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100 degrees, and Victoria found solace in the lake. Diving deep below the surface, darkness enveloped her as she swirled her body like a mermaid. Over and over she plunged and surfaced until she gave way to fatigue. She lay in the sand, moisture evaporating from her suit as the sun melted her muscles.
    Images of Joseph flashed behind her eyelids: the sunlight illuminating golden flecks in his blond hair, his infectious smile, the dimples that framed his mouth. The way he’d encircle his face with his hand and point to her—his secret sign to tell her she was beautiful.
    The sounds of Molly’s mother preparing dinner interrupted Victoria’s thoughts. She knew it was time to go in and help her own mother with supper. Reluctantly, she stood and was walking across the beach when a scream came from Maryland’s house.
    Doors banged and women ran across their front yards. When Victoria reached the house, Maryland was curled in her mother’s arms and they were both crying. Victoria turned to Evelyn, who stood by the staircase, a letter in her hand as she stared at the sobbing women. Victoria’s circulation slowed as her blood solidified. She felt like a china cabinet suffering an earthquake, her strength breaking into tiny prismatic shards that reflected like the church’s stained glass. Something had happened to Maryland’s brother, James. Victoria looked at the tiny diamond on Evelyn’s hand, the promise ring James had given her before he left for the war.
    “What happened?” Victoria asked as she put her arm around Evelyn. More women entered the room and they turned and waited for the response.
    Evelyn continued to stare out the window unable to speak.
    Maryland’s mother wiped her tears and said, “James’s platoon came under heavy fire. He’s missing in action.”
    Victoria knew how hard Evelyn and Maryland had prayed and still James might not come home. The protective bubble of Nagog hadn’t been able to save him, and the security Victoria had felt during her whole life was crumbling.
    Something changed in Victoria that day. She stopped going to church every afternoon to pray and only went on Sundays, when the community attended the Church of the Good Shepherd. The vigil she’d kept for Joseph became harder to endure, knowing that any day a letter could arrive stating he’d suffered the same fate as James. Movies became her respite. For the restof the summer, on Thursdays and Saturdays, she rode her bike the four miles to Littleton’s town center. With popcorn in hand, she lost herself in other worlds. The silver screen opened a window to life outside of Nagog, which had begun to feel like a prison—a world in which waiting for news from the war front seemed every woman’s sole occupation. Instead, the women on the big screen wore sequined tops, bared their bellies, traveled. They could live the way they chose without ties to community or expectations from parents.
    Everything in Victoria’s life had been planned: She would attend Wellesley College this fall, marry Joseph upon his return, and have babies. Her father’s plastics company would be combined with Joseph’s family’s textile factory. She and Joseph would summer in Nagog and uphold tradition. Parties would be thrown and social calendars kept. She would live her mother’s life.
    And if Joseph didn’t come home from the war, a different husband would be chosen from her parents’ circle.
    In the dark theater, a secret hunger grew. Though she still wrote Joseph letters and tended the gardens like a good Nagog woman, she longed to be like Ingrid Bergman: known and loved by everyone in the world, not just by a long-absent soldier. She wanted to wear gowns and attend fabulous parties on Humphrey Bogart’s arm.
    As the years passed and she was forced to sit with the neighborhood women and sew clothing, Victoria found herself unable to join the conversations. The women read Ladies’ Home Journal and discussed the latest recipes created to help the