Unanswered Prayers. Penny Richards

happen to girls like her. She’d been good and chaste…until Denny, and surely he didn’t count. They were in love and engaged to be married. It wasn’t as if she was loose or anything.

      Afraid for her future for the first time in her life, afraid Denny might abandon her and the baby, Eva wrote him a panicked letter, telling him about her condition and seeking assurance that he still loved her. His reply arrived early in March.

      Gallantly, Denny maintained that it was wonderful about the baby and that of course he still loved her and that he was doing his best to get an emergency leave so he could come home and marry her as soon as possible. He wasn’t sure when that might be, though, because the Allied forces were pressing the advantage of the successful northward march that had taken them to the outskirts of Seoul. The U.N. troops had been inflicting staggering casualties to the Chinese army, and Denny believed that they would be successful in retaking the city.

      “Don’t worry,” he had written. “I’ll be home as soon as I can, and I’ll take care of you, I promise. I love you. Forever yours, Denny.”

      His reassurances eased her mind, and she counted the days until he came back home. She didn’t tell either set of parents about the baby. She wanted to wait for Denny so that they could present a united front. She needed his support.

      Operation Ripper began on March 7, and Eva, like the rest of the country, sat by her radio, listening for every tidbit of news she could glean about the battle raging in Seoul. When she heard of the Communist evacuation of the city on the night of March 14, she had cried tears of thankfulness. Maybe now that the U.N. forces seemed to have things under control, Denny could come home.

      Three days later she had opened the door of her apartment and found his parents standing there with red eyes and long faces. Tears streamed unashamedly down Denny’s father’s cheeks as he told her that they had been notified by the War Department that Denny had been killed during the retaking of Seoul.

      Eva had fainted, and when she came around, she’d cried so long and hard that Denny’s mother wanted to take her to the hospital. Later, when Eva calmed down, Mrs. Talbot had smoothed her hair and suggested in a gentle tone that maybe Eva should go back to Crystal Creek for a while…just until the edge wore off her grief.

      Eva had thanked the Talbots for coming and sent them on their way. She needed to be alone, to ponder her future, a preoccupation that had taken up a lot of her time since she’d learned of Denny’s death. Days of thinking brought her to two conclusions: she had no real future without Denny; and more important, the idea of spending the rest of her life as an unwed mother was unbearable.

      She had debated—was still debating—whether or not she should tell the Talbots about the baby. If she did, she’d have to tell her parents, and they would insist that she move back to Crystal Creek. They would never let her live down her mistake, and the people of Crystal Creek…well, she was pretty sure she knew what their reaction would be. She would be an outcast. A scarlet woman, unfit to associate with the “respectable” people of the small town.

      Three weeks had passed since she’d heard about Denny, and the pain of her loss still nagged like a sharp stone in her shoe. She missed him—his smile, his gentleness. His common sense. She was lost and rudderless, unable to make the simplest decision.

      Even after three weeks of careful consideration, she wasn’t sure she could go back and face the people she’d known all her life. She’d been so full of pride and confidence when she left, so sure that when she returned, she would be a success—a star.

      Eva felt the familiar sting of tears in her eyes. As Reverend Blake had often preached, pride went before a fall. Her success hadn’t materialized, and not only had she lost the only man she would ever love, she’d “got caught,” the price her mother had warned her that “bad girls” often paid.

      Eva shuddered at the memory of her mother’s frequent, scathing lectures. She couldn’t go back to Crystal Creek. Going back home a failure was one thing. Going back a pregnant failure was something else altogether.

      What to do about the situation was something she thought about daily…while she worked, while she sat whiling away the hours until bedtime. She was now almost four months pregnant; luckily she’d been so ill that she’d lost a lot of weight, and so far she didn’t show at all.