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much
to her parents’ chagrin, but the knowledge that she had also turned down Leo,
the man she loved, chewed at her heart for days.
     
    *
     
    In the wake of Catherine’s rejection of Waldo, Josiah Woods
launched a new campaign. If Waldo wasn’t good enough for his daughter, she must
find someone who was. Thus, Josiah and Elaine encouraged Catherine to leave for
school where she could meet a man from esteemed lineage.
    Catherine made excuses. Didn’t her mother need help with
Catherine’s three younger siblings? Didn’t her father want her nearby to learn
how the judicial system worked in New Hampshire? But, in reality, it was about
being with Leo, so, he took a part-time job at the Woodsville Drugstore’s soda
fountain and grill and continued to see Leo in secret. But she knew their
meetings couldn’t remain secret forever.
    In the late summer of 1943, a few months after she’d refused
Waldo, Catherine came home late. She told her parents she’d worked the evening
shift at the soda shop, when in truth, she and Leo had gone to see a movie in a
neighboring town. What Catherine didn’t know was that Judge Woods had stopped
by the drugstore to get a root beer float and to see his daughter a few hours
ago when the manager told Josiah that, regrettably, his daughter wasn’t working
that night.
    When Catherine crept up the porch stairs, Josiah was waiting
in a rocking chair. Elaine sat wordlessly beside him knitting a scarf.
    “You were with that boy, weren’t you?” Coming from Josiah,
it was not a question, but a verdict.
    On any other night, she probably would have lied, but
Catherine was tired of pretending. She could still feel Leo’s arms around her
back, and she missed him terribly. Besides, she was so sick of her romantic
life being a perpetual façade.
    “Yes,” she said, “I was with ‘that boy.’ And that boy has a
name. His name is Leo Taylor, and I’m in love with him.”
    Josiah rose from the rocking chair and pulled himself to his
full height. Elaine put down her knitting. “Josiah…”
    “Silence,” he said, peering down at his daughter’s face.
“Listen to me closely when I say this: you are not in love with that boy.”
    Catherine laughed aloud. “Actually, Father, I am.”
    He stood towering over her as she looked up into his face
with a fierceness he didn’t recognize. Elaine watched them tensely from her
chair, coiled tighter than a mattress spring.
    “I forbade you to have anything to do with that boy,” Josiah
said. “You have flagrantly disobeyed me.”
    “Not flagrantly,” Catherine said. “I’ve done it all in
secret. But you know what? I don’t think I should have to hide my feelings
anymore. I’m eighteen, and I can associate with whomever I please.”
    With terrifying slowness, Josiah laid a heavy hand on each
of her shoulders as she continued to look him directly in the eye. “Catherine
Delaney Woods,” he said, his voice like a raw gravel
burn. “If you carry on with that boy, you will rue the day you ever met him.”
    “No, Father,” Catherine planted her feet firmly and shook
his hands off her shoulders. “ You will rue the day you lost your
daughter.”
    She was right; when it came to Catherine’s relationship with
her father, that night was the harbinger of things to come.
     
    *
     
    Summer slipped slowly into fall. The leaves on Woodsville’s
trees turned gold and crimson, rust and burnt orange as the air acquired a
certain nip to it. At the Woodsville Drugstore, Catherine sold fewer and fewer
root beer floats and Coca-Colas. Instead, most of her customers asked for hot
chocolate with a dollop of fresh cream.
    She saw Leo every night as they carried on their forbidden
affair right under her parents’ upturned noses. Things were tense in the Woods
household; Catherine and her father hardly spoke to each other, him noting her
late arrivals and early departures with a cold, disapproving eye, but she
hardly noticed.
    Catherine and Leo took long walks