She stood and went over to the armchair where Jonathan was attempting to make himself comfortable. He looked like a man trying to squeeze himself onto his kid brother’s hobbyhorse.
“This is ridiculous.” Grace held out her hand to him. “There’s no way you’ll ever get to sleep here. And . . . I think I would like it very much if you would sleep in the bed with me instead.”
“I’m pretty sure you know that I’m attracted to you. Honestly, I’ve always been. But I won’t take advantage of the position I’ve put you in tonight.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Well then, what if it was me who was taking advantage of you instead? No strings attached.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m saying that I would like it very much if you would spend the night holding me in your arms. And if you holding me leads to us doing something more? Well, I think I wouldn’t mind that either.”
Jonathan dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “You’re killing me, Grace.”
“Then say yes.” She extended her hand to him again.
This time, he took it.
Chapter 19
New York City
Late January 1945
RIBBONS OF DAYLIGHT streamed into the hotel room through the thin gaps between the blackout curtain and the window frame. Grace opened one eye, then quickly covered it with her hand to block the sunlight. It had been so long since she had slept in a bed as soft as this one. She picked up her watch from the side table. It was almost seven o’clock in the morning.
She wriggled her limbs, which were twisted around the sheets of the rumpled bed. Her movements were unhurried. She had no incentive to rush, but then she remembered the night clerk’s threat.
She swung her legs over the side and the bed groaned under her shifting weight. She winced as she stood. So much for her hopes for a silent escape. Even so, Jonathan’s face remained buried in his pillow.
“The last thing I want is for things to become awkward between us.” His words were muffled, but the meaning behind them was clear. “Last night—all of it—was about more than getting into your pants.”
He turned and sat up. “I wasn’t lying when I said I’ve had feelings for you for some time.”
“And I meant it when I said no strings attached. Jonathan, last night was inevitable. Like a dream really.” Grace scooped her wool stockings up from the floor. She sat down on the foot of the bed and began pulling the material up the length of her leg. “Let’s not ruin it with empty promises.”
He frowned. “There’s nothing empty about what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Then what are you trying to tell me?”
He paused, like he needed a moment to work up his nerve. Now, that made Grace go still. In all the time she’d known him, she had never seen him be unsure about anything.
“I would like to court you, Grace. Properly.”
She shook her head. Those words were not supposed to be coming out of his mouth. While growing up, she had eavesdropped on her brother and his friends in the neighborhood talking about how they liked the girls who made it easy, the ones who gave it up without pressuring them into a relationship or any kind of a future together. Last night’s “fling” with Jonathan was supposed to be like that. She had wanted him to see her as, well, an easy girl. One who would slip from his mind like they had never even known each other. Nothing more. He was supposed to be breathing a sigh of relief that she was making a beeline for the door, not giving her reasons to stay.
And his declaration shouldn’t be making her heart flutter with longing for what could have been. Nor should it flood with regret.
Damn this war. Under different circumstances, she could easily see him as the kind of man she might want to spend the rest of her life with.
“That’s . . . not what I want, though.” She turned her back to him and finished zipping up her skirt. “We agreed to no strings attached, remember?”
“No, that’s what you said.”
“Please, I need you to make this goodbye an easy one. You know where I’m going, what I’m about to face.” Grace paused. She threw her pillow at him. “More importantly, I need to get out of here in case that clerk makes good on his threat. Now get up!”
The rising sun broke through the gaps between the buildings as they rushed out the hotel’s side door. With it being early Saturday morning, it wasn’t unusual that they found themselves on a sidewalk without a lot of foot traffic.
A lone cab a block away sat at a red light. Jonathan waited for the light to turn green before lifting his hand up so the cabbie could see it. When it stopped in front of them, he opened the door for her.
He leaned forward to kiss her goodbye. She held her hand up to his mouth to stop him. One more of his kisses would be too much. Grace didn’t think she could handle it. She shook her head. She held out her hand. “Goodbye, friend.”
But Jonathan didn’t take it. He stepped back as if she had physically pushed him with her rejection. Instead, he saluted her. “God be with you, Captain Steele.”
Chapter 20
Sugar Hill, Harlem, New York
Late January 1945
GOOD MORNING, BABY. Rise and shine.” Eliza’s mother shook her awake.
Eliza stretched her arms, rolling onto her side. She wanted to stay there forever. She hadn’t slept in a comfortable bed in a long time. Before she could recall what day it was, her mother was handing her a breakfast tray with a steaming mug on it. In the mug, to Eliza’s surprise, was hot chocolate.
“Mother, how . . . ?” Chocolate was among those food items that had been rationed since before the United States had entered the war. Eliza felt her brow crease. Her mother had to have paid a pretty penny to get enough cocoa to make even this one mugful of the beverage.
Her mother winked at her. “I have my ways. It’s probably best that you don’t know. Now, drink up. Breakfast will be ready downstairs in a few minutes.”
Eliza took a careful sip of the hot chocolate. The combination of the smell and the sweet, rich taste transported her back to more innocent days. Ones where the bubble of her parents’ safe, privileged world would protect her from everything. For Eliza, it was a bubble that had popped when she had become too comfortable, too arrogant, and strayed too far away from the things that had kept her safe.
“. . . and when we’re finished, we have hair appointments with Miss Louise down at the salon. Everybody in the shop will be so excited to see you. They ask about you all the time.”
Eliza set the mug back down on the tray. “Thank you, Mommy. But all this fuss isn’t necessary. My hair will just get messed up again as soon as I put my helmet on it.”
Her mother patted her arm, smiling at her. “Taking care of you could never be a fuss. You’re my one and only baby girl. I love you.”
Despite the emotions flowing from her mother’s words, Eliza felt empty inside. No, she felt . . . helpless. Pitied even. No. Not ever again. She might have been foolish and broken once. But she had pulled herself out of that hole. She was better now. She was stronger now. She would not allow herself to be babied again.
She pushed her mother’s hands away. “I’m fine now. Thank you for the hot chocolate. I’ll see you downstairs.”
Her mother began to pull back the covers on the bed. “Let me just help you before I go.”
“No!” The word came out harsher than Eliza had intended. “I’m not helpless. I’ve got it.”
That declaration made Lillian Jones go still. She picked at Eliza’s comforter a few times with her fingertips before responding out loud.
“Well then. Since I’m not wanted here.” Lillian stood, smoothing her skirt. “Breakfast will be ready soon.”
Eliza held up her mug. “Please don’t go through the trouble of fixing a big meal on my account. This hot chocolate is plenty.”
Eliza watched her mother close her eyes, then hold them shut for a second longer than a normal blink. When they opened again, Mother had a tight-lip
ped smile pasted onto her face. “I expect to see you in the dining room in twenty minutes.”
“Will he be there?”
Her elegant mother let out a snort. It was clear she was done with Eliza’s excuses. “We will be dining as a family this morning.”
Eliza’s shoulders fell, her mother’s reprimand hitting its mark. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” The corners of her mother’s mouth relaxed into a more genuine version of her smile. “I’ll leave you to it then.”
Mother closed Eliza’s bedroom door behind her. Eliza sighed as she placed the half-empty mug of hot chocolate onto the side table. She had forgotten how effective her mother’s guilt trips could be.
She folded up the legs of the tray, then placed it on the floor propped against the side of the bed. She pulled back the rest of her covers and began getting ready for the day.
When her unit had been granted this unexpected forty-eight-hour leave, all Eliza had wanted to do was go to her parents’ house and sleep in her own bed. It looked like her hopes for being able to sleep late for once were just folly now. She would have gotten more sleep back in the officers’ housing near Camp Shanks where she shared a room with three other women.
She could only get so irritated by her mother’s smothering behavior. After Eliza was attacked, something in her normally strong, confident mother had changed. The woman who had raised her to be independent and have a mind of her own now hovered and gave her barely enough room to breathe.
Eliza hadn’t told either of her parents why she was in town or where she was going next. All she had said was that she had been given some leave and had decided to spend it at home. The reality was that she was scared to tell her mother about her pending deployment because she was afraid that the woman would lock her in her room, forcing her to go AWOL by default. As for her father, she couldn’t have told him if she wanted to. He had refused to speak to her since she had entered the brownstone last night.
Now dressed, Eliza opened her bedroom door. She squared her shoulders as if getting ready to go into battle. Aside from the soft bed she had slept in, she was beginning to regret this visit home.
Her father entered the dining room about ten minutes after Eliza had seated herself at the table. He had a copy of their newspaper tucked under his arm as he sat down.
“Good morning, Daddy.” Eliza held her breath, knowing that her father was capable of saying anything on a wide spectrum in response to her greeting.
Martin Jones took one look at his daughter, sniffed, then promptly opened the paper and held it up in front of his face. That was not the reaction she expected.
A moment later, her mother entered from the kitchen carrying a platter of food in each hand. Scrambled eggs were on one. A small pile of toast was on the other. From the corner of her eye, Eliza caught her mother frowning as she took in the scene between father and daughter. She put the platters down onto the dining room table with a little less grace than Eliza was used to seeing from her mother.
“Martin, how many times have I told you? No reading the newspaper during meals.”
Her father made a big fuss of lowering one corner of the paper to make eye contact with his wife. “What do you expect me to do when this newspaper is the most interesting thing at this table?”
“I expect you to interact with your daughter. It’s a rare treat to have her home these days.”
“Well, if she had stayed home like I had told her to instead of running off to join that damned Army . . .” he began.
“Martin!”
“Daddy! Please don’t start. What’s done is done.”
This time he lowered the newspaper all the way down onto the table. “I find what wasn’t done to be inexcusable. I told you that damned Army was no place for you. That they wouldn’t give a damn about you. That they wouldn’t protect you. Do you know what it’s like to have the worst of every nightmare you’ve ever had come true? To receive a phone call from a stranger out of nowhere telling you that your daughter, your only child, had been beaten and left for dead in a train station somewhere in the middle of Kentucky?”
“No, I—”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No, you don’t.” He pushed his seat back from the table and stood. “And I pray that you never will. Excuse me, Lillian. I seem to have lost my appetite.”
He began to walk around the head of the table and toward the French doors leading to the living room.
Her father’s words had left Eliza feeling like she had been slapped in the gut with a ton of rocks. She had been so wrapped up in her own physical recovery, her own lost sense of control, that she had not stopped to consider how her assault had affected her parents. She heard her mother rush to her side. Lillian attempted to grab her hand, but Eliza flicked it out of her reach.
“Baby, he didn’t mean any of that. He hasn’t been the same since that day. He was just angry and scared. I was too. But you’re here now, and we can see with our own eyes that you’re fine.”
Eliza pushed back from the table. “Sorry, Mommy. I’m not hungry anymore either. I think I should leave.”
But before Eliza could get very far, her mother unleashed a rare display of fury.
“Stop.” Mother held up her hand. “Both of you need to sit. Down.”
Eliza stared as Lillian Jones lifted her chin and inclined her head at a forty-five-degree angle. Eliza felt like a naughty five-year-old who had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been doing under the weight of her mother’s glare. She plopped back down into her seat. Her mother was not to be trifled with when she employed that tone of voice combined with that look. Daddy stepped back into the dining room with a sheepish look on his face.
Mother threw a heaping spoonful of scrambled eggs onto the plate in front of Eliza. “Eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
She moved on to drop another serving of eggs onto the plate at the end of the table where Daddy was returning to his seat. There was still another serving left on the platter.
“The two of you are getting on my last nerve.” Mother put the platter onto the table and sat down. She leaned back in her chair. “I’m done.”
When Eliza saw her mother’s shoulders slump, defeated, shame overcame her. Mother took great care to maintain her posture. She never slouched.
“Here.” She pushed the platter of toast toward Eliza. It slid across the table. The tower of bread toppled, leaving slices scattered across the space that separated mother and daughter. By this point, Eliza knew better than to say anything. She quietly picked up the one piece of toast that had managed to stay on the platter.
“Thank you.” Eliza took a bite out of duty rather than hunger. The taste of real butter coated her tongue. Now she felt even worse. She wouldn’t be surprised if her mother had had to barter a week’s worth of sugar rations to procure the few tablespoons of real butter needed to prepare this simple meal. A sacrifice made in an attempt to make their first meal together as a family in a long time special.
Eliza collected the scattered toast back onto the serving platter. She handed it down to her father. “Here, Daddy.” She held it out for a few seconds. When he still didn’t take the platter from her, she didn’t say anything. She just set it beside his plate. His continued silent treatment toward her was less scary than her mother’s fury. She had been subjected to it before whenever they’d butted heads in the past. He was laying it on a bit thick now, but she knew he’d come around. Eventually.
Mother took a deep breath. She had never been a woman of many words. She let her more gregarious husband and daughter dominate conversations. Lillian Jones preferred to let her actions do her talking for her. Which was why she surprised them both with not what she said, but how much she chose to say now.
“Not that anybody ever asked my opinion on it, but it is important to me that my daughter have the opportunity to make her own choices for her life.” She made a point to direct her glare at her husband then. “Unlike me when I was Eliza�
��s age.”
Daddy leaned back, affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he blustered.
“It means that by the time I was twenty-five years old, I had a one-year-old baby and was married to a man whom I had known all of my life, but who had returned from the Great War a stranger. That same war and my ‘responsibility as a Colored woman of means’ robbed me of my own dreams of one day living in Europe as a foreign correspondent for the local Colored newspaper. Instead, my husband lived out my dream, bearing witness to a war overseas, and I played the good little wife in a city where I knew no one, safe at home in the good old U.S. of A. knitting socks. Because it had been expected of me.”
Eliza watched her mother as she paused to sip her tea. Eliza did not miss the shaking hand with which she lifted the china to her lips.
“On the day you were born”—Mother gave Eliza a fond look—“I vowed that I would do everything within my power to make sure that my daughter would not be trapped within the same gilded prison. Even if it meant butting heads with her father from time to time on what a ‘proper young lady of means’ should and should not be doing.”
Daddy pressed his fingertips against the tabletop and leaned forward. “Lillian, you haven’t seen as much of the world as I have. If you had been there in France and seen the way our own government treated us over there . . . you wouldn’t be so eager to throw our only child into those bastards’ hands.”
“Don’t use that tone of voice with me. Maybe there were times in the past when I would have cowered to that. But today is not that day.”
Daddy sat back with his mouth hanging down against his chest. Eliza had never seen him like this. She pressed her hand against her mouth to keep from laughing.
Meanwhile, Mother had balled her cloth napkin in her fist and was squeezing it for dear life. “Maybe I would if you would just tell me about what happened to you during the war.”
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