CHAPTER SIX THE PROPOSAL
CHAPTER
SIX
The Proposal
Cora spent the night balled up on her bed, with the curtain drawn tightly closed to Benny’s side of the room, feeling abandoned, first by Lee, now by Benny.
And even though they hadn’t gone anywhere yet, she already feared for their safety.
In the morning, she woke with grainy, tender eyes, a dull headache and regret.
She shouldn’t have told Benny she wouldn’t say goodbye to Lee, because now she couldn’t stand the thought of letting him go without seeing him one last time.
She pulled the curtain back to ask Benny what time he wanted to leave, and her stomach dropped.
Benny’s bed was empty. She ran to the kitchen, hoping to find him eating breakfast, but there was no sign of him.
A flurry of panic erupted inside her, clashing with the too-still house. She’d missed her chance.
That whole morning, she and Momma barely spoke, but Cora saw the red in Momma’s eyes and the puff of her lids.
She knew her mother’s tears were all for Benny’s declaration, not Lee’s going, and carrying the extra grief in silence made her feel desperately alone.
Cora didn’t know what to do with the ocean of feelings that swirled around her, choking out the oxygen, and it was a relief to step outside, letting the crisp December air cool her lungs on her way to work.
At Sunshine State Insurance, she noticed a buzzing tension the minute she walked inside.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked Loretta, when she took her spot at the plywood table.
‘Three of the men are gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Enlisted,’ Loretta whispered.
The word felt dangerous to Cora, full of hidden threats and horrible consequences, and in its syllables she heard fighting and killing and loss, and all of this Lee had chosen over her.
With his workforce suddenly cut to size, Mr Griffin looked about as haggard as Cora felt. His easy manner turned clipped and impatient as he ran himself ragged trying to cover the extra work. Around mid-morning he slammed down his phone so hard it made Cora jump.
‘You and me need to start looking for a new job,’ Loretta whispered.
‘What do you mean?’ Cora asked.
Loretta fished an orange out of her bag and sniffed it before digging her nail into the rind and tugging it back to peel.
‘I typed up a dozen letters explaining that Sunshine State’s life insurance won’t pay out if folks die from an act of war.
’ She handed Cora an orange slice. ‘That’s why so many policies are getting cancelled.
And when business goes bad,’ she popped another wedge into her mouth, ‘you know as well as I do that we’ll be the first to go. ’
Cora wasn’t sure what upset her more, that she was about to lose her job because of this damned war, or that a rich insurance company wouldn’t pay life insurance if a man died fighting in it. ‘That’s not very patriotic,’ she said.
Loretta shrugged. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, companies are in the business of making money.’ She leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m quitting before I get fired.’
‘To do what, though?’ Cora whispered. ‘And we might not even get fired if everyone else is leaving. He’ll have to keep us.’
Loretta made a face and dumped her peel in the trash. ‘I need my paycheck, Cora. I can’t wait and hope I still have a job.’
‘But—’
‘I’m gonna find me some war-safe work. Something in an ammunitions factory or somewhere sewing uniforms.’
It was the smart thing to do, but Cora felt a kind of loyalty to Mr Griffin for having taken a chance on her. With Lee and Benny deserting her, it didn’t sit right to abandon Mr Griffin.
By the end of the day, she was bone tired, and when she got home, she flung herself onto her bed and pulled her pillow over her head to block out the world, but she couldn’t block out her thoughts, which returned again and again to Lee breaking her heart and marching off to a war he had no business fighting.
She heard Benny come in, and when he headed toward their room, she grabbed a Life magazine from the pile by her bed and pretended to read an article about women wearing trousers. She didn’t want him to see her falling apart, and she definitely didn’t want to hear about Lee leaving that morning.
She was hiding her face in the pages when he opened the door. ‘You’ve got company.’
Cora peeked over her magazine to see if he was serious, then got to her feet when she saw he was. For a split second, she dared to hope it was Lee as she followed her brother into the living room. He hadn’t gone through with it. He couldn’t leave her.
No one was there but Roscoe, and Roscoe didn’t count as company. She made a show of looking around the empty room, then raised her eyebrows at Benny. ‘What’s going on?’
Roscoe hopped up from where he’d been perched on the edge of the couch and her brother sat down, clasping his hands so tight his fingertips went from Benny-white to bright-white.
‘You look very pretty today,’ Roscoe said.
She clicked her eyes over to Roscoe, standing in front of her shifting from foot to foot. He held out a bunch of red flowers. Firespikes that looked like they’d been filched from the park. The two of them were up to something.
‘These are for you,’ he said. ‘Beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl.’ A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth despite her mood.
Leave it to Benny to get Roscoe to come smooth things out between them after all their days of bickering. She pecked their friend’s cheek in thanks, and brought the flowers into the kitchen, searching for something to put them in. They followed her.
‘So, uh, me and Benny were talking.’
‘Yeah?’ she said, filling a jug with water.
‘I thought it would be a good idea, and Benny thinks so too, we both think so, but it was my idea.’
‘What? The flowers?’ She snipped the bottom tips off the stems. ‘It was a nice idea. Thank you.’ He looked nervous, worried. ‘You okay, Roscoe?’
‘Yeah, yeah. It’s just, I didn’t mean the flowers. I meant something else.’
Cora arranged the blooms in the jug and turned to face him. ‘What did you mean, then?’
‘Just say it,’ Benny said, hovering by the doorway.
‘I’m getting to it.’
‘Come on, Roscoe.’
‘Would you hush? Just give me a minute.’
Cora let out a nervous titter. ‘Just say what?’
Benny nudged Roscoe in the ribs and bugged his eyes out at him.
‘Stop rushing me.’ He shifted on his feet. ‘Cora, why don’t you sit down comfortably on the sofa?’ He tugged her hand, leading her to the living room.
She bit back a smart-aleck response about him inviting her to sit on her own couch. The hand clutching hers was sweaty and cold, which made her pulse pick up its pace to an anxious two-step.
‘Benny?’ she called behind her, her voice wary, because whatever this was, it was Benny’s doing.
Roscoe sat her down and stood in front of her, digging his hands into his pockets. Benny followed them, sat beside her, and nodded encouragement at Roscoe.
‘So, now, Cora. Where were we?’
She blinked, helpless. ‘The flowers?’
‘No, not the damn flowers,’ Benny said, exasperated. Then to Roscoe, ‘Are you gonna say it or not?’
‘You’re both acting so—’
‘Let me do this in my own way.’
‘We need you to marry Roscoe.’
She stared at her brother, then at Roscoe, her mouth falling open.
‘For Pete’s sake, Benny! I was gonna say it better than that.’
‘We’d have been here all night and into tomorrow waiting on you to say it.’
‘Wait,’ Cora said. ‘Just hang on. Did I hear that right?’
‘Cora, look,’ Roscoe said, ‘I know this is not how you propose to a girl,’ he glared at Benny, ‘and I know we’re not even a couple, but it’s … it makes sense.’
She barked out a short laugh. ‘How, Roscoe? How in the world does this make sense?’
‘This way I know you’ll be all right when I go,’ Benny said. ‘If anything happens, there’d be widow’s money. See?’
‘You have both lost your minds.’ She moved to stand, but Roscoe held out his hand, stalling her.
‘It’s a good plan.’ He knelt on one knee in front of her. ‘It makes sense if you think about it.’
She glared at Benny sitting beside her. ‘Did you put him up to this?’
Benny shook his head. ‘It was his idea.’
She wanted to shake the both of them. ‘First of all,’ she counted off on her fingers, ‘if you don’t go you don’t have to worry about making it back, and second of all,’ she turned to Roscoe, ‘if you do come back, we’ll be married, for crying out loud.’
She caught the hurt look that passed over his face before he smoothed it away, replacing it with a crooked, cocky smile. In a tone light as a breeze, he said, ‘Well, then, I guess we’d get to play house,’ and waggled his eyebrows at her.
Benny punched his leg. ‘Shut up, fool,’ he said. Then to Cora, ‘Forget about that for now. We’ll deal with it later. The point is we have a solution.’
‘No, we do not.’
‘Please, Cora. I need you to agree to this so that I can go.’
‘Why would I, when I want you to stay?’
‘Because you know that if I don’t I’ll never be right with myself.’ He took her hands in his and squeezed. ‘I need you to do this for me. Please, let me go.’
‘Benny,’ she said, but fell silent. Her tongue weighed in her mouth like a dead thing.
How she wanted to tell him to stay, but the thought of him leaving her anyways, like Lee did after she’d begged him to stay, was too much.
She wished it was Lee who’d cooked up this harebrained scheme and stood in front of her, offering what security he could before going. But it was sweet, kind Roscoe.
She caught sight of a red petal by the door that had fallen from his clutch of firespikes. ‘Did you really come up with this idea by yourself?’
Roscoe nodded, reaching out and taking her hand. ‘Call me crazy, but it doesn’t seem like much of a hardship getting hitched to a beautiful girl.’
She shook her head at the ridiculousness of him, but also the goodness, the generosity. She squeezed his hand. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, because she couldn’t say yes, but she didn’t have the heart to say no.