Hi, so here is the first chapter of 2024! I hope you enjoy this chapter and this story and please let me know what you think (see previous chapters for more notes)

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The Same Coin

Chapter 8-Put On A Happy Face

In which Erin enjoys life as a married woman. And the war tumbles on.

Sometimes it was strange, she would wake up and still expect to be in the house, in her room with Serena and Elizabeth. Sometimes she expected to be in her old bed with Mary Ellen in the bigger one and Elizabeth beside her and the three of them staring out the window star gazing and talking about their dreams and which film stars they were going to marry when they became famous and how they would be always draped in diamonds.

Now she was a wife.

In every sense of the world.

Ashley was very kind she had to admit. She'd not known what to do but he'd smiled at her and gently kissed her from head to toe discovering places within her that she had never thought about. She had floated for days it seemed on a white bed of pleasure and then when he had entered her it had been a shot of pain and pressure that had moulded into pleasure.

They'd spent their honeymoon in the bed. She'd wanted to get up and help the Baldwin sisters in taking down the decorations but she'd been too pleasure drunk to care that much.

She could now understand why Mary Ellen mourned Curt still. She could now get why her grandmother could never think of anyone else other than her grandfather, why her mother and her father couldn't do well so far apart. She now understood what love and devotion and marriage was.

For that first week they were inseparable, picnics in the woods, dancing in the moonlight. The sisters made themselves absent in the recipe rooms but Erin found that she liked spending time with them. During that week John-Boy was a solid, dependable presence in their home as well. Her brother loved those two old ladies dearly and they adored him. He brought them books from London, and her lace from Paris and she noticed that alongside his kiss and his handshake now he was taking a jar of the recipe home with him as well.

At the end of her impromptu honeymoon she decided to be proactive.

"Ashely?"

"Yes dearest?"

"You want children yes?"

Ashley paused in the process of putting on his boots.

"In a week?"

"No" she laughed. "But I was thinking…would it not be tempting fate if we made one of the guest rooms into a nursery perhaps? I only ask because it would take some time and I know that my brothers are staying only for a short while—"

She did not say that she knew her husband too was only staying for a short while as well. Once their second week was over he was back at base and then maybe a third week before he was shipped out. John Boy and Jason were both in uniform and both going overseas. Ben was in uniform and would soon be going. Jim Bob had been desperate to go since Pearl Harbour. He wasn't going to stop now.

"I think that would be nice" Ashely said finally. "I think children would be lovely…but…but I cannot make any promises Erin. I will go back to the war—"

"My mother raised two children during the war and she didn't know what her husband was coming back too or even if he was coming back" she pointed out and Ashely smiled that pinched little smile that she knew was code for her Momma. Carefully she didn't push the subject.

"I will speak to the sisters in the morning and see if they are amendable" he said smiling.

Amendable Erin thought kissing him softly. Yes. Somehow she could see the sisters being more than that.

She was right. The thought of a baby in the house that had the two of them for so long was like a balm to the sisters and a firework all at once. Both of them had been thrilled by the idea and Erin had been almost emotional by the excitement they were showing. She had not seem much of her family since her wedding outside of her brothers. Oh she knew Elizabeth had school, she knew that Rose had her grandchildren and Cindy had her own baby on the way, she knew that Mary Ellen had a toddler and work to boot and she also knew that her Grandmother was feeble.

Her mother had no excuse she knew. Maybe she was busy running everything at home. Maybe she didn't want to come to the Baldwins. Erin found that she didn't care that much and that was what scared her more than anything else.

For if she didn't care that her mother wasn't coming to see her in those first few days of wedded bliss then she wasn't going to care that her daughter was cleaning out a room to turn into a nursery.

In the end she bit the bullet.

She needed Ben…well…Daddy would be better but failing that she needed Ben.

So she decided to go home.

Walking up the house as Mrs Ashely Longworth JR and not Erin Walton was something of a new thing. It looked the same, the sounds were the same and Erin paused on the frontier looking at it and she knew that if she closed her eyes she would be ten again her hair in pigtails playing catch with her sister, Jason with his music, John Boy with his writing, Ben trying to make money. Jim Bob with his model aeroplanes, Grandma crocheting on her rocking chair next to her Momma and her Grandpa and Daddy working in the small saw mill that had existed next to their house and that had provided for them for so long.

But when she opened her eyes it was different. She and everyone else had learnt the hard way during this war that you couldn't live in the past.

Only the future.

And so she carried on into it.

"I really don't want to put you both out like this"

"Oh please" Miss Maime said as she sorted through some of the stuff they'd found in the spare room. "This is a good days work. And should have been done months ago if truth be told. I am afraid my dear only memories improve with age." She held up a bolt of white silk edged in fur and then.

"I do hope this can be saved. I think it would make a lovely baby blanket"

"Oh I couldn't—"

"Oh yes you could my girl. And think what a favour it would be to us—to use some of our treasures on this baby—"

"You know I am not pregnant yet" she said quietly. "And I don't know when Ashely is going back to the war. There might not be time"

Miss Maime sat down and patted her arm. "Oh my dear I understand. But if you believe it then in my opinion it is true. Look at my sister—she believed Ashely Longworth would come back to her and he did. In a manner of speaking"

She folded the fabric and sighed.

"Well…I suppose I should ask your mother if any of this can be saved."

"Why?"

"She's the best woman with a needle around these parts and you know it" Miss Maime said firmly.

"Miss Maime…my mother and me…"

"Oh I know"

"You do?"

It floored her a little. She had not been aware that either one of the Baldwin sisters had known but Miss Maime waved her hand and then sat down pouring two cups of tea.

"You think that my sister and I don't know that he's struggling? In truth it was why we were so glad he found you. I know that the war can turn a young man's mind and I know that he can fall out with God. I know that when we asked Ashely to church he refused. And I know that Olivia and Esther and the rest of your family are god fearing individuals and I know that you marrying a man who professed to not believe in God must have been very upsetting. I understood this when I noticed that your mother did not engage in our pre wedding activities."

"Oh"

"Am I right to assume that you do not think she will revel in the joy of a new baby should we be so blessed as to have one?"

It was so close to what she was feeling that she didn't know how to respond to it.

Miss Maime nodded.

"Time" she said very carefully. "Heals all wounds."

"Not this"

"Yes this" the older woman said firmly. "Because Erin you only have one mother. And your mother is a precious and rare thing. And sometimes…mothers get things wrong. But that doesn't mean that they don't love you or want you to be happy. Why my own dear late mother got a lot of things wrong, perhaps…and I do not wish to criticize the dead but perhaps her greatest failing was that she was too lax with us. She allowed our father to spoil us I suppose"

She sighed and then.

"I will take these to your mother and ask if they can be saved. You spend time with your husband and enjoy married life. You are one of many war wives who might become widows Erin. You need to accept what that could mean"

It was not said with harsh intent, Miss Maime had never had a harsh bone in her body but it did give Erin something to think about that perhaps she had not thought about too much previously.

That night as Ashely came to her and they made love she found herself gripping his shoulders tightly. He ran his hand up her naked side the way he did their wedding night and ever night since he'd figured out that it made her sigh and she grabbed his chin.

"Are you going back?"

"Within the week" he said stopping still inside of her and she nodded and she curled both her legs around him pulling him impossibly close and whispered into his ear. "I have to go to my squad and then I'll get orders. They won't tell us what but my guess is France"

She nodded. This nothing she didn't know. She knew that soon they would have to invade France, from France if the Allies got a decent foothold then they would be able to launch counter offences into Italy, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Germany. The end goal. To get to Germany. Her father had never done it. Maybe this time her husband would do it.

Or if he would die in the attempt.

Carefully she didn't dwell on that thought. She rolled her hips instead and she watched as her carefully restrained, always clinical husband's eyes rolled back in his head with pleasure and she felt a surge of pride that she, Erin Walton, now Erin Longworth could get a man like Ashely to look like that.

"Ashely?"

"Yeah darlin?"

"Before you go?"

"What?" he asked with a small smile as if he knew what she was thinking and he agreed with her.

Love. This was love. This was so much love. This was the love of her life, her life beginning. Right here. Right now.

And so she grinned.

"Put a baby in me"

Ashley pulled back and stared at her and then grinned. He looked so much more like her Ashely when he grinned at her, not the battle hardened one the war had given her back but the real one that she knew and loved and treasured and dreamt about.

"Yes Ma'am" he muttered and then he turned so that they tumbled back to the bed and everything was awash with a glow and a pleasure that if Erin was being honest made it hard to remember that there was a war on and that this happiness was just a small part of the horrors that was to come.

And there you go, with only three chapters we shall see the ending taking shape soon.

Next Chapter-When Olivia hears the news that Erin might be expecting a baby from Miss Maime and Miss Emily it takes Esther to get her to understand what she couldn't before.