Fragments of Light

by Michele Phoenix

  I hadn’t heard from Nate since he’d left for Rend Lake, except for the occasional impersonal text about documents and deadlines. Every one of them was a gut punch. Every one of them went unanswered. The lawyer Darlene had found for me kept repeating that there was no hurry signing anything, but I could tell from her tone that she didn’t understand. My husband had left. He’d filed the paperwork. What could I possibly gain from delaying the inevitable?

  I wasn’t sure either.

  Most of the time I managed to convince myself that I was okay, but there were milestones that reminded me of how very much I’d lost. Moving into my new apartment was one of the hardest.

  I’d made the decision almost on a whim after Nate had come by that day. Living in the house, I could almost feel the fragments of my illusions crunching under my feet as I moved numbly from room to room. Our house on Harbor Lane was the symbol of an existence I’d thought I knew. A figment I couldn’t stomach anymore.

  Though I was told I’d have up to six months to pack up and find another place, I woke up one Monday morning certain that living there was sucking the life out of me. The cost of paying rent elsewhere seemed a small price to pay for escaping the memories saturating our home. I called a Realtor that afternoon, found the new place on Thursday, and partially moved into it a week later. It was a comfortable, small, recently renovated, but affordable loft in downtown Saint Charles. The sandwich-and-tea café downstairs was a popular hangout, but it closed early on weekdays, so my evenings at home were quiet.

  Most of my things—most of our things—were still in the old house, but I figured I’d deal with packing up our lives when they were officially severed. Whenever that would be. Until then, I’d have the loft. And Nate had no keys that would allow him entry.

  Chapter 7

  Darlene arrived right on time on a cold, early-March afternoon—she always did. She was mobile again, thanks to physical therapy, capable of walking unassisted and climbing stairs as long as she took them slowly. “You okay?” she asked as I adjusted the cushions on the couch and settled into them. I was eight days out from my final reconstruction surgery, and sitting upright for too long still made me a bit uncomfortable.

  “Just shifting some weight off the incisions,” I told her. These permanent implants were a huge step up from the expanders I’d called boulder-boobs, but they were taking some getting used to.

  It felt like the last few months had been a crash course in “getting-used-tos.” I’d done my best to mitigate what discomforts I could—like sleeping on my back, for the first time in my life. Wearing loose, layered clothing to hide the stages of reconstruction. Spending far too much money on a couple of lifelike wigs before I even started chemo, but turning to more breathable turbans when hormone-induced hot flashes made the wigs feel too hot.

  Only recently had I tried wearing my golden-brown layered-bob wig again. Darlene had given me a few pointers to make it feel less stifling and taught me to apply the false eyelashes I’d been given at a “Look Good, Feel Better” event at the Cancer Center. It had all seemed like too much work during the worst days of my treatment, but with my energy returning, looking like my old self again had become more of a priority. It felt good to go out in public without feeling the stares—some compassionate, some curious, some oddly hostile—of the people I crossed paths with.

  I tugged a bit on the edge of my wig and looked at Darlene, alarmed by the weight she’d lost since starting radiation. Treating the tumors on her hip and femur had helped with her pain, but aiming the beams through part of her abdomen to get to the right spots had caused such bad nausea that she’d contemplated quitting.

  “How’s the zapping going, Darlene?”

  “Like giving a ninety-nine-year-old a facelift,” she said, not for the first time, as her memory seemed to be failing along with her body. “Doesn’t do a whole lot of good in the long run, but it sure feels like a teensy bit of control over the tyranny of time.”

  “You look good.” She didn’t. She looked sick. And the hair she’d now tipped in bright purple did nothing to counteract the yellow pallor of her skin.

  “Sweetie, I love a good compliment, but only when it’s honest.”

  I tried for a smile. “You look . . . alive?”

  She laughed—a tinkling sound that felt death-defying. “Yes!” she said, a finger spearing the air. “Yes! That’s the kind of compliment I can get behind.”

  Something warm and bruising overwhelmed me.

  Darlene’s eyes locked with mine. Her laughter fizzled away. Though our lives had been intertwined since our chance meeting in the mammography waiting room, we’d expressed our love for each other more in deed—in time spent and conversations had—than in outright statements. But as we sat in my loft that afternoon, the looming end of her life struck me with such potency that I couldn’t not say the words that defined our friendship.

  “I love you, Darlene.”

  “I know you do, sweetie,” she said. There were tears in her eyes and mine. She smiled through them and raised an eyebrow. “I feel like I should get over there and give you a hug, but those chicken cutlets are so fresh, I’m afraid I’d hurt you.”

  “There’ll be plenty of time for that,” I said, wanting to sound hopeful.

  “Actually . . .” Darlene’s voice trailed off. Her gaze didn’t. It was steady. Sure.

  I felt the breath freeze in my lungs. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m going to be getting a bit of an upgrade at Sunny Cove.” She pinched her lips briefly. “Turns out it’s time for me to call in hospice care.”

  “Darlene . . .”

  “It’s gone to my lungs. A couple small spots right now and not too debilitating, but . . . Don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t happen to me.”

  I had trouble believing that the woman sitting in front of me, the woman who still zipped around town in her PT Cruiser against medical advice, using her left foot to work the pedals, was suddenly needing end-of-life care.

  “I know, right?” Darlene said, reading my thoughts. “Here I was thinking that I was beating the odds, that the Big C had given up when my bones got zapped, and now they tell me it’s metastasized again. And likely in the lining of my spine too. They wanted to do an MRI to be sure, but why bother? That’s what I told them. You don’t find out hell is real and go to extremes to figure out if the devil is too. Hell’s enough. That’s what I told them. Hell’s enough.”

  The silence that stretched between us was full. Full with realization. Full with the preciousness of life. Full with Darlene’s acceptance and my rebellion.

  “Will you need to move out of your studio at Sunny Cove?”

  “Not yet. Hopefully not for a while. Hospice sounds ominous, but it’s just the next step in getting more appropriate care. We’re filling out the paperwork now and they’ll start the extra pampering in a week or so.”

  She smiled. I tried to smile back but found myself incapable of it.

  “You’ll be needing to come to me, once you’re up to it,” Darlene finally said. “No more driving for this girl—doctor’s orders. I might actually have to obey them this time.”

  “Darlene . . .”

  “But my car—Melba.” She put on the dramatic, effervescent tone I loved so much. “That turquoise testament to flaunting vehicular norms and living life unleashed—I want her to be yours.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I opened my mouth to protest. Then I closed it. The Corolla I drove was a hand-me-down from Nate. For a moment, I contemplated how much it felt like living life leashed.

  “You know you want it,” Darlene said in an enticing voice, leaning forward with a sparkle in her eye.

  It felt inappropriate to be so casually talking about taking her car. She must have seen the conflict on my face.

  “I saved my pennies for months to get Melba her custom paint. And I’ve probably invested ten times that much just keeping her ticking all these years since then, even when my longsuffering mechanic told
me to just walk away. That’s how important she is to me. And I want you to have her and drive her.”

  I hesitated only briefly. “Okay.” Saying the word out loud felt like admitting my friend’s death sentence was real and imminent.

  “Okay,” she repeated, a broad smile deepening the lines in her face. “And you and Melba will come visit me, right? It’ll do me good to know she’s in the parking lot.”

  “I’m so sorry, Darlene.” Tears stung my eyes again. This was a conversation I’d known was coming, but hadn’t contemplated having so soon.

  “Ech,” she said, waving her hand. “They tell me I may still have months, but . . . I think it’s time to stop defying the beast and start respecting it.”

  I caught a fleeting glint of sadness in her eyes, quickly replaced by something that looked like hard-won serenity.

  “I know it’s a stupid question, but is there anything I can do?” I asked. “Other than take your car out for joyrides?”

  “Actually . . .” Darlene seemed to hesitate.

  I caught the seriousness in her voice and felt myself straighten. There was so little I could offer to ease her circumstances. Whatever she needed, I wanted to do. “Tell me,” I said, turning her favorite phrase on her.

  “It’s just that it’s so much more than joyrides and visits.”

  “Darlene.”

  She held my gaze for a moment before reaching into the giant tote she called a purse and pulling out a brown envelope. Then she looked at me with something like determination on her face. “Remember the day you told me about Nate?”

  “Gnome Day?”

  She smiled. “Yes, Gnome Day. I think I mentioned that there was one thing I needed to figure out before my not-so-early demise.”

  I tried to think back to that day in her living room, but it was all a blur. “I don’t think I remember . . .”

  “Of course you don’t, sweetie. You had a couple things on your mind.”

  “What do you need?”

  “You said you’ve always wanted to be an investigative journalist, right?” Darlene opened the envelope and slid its contents out onto my coffee table. There was a yellowed picture and a handful of envelopes tied together with a ribbon.

  Somewhere in the far recesses of my spirit, I sensed that they would alter the course of my life.

  Chapter 8

  Sabine and the old man carried Cal up the steps and through the broad front doors. A couple dozen people, ranging in age from infant to elderly, their faces gaunt, their eyes haunted, crowded the castle’s tall entryway. Most of them sat on the floor with their backs against the wall or on the wooden steps of a staircase extending off to the right. Some seemed alert and watchful, while others held rags to bleeding wounds or lay on the mosaic tile, pale and listless. A couple of the younger men stepped forward in a protective way and stared as Sabine and her companion carried Cal through the foyer.

  As they approached the tall, ornate doors leading to another room, a woman pushing a small child behind her skirts moved into their path. She unleashed a torrent of machine-gun-fast words on Sabine, clearly distraught and furious. Her eyes were wide and panicked as she gestured toward the front door, motioning for them to take Cal back outside.

  Sabine’s grip tightened on Cal’s stretcher and her eyes flashed with anger. She retorted with equal vehemence, undeterred by the fact that she was probably ten years younger than the woman confronting her. When her challenger snapped back, Sabine took a quick step toward her, jarring Cal’s stretcher and exacerbating the ache in his skull. “Non!” she said so forcefully, eyes ablaze and jaw set, that the other woman visibly flinched.

  Sabine stood there a moment longer, scanning the room, returning the glares of some of the foyer’s occupants until the last of the resisters averted their eyes. Only then did she nod in the old man’s direction and push through the doors of the adjoining space.

  “She is afraid that you bring danger here,” she whispered to Cal as they carried the stretcher into what appeared to be a living room where a dozen more haggard and wary people were gathered. Some of them shifted out of the way as Sabine and the old man moved to an alcove surrounded by windows covered in tar paper. A couple lengths had come loose and flapped lightly in the breeze blowing through a broken pane of glass.

  Cal scanned the room and its occupants, looking for anything or anyone suspicious. The space itself felt as weary as the ragtag group it harbored. It had probably once been grand and stately, but its wallpaper was peeling in the corners now, its parquet floors were dusty and buckled in some places, and its furniture looked faded.

  A young mother nursed her baby while a toddler slept in her lap. An elderly couple huddled close, hands clasped, foreheads furrowed. Two teenage boys watched Cal with suspicion and seemed coiled to leap at the first sign of trouble. A handful of adult men stood guard at every window, peering around blackout curtains and tar paper, holding primitive weapons—pitchforks, shovels, and lengths of metal.

  “They are from the village down the road,” Sabine said after lowering the stretcher to the parquet floor. She blew a stray tendril out of her eyes, then paused to secure it with one of the combs holding her straight, brown hair back from her face. “When the planes started flying over, these people came here. We are far enough from the village and our walls are thick and strong. They had nowhere else to go.”

  Cal tried to focus. “The fighting—where is it?”

  Sabine jutted her chin toward the courtyard out front. “Six kilometers that way,” she said. “On the other side of Aubry-en-Douve.” She caught herself. “If there is still a village there.” Sadness darkened her wide, hazel eyes, but only for a moment. Squaring her shoulders, she shooed a young couple off the banquette in the alcove and got down on her haunches next to Cal.

  “First, we must take off your uniform,” she said, all business. “If they come back—the Germans. You must look like one of us or we are all in danger.”

  Cal’s head was still throbbing, but that got his attention. “Wait. ‘Come back’?”

  Sabine nodded. “They have been staying in our home. Upstairs. They left a few hours ago, when the débarquement began, but they could come back again.”

  She caught Cal’s change of expression and raised her chin in a gesture of defiance. “We did not invite them here. We did not welcome them. We are not collaborateurs,” she said with vigor.

  “I didn’t—”

  “They forced us to let them live here because we have a large house for the Kommandant and stables for their horses. And because it was just me, my sister, and Albert here.”

  Sabine began to unbuckle his harness, but Cal pushed her hands away. “I can do that.”

  She gave him a look and sat back while Cal raised his head and fumbled with the buckles of the jump gear still strapped to his body. Nausea overcame him before he’d made much progress, and he lowered his head back onto the stretcher’s canvas, letting out a long, steadying breath.

  Sabine raised an eyebrow when Cal made eye contact with her. “I can help you,” she said with something that sounded like disapproval. “Or you can be stupid and make yourself sicker.”

  Cal stared at the ceiling and tried to tamp down a burst of frustration. He’d expected enemy fire. He’d expected the brutality of battle. He’d trained for months in anticipation of this day, and his inability to do the simplest thing, let alone stand and raise a weapon, was bruising.

  Reading his silence as assent, Sabine released the remaining buckles and clips. She started to unzip Cal’s field jacket, and he reached out, startling her. Exasperation flashed in her eyes. “I am fourteen. I am not a child,” she said with a hint of petulance. “I have seen men’s underthings.”

  Cal shook his head and regretted it instantly, as it reignited his pain. “No, it’s not that. I’m just trying to say thank you.”

  He saw something soft come over the teenager’s face. Then something proud. “We help our liberators,” she said, glancing up at the p
eople around them. “Not the occupiers. It’s what good French people do.”

  “Where are the Germans now?” Cal asked.

  “Still in the fields behind the village, probably. They were there all night, shooting at the planes and defending the . . .” She frowned, searching for words. “The place where the big guns are. The Américains—your people—they want to take it from the Germans.”

  “A battery?”

  She leaned forward to start unbuttoning his shirt. “Yes, the battery. That’s where the most fighting is happening near here. But we have heard there is much more in other parts of the Cotentin.”

  Cal knew that was true. The plan had been for the invasion to be so multifaceted and vast that the Germans wouldn’t know where to focus their defenses.

  “How do you speak English so well?” he asked Sabine, his voice hoarsened by pain.

  “My mother was from England. She died three years ago. I haven’t spoken the language very much since then, but . . . I remember enough.” She turned toward the old man and said, “Albert,” motioning for him to come nearer. He gathered the gear scattered around the paratrooper and headed out of the room with it.

  “The Americans. Have you seen them?” Cal asked.

  She shook her head. “Not me. But when the fight for the battery started and people ran away—ran to here—they saw American fighters.”

  “I’ve got to get back out there,” Cal said, attempting and failing once again to sit up.

  Sabine shook her head. “If you cannot sit, you cannot fight. Not yet. First, you must put on different clothes so you don’t look so American if the Germans see you. That is what you need to do now, because you are a danger to all of us.”

  The door to the living room burst open, and an exuberant Lise strutted in, her arms full with the remnants of Cal’s canopy. “C’est fait!” she declared, striking a victorious pose. Her thick bangs were damp with sweat and stuck to her forehead as her eyes darted off Cal and settled on her sister, clearly expecting validation for her efforts.