Eileen? At last?
No. Not her. That color was haunting him. He’d developed an uncanny ability to find a snatch of it in any environment.
“Gentlemen, I’m sure the Raiders are tired. We’ll take one or two more questions.” The P.R. man nodded to a fellow in the last row. “You, sir.”
“I expect you’re heading home to your families now. But after that? What’s next?”
Nielsen answered first. “I’ll keep flying for the Air Force. I figure I might manage to complete my second mission.”
More laughter.
Watt nodded in agreement. “That’s my plan, too.”
“Lieutenant Delham, what’s next for you?
“I haven’t decided yet. I need to talk it over with my—” Wife. A pang radiated through him. He hadn’t heard from her. Three whole weeks since he’d been released, and she hadn’t answered a single letter. Every time Watt or Nielsen got a letter he felt sick. “With my family. I think my Air Force days are done. I have a few other ideas that might surprise you. This’ll surprise”—he paused, trying to fathom how Eileen would react to going to Japan with him, if she even cared where he went—“a lot of people.”
“A hint, sir. Please.”
“I can tell you this.” His throat felt tight again. He cleared it and took a swig of ice water. “My experiences over there taught me a big lesson. About Jesus. About the power of His forgiveness. It’s a lesson I intend to devote my life to sharing.”
Pens scritched over notepads.
Roberts stood. “That’ll wrap it up for today, fellows. Thank you so much for coming.”
The sergeant at the door held it open. Dave looked through it—and straight into her eyes. Eileen. Her perfect oval face arrayed with that bewitching smile he’d pictured a hundred times. Every day.
The conference room, the table, the reporters—they all vanished. He jumped up and elbowed his way out into the hall. “Eileen?” He took her shoulders in his hands and gazed into those hazel eyes with their flecks of gold fire. “It’s you. Really you.”
She threw her arms around him and burrowed her head in his chest. “Oh, Dave.” She took a gasping breath, then dissolved in sobs. “We didn’t know if you...They couldn’t tell us.”
He folded her against him. “Shh. It’s all right, honey.” Held her, rocking her a little. Exalting in her warmth.
She shuddered against him. “We knew some got executed, but we didn’t know who.”
For more than twelve hundred days, she’d been a figment of his imagination. A fantasy. But here she was, with her scent of spice and tropical blooms. All his senses were telling him she was real. He ached to believe it. He burrowed his cheek into her luxuriant hair. Let his lips rest against the silk of it.
“It’s all right now. Everything’s all right now.”
She looked at him, face wet with tears, and turned up those sweet lips—an engraved invitation if he’d ever seen one. He planted a lingering kiss on them.
A flashbulb went off, then another.
Dave jerked around toward the newsmen, blinking. Four of the press men had followed him.
“Hello, gentlemen.” He tried not to sound too exasperated. “Allow me to introduce my wife, the lovely Eileen Delham.”
“Beautiful. Give us a smile, you two.” The flashbulbs popped, catching Eileen with a bashful smile and tear-streaked cheeks.
Roberts emerged from the conference room, took stock of the situation, and grinned. “Would this be Mrs. Delham, by chance?”
Dave gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Yes, sir.”
“Are these fellows bothering you, ma’am?”
She started to speak, but Dave answered for her. “We would prefer some privacy at the moment.”
Roberts put his hands on his hips. “You heard the lieutenant, boys.”
“One more shot?” It was the cameraman who’d been at the left of the conference room. “Look over here, please. Smile. That’s it.”
Roberts herded them away.
Dave pulled his wife against him. “Roberts to the rescue. Now, where were we?” He kissed her until he was breathless. Clung to her, giddy with joy. He could see the curtain opening on a future together. Furnishing a home. Raising kids. Celebrating a long succession of anniversaries and Christmases. All the normal things free people did with their lives. Until that moment, that future had felt like a distant dream.
Could she get used to the idea that their home might be in Japan?
He stroked her hair. That conversation could wait. “There’s so much to tell you. It’s going to take a long time. But maybe we’d have more privacy outside.”
“Outside?”
“The truth is, I can’t get enough of looking at the sky.”
They laced their way arm-in-arm through knots of people in the lobby and strolled out the front door. Down the broad steps and onto a sidewalk that crossed the lawn.
Eileen pulled away. “Dave, there’s something else.” She fished in her purse, dug out her wallet and flipped it open to a photo encased in plastic.
He took the wallet. A toddler with shiny, medium-light curls cascading onto a ruffled dress looked back at him. “She’s adorable. Who is she?”
A smile bloomed from Eileen’s lips, even as she dabbed a fresh tear from the corner of one eye. “Sarah. Our daughter.” She sniffed and somehow managed to look both proud and apologetic at the same time. “She’s a carrot-top.”
“Our daughter?” A sense of unreality settled in. He gazed around at the hospital grounds, surprised that everything still looked solid.
Eileen nodded, all smiles now. “She’ll be two years and eight months on Saturday. She can’t wait to meet you.”
“I’m a dad?” The curtain on that dream life was rising a lot faster than he expected. “When can I see her?”
“She’s home with Mom.”
“I can’t believe it.” From the pit to Pharaoh’s throne room. Joseph himself couldn’t have been more overwhelmed.
He studied his little girl’s photo. Bright eyes. A winsome smile displaying even teeth like a string of tiny pearls. Pudgy little hands folded in her lap. Glossy black shoes. And a miniature version of her grandfather’s chin. “She’s gorgeous.” He grabbed Eileen and gave her another kiss. “Like her mother. Oh, darling—” He picked her up by the waist and whirled her around. “You’ve been alone. All this time. Not even a letter.” He lowered her to the sidewalk and squeezed her, the wonder of it flooding him again. “You’re so brave. How did you find me here?”
She laughed her musical little laugh. “I got a phone call from General Doolittle himself, no less. He told me you were on the way, and he’d fly me out.”
“And you came.”
“Of course I came, silly. Did you think I wouldn’t?” Concern dimmed that radiant smile. “Oh, Dave. All these years, did you imagine I’d left you for good? Look, those last weeks at Eglin—”
“Stop. I deserved it. I deserved it all. Eileen, I love you so much. And I was so rotten to you.”
“I was pretty rotten back.” She gave him a rueful look.
He clasped her smooth hand and felt its warmth in his own. Gazed into the mysterious green-and-gold depths of her eyes. “It’s all right. That chapter’s over.”
“Yes, thank God. Oh! I hope you like the name Sarah. We never talked about it.”
“Are you kidding? Sarah’s a great name. You know Sarah in the Bible?”
Eileen shook her head. “Not really.”
“She got to have a baby when she never dreamed she would. And Abraham, her husband? Abraham did plenty of things wrong. But he finally got it right with that little boy.”
He sank to one knee, like the evening he proposed. There wasn’t much he was sure about in that big free world with all its options, but he was sure about this. “Darling, right now, I’m swearing a solemn oath. You know that guy you ran off on in April of forty-two?”
She nodded, eyes glistening.
“I am not that
guy. I promise—I promise—I’ll get it right this time. I swear before my Lord Jesus Christ that I will learn to be the husband you deserve. The father our little Sarah deserves.”
“Your Lord Jesus Christ?” She arched an eyebrow, but her smile returned to full radiance. “Something has changed you.”
A thick place swelled in his throat. So many men didn’t make it back, but the Lord had given him a fresh chance. Fresh as Sarah’s little cheeks. Shiny and new as those tiny patent-leather shoes.
He stood and circled his arm around her. “I bet you’re getting cold. We should go in.”
They made their way toward the steps. A giant banner hung in front of the monstrous columns enclosing the hospital’s veranda. Welcome Home POWs.
Eileen squeezed his waist as they walked beneath it. “Well, how does it feel?”
“Which part of it?”
She beamed up at him. “The part where you’re the hero you always dreamed you’d be.”
He stopped and turned her to face him. “Being everyone else’s hero isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But your hero? Now that’s worth fighting for.”
He pulled a silver half dollar from his pocket, flipped it in the air, and caught it. He said what he’d waited more than three years—very long years—to say.
“Hey, want to see a movie?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Saturday, January 1, 1949
Osaka, Japan
Miyako didn’t go to her own room. She had a deep-rooted fear of turning up where anyone might look for her. She knew plenty of cheap hotels. Kamura-san’s cash was good for a night at one of those.
She scoured the black-market stalls on the fringe of the Shinsekai for a change of clothes. When evening came, she passed an hour or so in her hotel room practicing. She stood in front of the cracked mirror and opened the handbag’s clasp subtly, with one hand. Pulled the knife out with a smooth motion. Followed up with a fierce thrust. She thought she looked dangerous, but without Kamura-san’s guidance, who could tell if she’d be good enough?
The poison would be critical.
She sank onto the futon, head throbbing, nerves wound tight as silk in a cocoon.
George-san. Why not forget all this and get on that train with him?
She rolled onto her side and pulled the pillow to her chest. She drifted to sleep imagining her head cradled on his strong chest, the scent of pine in her nostrils.
Sunday crept by with the tedium of a snail scaling Mount Fuji. Until the afternoon, when it was time to catch the Midosuji Line to her meeting with George-san.
She arrived a few minutes early. She stood on the curb outside the Hollywood Club, gnawing at a hangnail.
It was an afternoon worth remembering. One of those clear, crisp winter days—which was a gift, since odds were good it would be her last day of freedom.
The afternoon light brought everything into high relief. The pile of firm apples on display at the fruit stand next to her glowed red and gold. The spicy-sweet aroma of barbecued pork from the Korean barbecue place down the street teased at her nose.
It had to be three o’clock. She tugged at her top. Any minute, he would appear. And with him, the answer to the question that had plagued her since Friday night. What rumors had gotten back to him?
The streets were busy, but there was no mistaking him when he rounded the corner at the end of the block. Cropped sand-colored hair and that familiar confident stride. She took one last tug at her sweater. Was she worth ten thousand yen?
She got a good look at his face as he crossed the street. Mouth drawn in a taut line. Furrows creasing his forehead. Her chest hollowed, but she put on her warmest smile and started toward him, arms extended, before he reached the curb.
“George-san. Finally. I miss you so much.” That was the truth.
His lips twitched. “Funny. That’s not what I heard.”
Any confidence she held vanished like incense smoke in a drafty room. “Why? What you hear?”
He stopped a long pace short of her, folded his arms, and glared. “Don’t play me, baby.”
“That Bowman talked to you? Stinking liar.”
“Not just him.”
She sucked in her breath. “What else, ah?”
He strode past her, plucked an apple from the pile, and handed a coin to the street vendor. He faced her, his expression fierce. “To hear Perkins tell it, you were all over some Jap fellow when he picked you up. You flirted with O’Shea. But it was Perkins you couldn’t keep your hands off of.”
She stared at him, all but spluttering in disbelief. “Pardon me, George-san, but you believe all that?”
The betrayal written across his face told her that, at least at some level, he did believe it.
She took a deep breath. “It wasn’t like that, George-san. No.”
“What was it like, then?”
“I ran into some Japanese guys I knew from Abeno. They said they would...” She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Bad things. I was afraid, George-san.”
He pulled his arm away and bit into the apple, eyes narrow. “So you thought Perkins and O’Shea would protect you? But when I offered—”
“I am so sorry, George-san. I made a big—how do you say?—mistake. Please forgive me. And I paid for it.” Much more than you know.
Did his expression soften?
She chose her words with care, revealing as much of the truth as she dared. “I thought if I stayed at the club, those Japanese guys go away. Harry asked me to leave with him. But I wasn’t going to. Then the big fight started.”
“You weren’t going with Perkins, huh?” George-san took another hearty bite of apple and gave her an appraising stare. But without a doubt, his expression softened. “You’re a load of trouble. You know that?”
She bowed low and stayed there, eyes on her shoes. “Please, please forgive me, George-san.”
He put a hand under her shoulder and pulled her up. “Don’t bow like that. You know it bugs me.”
That hand rested on her shoulder. Hundreds of men must have touched her there. But there was a steadiness to his grip that made his touch mean something. It reminded her he had every reason to leave her—and didn’t. How could she lie to him now, when she’d felt what it meant to lose his trust?
She wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled into his strong chest. He hesitated a second before his arms circled her. A wave of warmth washed through her. “I am sorry to make so much trouble for you. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
The train. The taxi. The ryokan. She’d imagined it for years—going there with a man she loved. A man who’d take care of her. Fight for her. Stick with her when others would not.
Was it too late to take that train with this man? Seize this chance at happiness?
She should forget Delham and escape with George-san.
Papa-san. Hiro-chan. Surely they didn’t want her to pay with her life for this.
She sighed and leaned into his chest. Her cheek rested on smooth leather, then found a ridge—his squadron patch. He was a soldier, and soldiers had duties. Sooner or later, he’d go wherever the U.S. Army sent him.
She had duties too. If she forgot them, what would it buy her? A month of happiness? A year?
Maybe as little as a weekend.
The dream shattered, giving way to hard reality. A daughter of samurai lived for honor, not for passing pleasure. Her duty to her family was eternal. For Hiro-chan. For Papa-san. For the ancestors. This had to be done.
She had to betray him.
She felt a pang of grief that was almost physical—a spear piercing her chest. But she steeled herself and breathed the crucial question. “Did you bring the money?”
He slipped from her arms and fished a thick wallet from his pocket. His gaze rested on her as he thumbed it open, giving her a glimpse of a stack of bills.
She twittered like a nightingale. “Wonderful! I’ll buy the tickets tonight. It will be perfect, George-san.”
“Not so fast, ba
be. How much are these train tickets? When do we leave?”
She sent a silent thanks up to the ancestors that she’d thought ahead to detail it out. She shot him a confident smile. “We’ll take the 10:10 train to Shirahama. Then a taxi to the ryokan. It’s an extra special nice one. Two thousand yen for two tickets.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“Ryokan Montei.”
“And what’s the rate there?”
“Three hundred yen per night.” She searched his face. “All these questions, George-san. You don’t trust me?”
“The station’s not too far from here. We can go over there right now. Pick up the tickets together.” He took another bite from the apple, eyes not leaving her face.
“I, ah, have some things I need to take care of. Today, before the shops close.” The words seemed to fight her, not wanting to come out. “If you could please just give me the money, I can pick them up later tonight.”
“No, Midori. I’ll do this with you.”
She made an attempt at a light-hearted giggle. “But it’ll be boring for you. No need to bother you with all these detail things. You trust me with them.”
“I insist.”
She pouted. “You don’t trust me.”
“I used to. But this is smelling funny, kid.” He tossed what was left of the apple onto the sidewalk. “Look, I need to think about it.”
“Think about it?” In less than an hour she was to meet Tsunada-san’s man. This was not the time for him to think about it. “It’s all lies about Harry. I promise.”
“Maybe.” His expression hollowed. “But I’m not sure what to think any more.”
“George-san! Please.” She moved to slip her arms around his waist.
He caught her forearms before she could. “I want to believe you. I do.” He studied her, a vulnerable glint to his eyes. “Look, let’s just meet up on Thursday, like we always do. We’ll take it from there.”
She rested her hands on his arms while something inside her dissolved into liquid. Maybe she’d hurt him enough. “I tell the truth, George-san. I don’t care about any man but you. Please believe that, always.”
The Plum Blooms in Winter Page 30