Work Text:
Lorraine hadn’t slept in days. She was too scared. Not because of the nightmares, she was too used to those in her waking hours, ice cold water eating at her bones, but because she would wake up, be blissful for a few seconds and then it would hit all over again. Her husband was dead.
She found out earlier than most war widows. As horrible as everything felt, that much she was grateful for. Radar, the kid and company clerk that Henry always spoke so highly of, had called her a few days before the letter came, which was full of the same expressing sympathies as when her distant friend Bernice’s husband, Maurice, died in action. Lorraine thought she could call Bernice up, cry and feel catharsis, but later, when she didn’t feel like a zombie.
Oh she’d been so excited before Radar called, worrying about the furniture and whether she’d spent too much on Jane and Molly’s dresses for when their dad came home, but he told her haltingly (with two men beside him making soft reassuring noises that she couldn’t quite make out) that her husband’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan, and he was so sorry, and that he knew on some level it was going to happen but didn’t want to believe it.
Lorraine had thanked him dully, not really being able to process anything beyond “your husband is dead” but still hoping the kid was safe and cared for, and sat on her covered couch, feeling like all the colours had drained from her world.
She and Henry had always been slightly anxious together, able to clear their heads and rise above if one sank a bit too deep. But now he was rotting at the bottom of the ocean and she was alone.
Lorraine called her mother first. The woman was eighty three, always thought Henry was a bit of a bumbling fool, but came over immediately, fixing Lorraine a shot of whisky (“but only one, he wouldn’t want you to wallow darling”) and organising her now crying children to spend a week at her sister’s (“your mama is going through a lot right now, and Aunt Mildred will give you all lots of cake and hugs”).
When the house was clean, a casserole in the oven because apparently Lorraine needed to eat, her mother sat by her and held her close. “It’s okay to cry, darling.”
Her own voice sounded like a stranger’s, ragged and hoarse. “I can’t, not yet.” What was her life going to be like? Was this going to be her whole identity? Did she want to be anything else?
Her mom squeezed her hand, reassuring and above all else,
there
. “There’s no time frame on these things.”