From thin air
(Book)

Ira McNewell was supposed to be dead. The government had sent a telegram saying he had been killed in action yet there he was, sprawled out beneath Alice on the floor of the Black Swan Hotel. For a minute she thought she'd died when she fell off the ladder and he'd come to escort her to heaven. Ira had been engaged to Alice's sister when he went off to war. Now Alice had to tell him that flu had wiped out his family and his fiancée had married another man.