Free Baby It's Cold Outside by Susan May Warren

only knew each other through correspondence, really. But…he was everything to me too.”
    Jake looked away, as if embarrassed by her words. Or, perhaps, hurt.
    “Did you know him well?”
    He made a face, one she couldn’t read, and his voice emerged tight, constricted again, like it hurt. “All his life.”
    A friend. One who cared enough to trek across Minnesota in a blizzard to tell her the terrible news.
    Alex. She looked outside, at the storm buffeting the window. She could still remember him—mostly. Curly brown hair, hazel eyes, a smile that lit up as he leaned over her changing a tire, retiming an engine. Once, he’d wiped grease off her face with his thumb, told her she looked pretty in oil.
    The compliment had clung to her bones, seeded too many fantasies late at night as she lay on her bunk at Fort Meade.
    He’d written her nearly every week for a year after he shipped out—he’d only been at Fort Meade for a few days, really, en route to Normandy. He told her of the cities he visited—London, Paris. She’d hoped that they might cross paths over in Europe, but he’d been shipped home long before her.
    She lowered the cloth from her head. Her forehead ached. Pulsed, really, like her heartbeat, a fist pounding on the inside of her head. But the bleeding had stopped. Oh, her mother would be thrilled with her appearance tonight for the—
    “The dance.”
    “I think we’re long past the dance,” Mr. Lindholm said. “Dottie was right. There’s no getting the truck out in this wind.” He was looking past her, however, his gaze on Dottie. She’d been rather rough on Mr. Lindholm, and the look he settled on her hinted at pain.
    I care about you, Dottie.
    Those words had touched Violet, so softly spoken from this grizzled farmer that they wheedled under her skin. But as far as she knew, Dottie had been single since…well, yes, apparently she’d married, but under every polite conversation about Dottie Morgan ran the undercurrent that no, she’d run off to marry some handsome gangster, gotten herself pregnant, and skulked back to Frost in shame.
    Maybe Frost had simply become a good place for the brokenhearted and lonely to hide.
    Dottie.
    Gordon Lindholm.
    Violet.
    She whisked her hand across her cheek. “I’m sorry…I just need to know.” Her voice fell. “How did Alex die?”
    Jake didn’t look up at her, his breath coming slow and long, almost as if he forced it through a web of pain, and she hated, suddenly, that she’d asked. “It was awhile ago. I—I should have come sooner.”
    “It was kind of you to come at all. I received a Return to Sender from his address today—I appreciate knowing that he didn’t just reject my mail.”
    “Oh, no, Violet. He would have never done that. He lived for your letters.”
    That seemed a little over-the-top, but Jake betrayed not a hint of sarcasm.
    “He hasn’t written to me but a greeting card and postcards in the past four years. Nothing of emotion or dreams, like his letters during the war.”
    “Perhaps…he felt like he might be leading you on.”
    She looked back at him, frowned. “I thought you said I was everything to him.”
    “You are—were.” He flushed, set her foot down. Looked away from her. “I’m sorry, Violet. Alex did care for you.” He rose but still didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m going to see if I can get my suitcase out of the snow before it’s completely buried out there.”
    She drew in a breath as she watched Jake leave, the opening of the door allowing a draft into the warm room.
    If Alex had cared so much for her, why had he never hopped a train from Minneapolis, taken the half-day journey west to Frost? Why had his letters dwindled to postcards after he’d shipped home? Why had he stopped writing about his life, his fears and hopes?
    Maybe because he’d never seen her as more than a friend. More than the woman who wore grease on her face, knew how to turn a wrench.
    She tightened her jaw against the pulsing