fence, Ray turned to her—tender, amused, and silent.

  Helen ripped her gaze away to the trees wagging their branches over her head. “It’s beautiful out here.”

  “Beautiful.” But he didn’t look at the trees or the sky, only at her.

  This couldn’t be happening. How could he be alive? How could he look at her like that? How could he stand so close? Close enough to touch.

  “Everyone wants to talk to the dead guy. Everyone but you. But you can’t avoid me forev
er.”

  “I’m not . . .”

  He tipped a smile.

  Her breath rushed out, not quite a laugh. “All right, I am. But it’s so much, so emotional. I think—I think joy can be as nerve-wracking as grief.”

  “So you’re happy.” His gaze asked much more.

  “Very much. But—but I still can’t believe you’re alive.”

  “So take time to get used to it. Don’t go to Washington.” His gray gaze held her with the softness of flannel and the strength of steel.

  “I won’t.” Her voice fluttered out.

  “Good.” He moved closer, and something ignited in that gray, a fire she’d never thought she’d see again. He ran his fingers into her hair, behind her head, and tilted her face up. “I want you here with me. Always.”

  The warm touch of his living flesh coursed through her. Her knees buckled, but he embraced her, pulled her close, held her together, and pressed his lips to hers, his warm, living lips. All the old passion returned, lit by a new flame of longing fulfilled and life reborn.

  Everything spun in Helen’s head, all her emotions and plans, all she thought she knew about Ray and about herself. He cared for her as much as before, if not more.

  New strength surged inside and braced her legs. She caressed his back, his shoulders, his face—thin but alive. And hers. He was hers.

  Ray pulled back, and the steel came to the foreground of his eyes. “I love you. I love you so much, and I won’t let you get away. You’re going to Ohio with me. You and Jay-Jay. Walt and Allie will be there too. We’ll find you a room and a job, and maybe Allie can watch Jay-Jay while you work. Until you’re ready to get married.”

  With those words he rubbed out her dreary future, and a new future zoomed into rainbow-hued focus, brilliant in the light of his love. His love! He loved her. “All right.”

  “No arguing. I love you, and I won’t let you get away.”

  “You weren’t listening, darling.” She stroked the contours of his face. “I said yes.”

  “You said yes?”

  “I said yes.”

  “Yes, you’ll go to Ohio, or yes, you’ll marry me?”

  “Both.” She brushed a kiss over his lips, stiff from confusion. “I am deeply in love with you, Raymond Novak, and I have been for a long time.”

  His eyelids fluttered. “You have? Since when?”

  She looped her arms around his neck and laid a series of kisses along his cheekbone. “Since you plucked blossoms from my hair last year, since you rescued me after the bike accident when I was ten, since you played checkers with me when I had polio—it’s hard to tell. For all I know, you smiled at me when I was a baby, and it started then.”

  “Wow. I can’t . . . I can’t believe it.”

  “Hmm. Sounds like you need some convincing.” She pulled him down for a long, deep kiss. “Now do you believe me?”

  He raised that sloppy grin she loved. “A few more like that and you might convince me.”

  She laughed, and he joined her, and he kissed her, and their kisses and laughter knit together like a silver scarf, swirling around them and binding them together.

  Ray burrowed in her neck. “When do you want to get married?”

  His kisses made her too warm and woozy. “Soon.”

  “Today then. Tomorrow if you insist on a long engagement.”

  She laughed, but the eager rumble in his voice kicked up her heart rate. “I know a preacher. Maybe he’s available.”

  He chuckled, his face in her hair. Her hair would be a mess, but who cared? “I have some influence with him. Maybe I can talk him out of those long engagements he endorses.”

  “Then again, what about Jay-Jay? Maybe we should wait a little while to give him time.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. And I need to put some meat on my bones. You don’t want to marry a scarecrow.”

  “I’m not.” She worked her fingers through his soft black hair. “I’m marrying Sir Raymond, my hero and the love of my life.”

  He swallowed hard, his eyes smoky. “I never thought I’d say this, but it was all worth it.”

  Helen snuggled close and breathed in the scent of him. The pain of the past year didn’t evaporate in the warmth of his love—and she didn’t want it to, because it made that love possible. “Yes, it was worth it.”

  48

  Antioch

  Saturday, September 8, 1945

  Dad set his hand on Ray’s shoulder. “Are you sure you want to be a pastor?”

  Ray chuckled and ladled two cups of Mom’s wedding punch, one for him and one for his bride. “All my life.”

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

  Grandpa Novak picked an apple out of a bowl on the dining room table. “Heavens alive, John. First you want all your sons to be pastors, now you want none—”

  “I want him to do what he wants to do.”

  “I want to be a pastor.” Ray gave his dad a dark glare. “Don’t stand in my way. Especially not on my wedding day.”

  Dad laughed and clapped Ray on the back. “Go find your wife.”

  “My wife.” He savored the words, headed into the living room—and stopped short.

  “I’m a jet. Can’t catch me.” Jay-Jay ran in front of him, arms spread wide. Little Judy Anello and Susie Wayne trailed behind in echelon.

  “Whoa, there.” Ray smiled at his stepson. His son. He couldn’t have been prouder if the three-and-a-half-year-old were his own. Ray was glad God had called him to a church in Martinez, less than twenty miles away, so Jay-Jay could grow up near family.

  The Army Air Force uniform sat comfortably on his shoulders, but he wouldn’t miss it after his discharge. Now that the Japanese had surrendered, his discharge would come any day.

  “Too bad you can’t stay longer. You just got back from Ohio.” Betty Anello scowled at Allie Novak seated on the living room couch beside her.

  Allie bounced Frankie on her lap on his little fat legs. “Boeing wants Walt in Seattle.”

  “And we needed to spend the last few days in Riverside.” Walt slung his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Finally got to meet Allie’s friends. Cressie and Daisy—what characters.”

  “I got to meet Eileen Kilpatrick too.”

  Ray nodded to Walt. “Your friend Frank’s widow, right?”

  “Right. She’s doing well. She worked the assembly line at Lockheed Vega, fell in love with her foreman. They’re getting married next month.”

  Betty put her new baby girl to her shoulder. “I love these happy endings. Even with Allie’s parents.”

  Allie and Walt exchanged a smile. “I don’t know if I’d call that happy,” Allie said. “But it was improvement.”

  Walt made a funny face at his son. “You don’t need an olive branch when you have the cutest baby in the world.”

  Ray smiled. “Who could slam a door in that little face?”

  “Not even my parents.” Allie wiped drool off Frankie’s chin. “Our reception was chilly, but we were received. It was a good start.”

  Laughter from the parlor drew him. “Excuse me,” Ray said. “I want to find my wife.”

  “Your wife?” Walt said. “Really? She’s your wife? You’ve only said that phrase a thousand times today.”

  Ray winked at his brother. “The day is young and my wife is waiting.” He carried the cups of punch into the parlor.

  Jack sat at the piano playing “Till the End of Time,” and Ruth sat on the bench beside him in her wedding dress. Since both Helen and Ruth wanted small weddings, they’d chosen a double service to limit the fuss.

  “Say, Ray,” Jack said. “Sure you don’t want to stay in the military, come to the desert with me, and test jets?”

  Ray rested his elbow on the ink spot on the piano that earned him a spanking but saved his life. “Sure you don’t want to stay in the ministry and write sermons with me?”

  Jack laughed. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

  Ruth leaned on her new husband�
��s shoulder, now adorned by silver eagles. “I’ll have my work cut out keeping you in line . . . Colonel.”

  “That’s for sure. Still can’t believe they promoted me even though I never got to fly a B-29 in combat.”

  Ray clucked his tongue. “Stupid surrender—ended the war and spoiled your fun.”

  “Oh, I’ll have plenty of fun at Muroc Army Air Base.”

  “The Mojave Desert. I’m so excited. You think there’ll be cowboys and Indians there?” Ruth’s youngest sister, Maggie, a leggy girl of thirteen, danced with Jay-Jay. Since Ruth’s other siblings were in the service or in Chicago, only Maggie represented the Doherty family.

  “Flyboys, not cowboys,” Ruth said.

  “Too bad.” Maggie couldn’t stop talking about leaving Chicago to live with Jack and Ruth. She hugged Jay-Jay. “Can we take him with us? He’s so cute.”

  “Sorry. He’s coming with me,” Ray said. But the adoring look on Jay-Jay’s face said he’d rather be in the California high desert with Maggie. “Don’t get any ideas, young man. Two weddings in one day are enough.”

  Jack laughed. “Say, he can double up with Charlie and May in December.”

  “Nope. I refuse to consent until he turns five.” Ray glanced around. “Speaking of weddings, anyone seen my wife?”

  Ruth grinned. “Checked the kitchen?”

  “Mom and Grandma banished her. It’s been tough.” Ray wandered out of the parlor. Despite the teasing, Helen had developed a beautiful balance between Martha busyness and Mary-like faith. His new church had a moribund ladies’ group, but not for long. Helen would spark them to life.

  Dr. Jamison’s deep voice rumbled from down the hall, and Ray followed it into Dad’s study. “Too bad your friend Esther couldn’t be here. Wanted to meet her.”

  “I know. But her latest letter brought good news. The Navy reduced the men’s sentences to two to three years, with one year already served. We think they’ll be quietly released soon, now that the war’s over.” In the study, Helen sat in Dad’s leather armchair, lovelier than ever in a cream suit and with his ring on her finger.