Free Seasons of the Heart by Cynthia Freeman

she was unable to let him make love to her. Somehow she felt that she would not be honoring her father if she allowed herself to take pleasure in anything.
    Many times Ann would wake at night crying bitterly. Phillip would comfort her, but each time he tried to draw her closer she would turn away.
    He was incredibly kind and supportive. Before he left for work, he would bring her breakfast on a tray. Three or four times a day he called from the office, and almost every night he brought her a bunch of violets. When he decided she wasn’t eating enough, he began to bring home boxes of candy, hoping to tempt her appetite.
    Finally his patience paid off. One weekend he took her up north to the Sonoma Mission Inn. The inn was terribly run down and it rained all weekend, but that night Ann opened her heart and her body to her husband once again.
    Phillip blossomed under Ann’s renewed attention. He worked harder at his job and was almost ready to ask for a raise when they woke one Sunday to discover that the lives of all Americans had been permanently disrupted.
    Ann was making waffles for a late breakfast when he came into the kitchen.
    “These are delicious,” he said, laughing and snagging a piece before she could serve him. “They’re even better than my mother’s.”
    Ann feigned a scowl. “Well, I’m glad I can do something better than she can.”
    “You do everything better,” Phillip said, turning on the radio.
    And that was when they learned the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
    Ann took off her apron and walked into the living room. Phillip sat immobile, his face drained of all color.
    “Darling, Honolulu is a million miles from San Francisco.”
    Phillip looked at Ann’s puzzled eyes. “Hawaii is a U.S. territory. This means that we are at war.”
    Ann felt as though she were going to faint. She held on to the chair so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
    “Phillip, what will this mean to us?”
    “I’ll either have to enlist or I’ll be drafted. It makes more sense to enlist because then I can apply for officers’ training.”
    Ann’s heart almost stopped beating. Her world was falling apart. She had just buried her father; now Phillip was going to leave her, too.
    “You can’t!” she cried despairingly. “We’ve just gotten married. I’ll be alone!”
    “But, darling—I have no choice!” Even though it was the truth, Phillip felt as if he were abandoning Ann. She looked so vulnerable as she sat on the sofa, weeping. Quickly he got up, gathered her into his arms, and gently carried her into the bedroom. He lay there, Ann cradled in his arms, brushing her lovely dark hair back from her forehead. She was so beautiful, so infinitely precious to him. But once again he was powerless to protect her….
    The next morning Phillip stood on the corner of Leavenworth and Bush and watched the men going into the recruiting office. He sighed, realizing that history had twice irrevocably changed the course of his life. First the Depression and now the war. What good did it do to plan? he wondered. He had just begun to feel that life had meaning again, that he might even achieve success as a lawyer, when his world exploded in his face.
    Lighting a cigarette, he forced himself to shut off his self-pity. After all, millions of young men were going through the same torment. Squaring his shoulders, he walked across the street.
    When he came out, he felt that he had made the best of a bad deal. He was a second lieutenant in the Judge Advocate General’s corps. He didn’t know to whom he would be assigned, or even to which theater, but wherever he went he would be safer than in the infantry.
    Ironically, after boot camp, Phillip would receive the rest of his military instruction on the University of California law campus—the very place from which he had graduated. He would be an hour away from Ann, but would not be permitted to see her even for that length of time. The best he could hope for would be a