Saturday, August 15, 1942

Today, Dennis and I were married. Nothing has changed except that I am now Mrs. Dennis Kittering. Elizabeth Kittering. Not a name I’d ever expected to have. If anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be married to the schoolteacher who camped on the beach on weekends, I would have laughed in their face! I’m not laughing now.

We were married in the rectory at St. Mary’s, by the priest who told me the only way to atone for my sin would be to convert to Catholicism, and I am doing that, although not with my whole heart. I’m just doing it to get the priest off my back and to make things easier for Dennis, since I know he could only imagine being married to a Catholic. SueAnn was there, and a lady from the rectory, and that was it. Just a quiet, simple exchange of vows.

This was not what I’d expected for my wedding day, that is for sure, but it’s me who messed everything up, so now I guess that’s my payment. Or penance, as the priest would say. “For your penance, say five Hail Marys and have a small, peculiar wedding.” Of course, we are not taking a honeymoon. We are not even sharing a bedroom. Dennis told me that he loves me, but he knows I don’t feel the same about him and that we don’t have to sleep together until I’m ready. I do love him, although I didn’t tell him that, since it’s not the sort of love he means when he says it to me and I don’t want to give him false hope. But I know marriages used to be arranged all the time and they worked out even if the two people didn’t start out loving each other, so I’m hoping this one will work, too. It has to, because Dennis doesn’t believe in divorce. Not that I do either. I guess I am glad to be married, actually, since it will soon be very obvious that I’m pregnant. It’s best I have this ring on my finger.

Of course, the whole point of Dennis begging me to move here was so I could get a better education, and now here I am, not able to go to school in the fall. He is going to teach me himself. He’ll bring books home for me and tell me what books to get from the library and have me study by myself during the day. I like this plan, although I will feel even lonelier here than I already do, not being able to make friends at school. But that is hardly Dennis’s fault. I have only myself to blame for my predicament.

I wonder if I’ll ever see Mama and Daddy again. I already feel so different from the girl I was a few months ago. I’m afraid of all the questions they’d ask me if I go back to visit and afraid of getting Dennis in trouble. It might be better if I never go back, although I get a heartache when I think about that.

If I was still in Kiss River and they discovered I was pregnant, I know what would happen. After I got the tar beat out of me by Daddy (That’s just an expression. He wouldn’t ever lay a hand on me, but the words he’d chew me out with would feel like it all the same), I would have to drop out of school and live with Mama and Daddy. I’d have the baby right there, in the house, and be one more Banks girl who just becomes a mother and nothing else. It is better for me here, I keep telling myself. Yet, if I still lived at Kiss River there’d be a chance I might at least see Sandy every once in a while. If he didn’t get picked up by the FBI, that is. And although I know that seeing him is the wrong thing to wish for, I can’t help it. I miss him, at least the Sandy I knew before that night that changed everything.

Some pain goes on and on. I can hardly remember what he looks like now. I keep trying to get his image in my head, but I can only see around the edges of it. I can’t really make him out at all. But I can remember him holding me, and us walking the beach on his patrol, and a lot of times at night I cry myself to sleep thinking about him, hearing those ugly words he said to me the last time I saw him. Tonight will be one of those nights, because whatever hope I still had that I might someday see him again, that some miracle might happen to make things go back the way they were, is gone.

Yours in heartache,

Mrs. Dennis Kittering.