Page 37 of The Launch

Jo shakes her head sadly. “I found out that he’d only invited me to make Suzanne Wimmer jealous. They’d been dating for ayear and she broke up with him, and he thought taking me to the dance would be the thing to get her back.”

“And did it?” he asks hesitantly, as if hearing the truth might break his heart.

“As it turns out, Suzanne had broken up with Ralph because she was in love with our Algebra teacher, Mr. Simpkins, who had just finished his teaching degree. He was twenty-two, and he waited for her to graduate high school and then they got married.”

Mr. Dandridge shakes his head and tsk-tsks at this turn of events. “A tale as old as time,” he says. “An ugly one, but still. It happens.”

Jo shrugs. She’s almost cheerful. “I hate to say that I kind of felt like Ralph Putnam got exactly what he deserved in that situation, but…I wasn’t the least bit sorry for him.”

“So what happened to old Ralphie in the end?”

“Joined the Coast Guard, last I heard. I think he was stationed up near Alaska. A friend of mine from back home was close with one of his sisters, and she heard he dated a bunch of different local girls up there, but was still single.”

“And yet, after all of this, you still call Ralph Putnam the first love of your life?” Mr. Dandridge frowns at her.

“Oh, yes.” Jo nods enthusiastically. “The amount of time I spent daydreaming about him in class, going to basketball games and pretending I cared about school spirit, and walking past his house hoping that he would notice me and ask me to the dance—I loved him. For sure. He even kissed me that night before I found out about him just asking me to make Suzanne jealous.” She makes a face now at the memory of the kiss, which was lukewarm, at best, though at the time she’d ascribed much more meaning to it than it had deserved. “But what about you—first love—was it Mrs. Dandridge?”

He turns and looks out the window again wistfully. “Oh, sure, sure. You could say that. First girl I really and truly gave my heart to. But first love? The kind of love you’re talking about, where you wish and hope and dream…and never forget the heartache?” He glances back at Jo with a twinkle in his eye. “Mrs. Shane.”

“Mrs. Shane?”

“My best friend’s mother,” he says with a bad boy laugh. “Oh, she was a beauty!”

Jo is scandalized; her hand flies to her mouth and she can’t find a single thing to say.

“Diana Shane,” Mr. Dandridge says. His eyes are misty with the memory of her. “Tall and leggy and brunette. She had my best friend, Chester, when she was only sixteen. So you can imagine that when I was a twelve-year-old boy, she was a gorgeous woman still in her twenties.”

This sounds slightly more reasonable, and Jo lets her hand fall to her lap as she listens. “Wow,” she says, shaking her head in awe.

“Wow, indeed.” Mr. Dandridge laughs again. “Chester and his mom lived with her parents on the outskirts of town, and anyone who didn’t know them always assumed she was his big sister, which he didn’t bother to correct. I remember this one time, I went over to their place on my bicycle, and Mrs. Shane was outside in a pair of jeans! That was outrageous, Josephine, for a woman to be wearing jeans held up by a bit of twine in the late 1800s. They belonged to her father, and she’d borrowed them so that she could build a chicken coop. So I pulled up on my bike, and there she was, in jeans and a dirty white shirt, sweat on the back of her neck and dirt on her hands, and oh, was I in love. I wanted to marry Diana Shane and build her a million chicken coops. I wanted to be the husband she never had. You know, it never once occurred to me that marrying her wouldmake me Chester’s stepfather.” He chuckles at his younger self as he talks. “Silly kid stuff.” Mr. D grows serious. “But love is love, and you never discount it. Never call it stupid or brush it away, you understand?”

“Sure.” Jo nods fervently. “I agree. It’s important to love and to suffer through heartbreak and loss. It makes real, lasting love even sweeter.”

“Aha!” Mr. D says, pointing a finger in the air like he’s made his point. “There you go. A+ work, Mrs. Booker.”

“Ohhhh.” Realization dawns on Jo.

“You see? You don’t get to discount Mr. Booker’s first love or brush it away, because for him, the heartbreak and the loss of it makes his love for you even sweeter.”

Is she an idiot that she needed a ninety-year-old man in a hospital bed to state the obvious for her? “You aresoright.”

Mr. Dandridge’s raised hand falls to his lap and he sighs. “Okay, now pass me those romance novels and some extra cookies, and I promise not to tell the nurses who gave them to me.” He winks at her and points at the door. “And then you go out and spread your cheer around this place so that you can go home and have beans on toast with your children.”

“Fish fingers and french fries tonight,” Jo says with a smile as she hands Mr. D three packets of pecan sandies and two paperback books.

He flips the books over to inspect them. “Her Lonely Heart,” he reads. “Under the Willow Trees,” he says, glancing at the other book. “They sound lovely, dearest Josephine. Now, off with you.” He waves at her and opens the cover ofHer Lonely Heart. “I have my books to read.”

Jo backs out of the room with her cart and the promise to come by next time she’s on duty, and she’s still smiling to herself when she nearly bumps into Dr. Chavez in the hall.

“Josephine!” he says, smiling widely with those big, square, white teeth set against a deep tan. “Good to see you!”

“And you as well,” she says. She’s about to offer Dr. Chavez a packet of cookies for lack of anything better to say, when Nurse Edwina approaches them with her face red and her eyes worried.

“Dr. Chavez,” Edwina wheezes. “You’re needed in triage immediately. Potential head injury. Young female, unresponsive.”

“Any idea what happened?”

“She fell and hit her head on the edge of a pool, and was apparently in the water for a couple of minutes before her neighbor was able to pull her out.”

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