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before she’d stopped believing in God, and some wise-aleck boy in the back of the room had called out, “Our teacher never reads that.”
    She had given him a withering stare and asked, “Do I look like your teacher?” Her icy response hadn’t fazed him. In fact, the boy continued speaking out in that same irritating manner all day, telling Helen how the “real” teacher did things. No, she had no desire at all to be a substitute.
    She wheeled her bike into the scraggly bushes that served as landscaping and leaned it against the front of the building for lack of a better place. If someone stole it she would just have to take public transportation—another first for her. But maybe it was time to take another step down the social ladder and see how other people lived. She had never asked God for wealth and social stature, so what did it matter now if she threw it all back in His face? Being a Kimball had been a curse, not a blessing, and Helen was ready, at long last, to prove to God and everyone else that she could live a simple working-class life.
    The air felt cooler inside the building, out of the glaring sun, and she paused for a moment to get her bearings before making her way to the same office where she’d applied for a job two days ago. She nodded a silent greeting to the lone woman in the waiting area, then sat down and pulled a handkerchief from her purse to delicately wipe the perspiration from her brow.
    The other woman looked vaguely familiar—and very nervous. The mother of a former student, no doubt. She was in her early thirties, attractive, but round shouldered and timid looking. She sat huddled over her purse, her white-gloved hands gripping it as if it contained state secrets. Helen had to bite her tongue to keep from telling her to sit up straight. Good posture was so important. Then their eyes met and the woman smiled.
    “Excuse me … Miss Kimball?” she asked. “I don’t know if you remember me or not, but my son Allan had you for his teacher in second grade?”
    “Yes, of course—Allan Mitchell, I remember. A bright boy. Well-mannered.”
    “Why, thank you. His father insists on good manners—and so do I!”
    Helen remembered Mrs. Mitchell’s husband. Firm yet fair, not much warmth, rarely allowed his wife to say more than a peep. But obviously intelligent, articulate, and well-educated. He had reminded Helen of her own father.
    Mrs. Mitchell, on the other hand, had struck Helen as a typically dull wife and mother, the sort of woman who does charity work in her spare time, who always buys purses to match her shoes and goes to the hairdresser regularly to refresh her permanent wave. In fact, Mrs. Mitchell was probably the last person on earth that Helen would ever imagine working in a defense factory. She was surprised that Mr. Mitchell had allowed her to. He didn’t strike Helen as the sort of man who would embrace nontraditional roles for women. In that regard, he definitely resembled Helen’s father.
    “What brings you here, Mrs. Mitchell?” Helen asked.
    She hesitated, blinking in doe-eyed wonder as if asking herself the same question. “I … I’ve taken a job here.” Her voice had a tremor of excitement—or perhaps it was fear. Mrs. Mitchell seemed ready to bolt for home at the slightest provocation. “Now that I’m here,” she continued, “I’m wondering if my decision was injudicious . Why are you here? Surely not to work?”
    Helen nodded. “Yes, to work.”
    Mrs. Mitchell was too polite to ask why, but Helen saw the unasked question in her eyes. It took Helen a moment to recall the reason herself. Five days ago, as the walls of the house had begun to close in on her, she had seen an advertisement in a magazine from the Office of War Information calling for defense workers. The slogan read, His Life Depends on You . She had thought of Jimmy.
    One would think that after all these years she would have forgotten Jimmy long ago. Heaven knows all the other things