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“Now we actually have to drive them,” said Alice, putting down her rag and coming to join them. “Who’s the French saint for inexperienced drivers?”

“I thought you knew how to drive,” said Kate, twisting her neck to look at her.

Alice fiddled with her earring. “Gil—I mean, my sister’s husband, took me out a time or two and let me turn the wheel. I said I could drive so the Unit would take me. And I think I can. Maybe.”

“I haven’t driven for six years,” confessed Kate.

“I’m a very good driver,” said Fran Englund, and for some reason that struck them all as hysterically funny, and that was how Mrs. Rutherford found them, clinging to each other’s shoulders, howling with laughter.

“Did I miss a joke?” Mrs. Rutherford asked.

Kate managed to choke in her breath, tears streaming down her cheeks. She wiped them back with a grease-stained hand.

“N-nothing worth noting,” she managed, exchanging a glance with Alice Patton, who was choking into her own handkerchief.

“Well done, ladies! And ahead of schedule, no less,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “No one would ever guess you aren’t seasoned engineers.”

That almost set them off again.

“I don’t think she’ll think we’re quite so wondrous when we run her off the road,” giggled Alice Patton.

“You’ll be fine,” said Fran Englund. “But I think I’ll let you go ahead. . . .”

And they were fine. Mostly. One of the Fords was extra long, which was quite useful for piling on the giant pieces of prefabricated building materials that Mrs. Rutherford insisted would turn magically into living quarters and schoolhouses, but also meant that there was a great deal of truck they couldn’t quite keep track of.

The man whose stall they knocked over was very nice about it, especially after they bought all his onions.

“What are we to do with these?” asked Alice Patton, holding up a string of onions and staring at it blankly. Fifteen similar strings adorned the cab behind her.

“Make soup?” suggested Kate, and ducked as Fran lobbed an onion at her.

They’d barely made it ten blocks, the long Ford seizing up and having to be re-cranked twice, before they got held up behind a series of very official-looking cars outside a large building flying an American flag. There was a group of soldiers milling about, very excited and surprised to see a convoy of American women driving three trucks.

One of the Sammies, a tall man with brown hair and an open, windburned face, began waving frantically at them. “Fran!”

“Freddie! It’s my brother—excuse me.” Fran Englund slid down from the cab of the Ford.

Kate, who was sharing the White with Margaret Cooper, tried to remember how to put it into park.

“I think it’s this lever,” said Margaret, pulling it for her. Margaret, Kate had learned, was an excellent driver, although she said very little about it. She still apologized periodically for fainting on Kate, which Kate found awkward for both of them.

“Thanks,” said Kate, and slid down from the truck, which wasn’t white at all, but simply made by the White Motor Company.

They found themselves in a mob of American soldiers, all tremendously excited to find women who spoke English, ready to be friends with anyone who knew Fred Englund’s sister, anxious for news from home, and all extremely disappointed that none of the women could tell them anything about the baseball season.

Margaret Cooper immediately found someone who had a sister who was her year at Smith. Kate was left to talk to two others and, in want of something to say, gestured to the house behind them, the one flying the American flag.

“That building—is it the American consulate?”

“It’s—er, a sort of clubhouse,” said one of the men, exchanging a look with another.

“They mean it’s a bawdy house,” said Fran Englund calmly as they went back to their abandoned trucks. She climbed back up into the Ford, sitting down on the board over the gasoline tank that served as a seat. “My brother told me. He said when our troops first landed there was a line that went down three blocks.”

“That’s dreadful. Don’t their commanders do anything about it?” demanded Liza. Her eyes looked even more like glass dolls’ eyes than usual, round as a cartoon in the Sunday papers.

“Sure they do,” said Fran. “They demand the first spots in line.”

Kate coughed to cover a snicker.