“Still don’t like the looks of that one,” Buck said, jutting his chin toward Albert, who had just entered the living room with Sabine and Lise.
“I believe he feels the same way about you,” Sabine murmured as she walked past Buck on her way to Cal. She instructed him to sit in the chair, and he winked at Lise as he lowered himself from the armrest to the seat. But the girl’s brown eyes were on Buck, defiant and fearless. “You can tell your sister this is one of the good guys,” Cal said to Sabine.
“Anyone who holds a gun on Albert is going to have to prove that.” She smiled a bit tightly. “We found her in the cellar. She ran there when she heard the shots.” She cast a quick glance in Buck’s direction. “I will be happy when there is no more reason for French children to hide.”
“Have you heard any more about what’s going on out there?”
“We know for sure that the battery is in American hands,” she said.
Cal cringed as his friend let out a howl of victory that reverberated in the silence of the castle, startling some of its occupants. “A star-spangled touchdown!” He bolted upright and brought his hand to his temple in a dramatic salute.
“But Germans have been seen all around still,” Sabine continued, aiming a disapproving glare at Buck. “They have not run away. The Americans are fighting them, but it’s small battles, not big ones.”
Cal said to Sabine, “If you can stabilize my leg, we’ll head out later.”
She looked out the window. “It would be better for you to leave when it is dark. The boches have been here for months. They know the roads and the land. You don’t.”
Sabine finished unwrapping Cal’s ankle. It had turned a darker shade of mottled red since he’d stood on it, and though the bandages had contained the swelling, it began again the moment they were off. She gingerly moved his ankle side to side, and Cal jerked back from the pain.
“You cannot fight if you cannot walk,” Sabine said.
Cal didn’t like her assessment. “I have to,” he said firmly. “I didn’t fly over here to sit in an armchair and listen to the fighting going on down the road. And if I stay here, I endanger all of you. This”—he pointed to his injured leg—“is no reason to put civilians in the Nazis’ crosshairs.”
“We are not scared.”
He looked from Sabine’s resolute eyes to Albert’s unyielding expression. Then he let his gaze settle on little Lise. She gave him a tentative smile. “And you,” he said, leaning in a little. “Are you as brave as your sister?”
The girl pulled herself up to her full height and declared a resounding, “Oui!”
Cal chuckled and held up his hands. “I believe you!” He paused. “How old are you, Lise?”
“I am seven,” she answered, saying each word carefully, her English as clipped as her French.
“You speak good English.”
“Pas vraiment.”
“Not really,” Sabine translated. “She was young when our mum died and we always spoke French with Papa.”
“Sabine, do you know where your father is?”
She shook her head. “There has been no word since they took him away. We do not even know if he is still—” She glanced at her sister. “We do not know if our father will come back. But Albert has been . . .” She shook her head, as if her vocabulary was too limited to express what she wanted to say.
“He’s taken care of you.”
“He is our friend. He worked with my father and now—he is our friend. If he had not been here . . .”
Cal shot a glance at the older man. His wrinkles were deep and he stood slightly stooped, but there was something of a warrior in the calm, intense energy he radiated.
“Now”—Sabine reached into the broad pocket in her apron and took out bandages and a small medicinal vial—“we must try to get your ankle ready for combat.”
Cal sighed. “You really think I’ll be able to stand on this thing?”
The young woman frowned. “I will do what I can so you can do what you came for.”
“Whoopin’ them Krauts!” Buck yelled.
Sabine shot him a disapproving glare. “That bottle,” she said to Cal in a low voice. “We use the Calvados to disinfect wounds, and we were not able to save much of it after the Germans came here. Your friend must not drink it all.”
“I’ll send you more when the war’s over, little lady,” Buck said loudly to the teenager, raising the bottle in an ironic salute before bringing it to his lips again. “Good stuff.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You have any more of this?” he asked Albert.
The old man stared back without a word.
“What—are you mute or something?”
“He does not understand English,” Sabine said.
A flush crept up Buck’s neck. He got off the couch and swaggered toward Albert, stopping inches from his chest. “But I bet he got along fine with the Germans, right? Thick as thieves when they were hangin’ out around here, right?” He shoved the old man, but Albert caught him by the front of his jacket and jerked him close enough that they were nearly nose-to-nose.
“Albert, non!” Sabine gasped.
Cal was on his feet immediately, limping over to push the men apart, then spearing a finger into his friend’s chest. “Knock it off, Buck!”
A muscle clenched in Buck’s jaw. He swatted Cal’s hand away and kicked a wooden footrest across the room.
Cal turned toward Sabine and Albert, hands outstretched in apology. “He doesn’t mean any harm,” he said, but even he could hear the uncertainty in his voice. Buck’s histrionics were nothing new, but there was something even more frantic and fractious roiling in his friend that day, something that felt dangerous.
Buck took another swig of Calvados. “Relax, man,” he said to Cal. “Just tryin’ to figure out who’s really on our side.”
“Keep this up and we’ll lose the friends we have,” Cal said softly. He motioned for Buck to hand over the bottle and was surprised to find that it was nearly empty.
As Buck threw himself down on a nearby couch, Cal lay a hand on top of Lise’s head and nodded, as if assuring her that Buck wouldn’t be bothering Albert again.
“I will bandage your foot now,” Sabine said.
Cal hobbled back to the chair and she knelt in front of him, propping his foot on her lap. She handed the small vial and a rag to Lise, who soaked the cotton fabric in pale-yellow liquid.
“Nettle and dandelion to make the swelling go down,” she explained to Cal, taking the cloth from Lise and lightly wrapping it around his still-discoloring ankle and foot. “I will place these thin pieces of wood on the sides and hold them there with bandages. Tight. It will hurt.” She tried to smile, but her efforts fell short. “If it works, you will be able to move your foot up and down, but it will not bend sideways again.”
“How do you know how to do this?”
“The Germans—they made me work at their clinic for a while. Until they discovered I could not do that and cook their meals too.” She shot Cal an ironic look.
“Were they . . . ?” Cal struggled to find the right word.
Sabine said, “They were not cruel to us, because we didn’t give them reason to be.” She began wrapping his swollen and bruised ankle, pulling the bandages nearly unbearably tight. “But they were not good either. We could not move freely, even if family needed us. All of us, we have lived under their boot. Not enough food. Never enough food. No possessions they could not seize. No freedom.” She looked Cal directly in the eyes. “More than four years living as prisoners in our own country. Our own home. It was—how do you say it? Un enfer.”
“Hell?” Cal guessed. He could see the depths of it darkening Sabine’s expression.
“Yes, hell.” She agreed. “And when they went to fight last night, they left more hell behind them. Our barn is filled with the dead horses they could not leave for you Americans to take.”
Cal frowned. “They shot their own horses?”
“
Theirs and ours.” She glanced toward Lise. She was sitting with an elderly couple across the room, bringing smiles to their faces as she talked in her animated way. “Lise hasn’t seen the horses yet. She doesn’t know. When she does . . .”
Cal tried to imagine what the family had endured and again felt something protective descend over him. With no adequate words coming to his mind, he simply said, “You’ve been through so much and you’re still so young.”
She attempted a smile. “It is nearly over,” she said. “But we will not soon forget. We will never forget,” she amended, blinking away tears.
“Thank you, Sabine,” Cal said, though the words seemed insufficient. “For taking the risk of bringing me inside when you found me. For fixing me up. You’ve been . . . Thank you.”
Sabine shrugged. “My father taught us to treat good people like family. Family is worth taking risks for. He would have done the same.”
Cal reached into his shirt pocket and realized most of the items he’d carried over from England weren’t there anymore. “Do you know what happened to my letters?”
“Your . . . ?”
“The letters. You took them out of my pocket when we still thought Buck was the Germans coming back.”
She frowned. “A lot was happening. I think . . . I think someone took them from me to hide them.” She seemed to be trying to recall the details of the brief but intense moment. “Maybe Sylvie. I will ask her if she has them.”
“I’d appreciate that. Those letters . . . they’re important to me.” He reached deeper into his pocket and relief swept over him as he found the small picture that never left him. “You were talking about family,” he said, holding it out to Sabine. “This is mine.”
The fourteen-year-old took the picture from him. “This is your . . . ?”
“My wife, Claire.” Saying the words was at once a comforting and a devastating thing.
Sabine peered closely at the black-and-white snapshot. “She is very beautiful.”
“That’s the day we got married. Right before I took off for England. What we didn’t know then—” Cal hadn’t spoken the words out loud before. He’d wanted to, but he’d feared that they’d somehow heap an even heavier burden on his fight for survival. “What we didn’t know then,” he tried again, “is that she was expecting.”
Sabine looked at him, confused. “Expecting what?”
“A baby,” Cal said, realizing the term might not be familiar to the young French woman. “She was expecting a baby.”
“You are going to be a father?” It was the first bright smile he’d seen since he’d landed on French soil.
Cal felt one of his own spreading across his face. “I’m already a father,” he said. His own words stunned him. “She was born nearly six months ago, when I was at Ramsbury. Claire and Darlene . . .” He swallowed past the emotions tightening his throat. “They’re my life.” He shook his head, keenly feeling the distance between them, the dangers ahead, and the frightening prospect of never being able to hold his infant daughter. “They’re everything,” he said, his voice soft with yearning. With hope. With dread.
Sabine frowned. “You must see them soon,” she said emphatically.
“There’s a war to fight first.” Determination and frustration dueled in Cal’s mind.
“Then right after. As soon as it is over. Daughters need a father.” Cal saw something sad descend over the teenager’s face. She blinked hard as tears rose in her eyes. “Daughters need a father,” she said again. Then she sat up straighter, handing the picture back to Cal.
“I’m sorry, Sabine,” he said. “I’m so sorry your father isn’t here. You and Lise . . . you’ve been so brave.”
“We did not have a choice.” Something steely dropped over her momentary show of emotion, a resolve, Cal suspected, born of untenable grief and a ferocious determination to live in spite of it.
Suddenly getting back to business, Sabine motioned for Lise to join her. The seven-year-old held the splints in place while her sister applied a second layer of bandages to Cal’s aching ankle.
“Whaddya gonna do for me?” Buck asked from the couch, his words slightly slurred. “I got a few boo-boos and I bet a kiss or two would make them all better.”
“Buck!” Cal’s voice was sharp. “I told you—knock it off.”
As if sensing the nature of Buck’s comment, Albert stepped closer to Sabine and leveled a hostile stare on the American soldier. His hands were in his pockets and his stance was casual, but from the hardness of his expression, Cal could tell he was coiled to strike.
Sabine stopped wrapping and said, “Albert” under her breath.
“You want a piece of this GI, old man?” Buck asked, sitting up straighter.
“Albert,” she murmured again. “Ignore le.” Albert held her gaze for a moment. He nodded but did not step away as Buck lay back and stared at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” Cal said quietly as she got back to work on his ankle. “Buck’s . . .” He sought the right word to describe his comrade in arms. “He talks tough, but he’s not a bad person.”
“He is rude,” she whispered, dismissing his explanation.
“Yes,” Cal agreed.
A moment passed. “Is your head feeling better?”
With all that had happened, Cal had nearly forgotten about the dizziness that had plagued him after his fall from the tree. He moved his head side to side and took stock. “I think so. Still a bit woozy if I move too fast, but yeah, I think it’s getting better. Good enough to get out there if my leg will hold me.”
Sabine ripped the tail end of the final bandage down the middle and tied it in a knot around his calf, inspecting her handiwork with approval. “We will replace the oils every two hours until you leave.” The look she gave him was direct, devoid of hesitation. “When you are ready, we will return your uniform.”
Cal glanced over to the couch, where Buck had fallen asleep. Memories of the months they’d spent in training flooded into his mind and it struck him in a fresh way that he was on French soil, that Operation Overlord was underway, and that there was still a war to wage to break Hitler’s hold on Europe.
Military pride and a deep sense of duty inflamed Cal’s imagination once more and heightened his drive to join in the fight. Looking around at the haggard townsfolk who had already endured so much—at Sabine and Lise and dozens of others still confined to the castle—he felt a warrior’s spirit surge in him again.
“We’ll head out after midnight,” he told Sabine.
Chapter 13
“I shall review the things we know, from most certain to most obscure,” Darlene declared.
We’d just left I-55 and were traveling west on I-44, over halfway to Kinley, Missouri. The car’s tires clunked over the seams in the pavement in rhythmic monotony. Convincing Joe to let me go, it turned out, had been the easiest part of the negotiations. Darlene’s medical team had been outright hostile to the idea. They’d reluctantly relented only after we’d had a lengthy sit-down together. I’d promised to break the nine-hour trip into two days, to be on the lookout for any signs of medical crisis, and to get immediate help if and when they manifested. And Darlene had vowed that she’d tell me the moment she felt unwell. Her oncologist had finally let us go with a smiling but terse, “Have fun, but not stupid fun.”
As for Justin, Darlene’s son, she’d opted to leave him completely in the dark. “He’ll have a conniption if he gets wind of our little excursion. His ignorance is our bliss. We’ll tell him when the trip is over.”
We hit the road in my car—as Darlene’s Melba had over two hundred thousand miles on her—armed with little more than a handful of yellowed letters and an intrepid spirit. There hadn’t been much margin in my life to do in-depth research before we set off, as I’d wanted to devote as much of my time to the Sentinel as I could before leaving, but I’d done what I could in my after-work hours, relieved that my stamina finally seemed to be coming back. Though my expectations were somewh
at tempered by the scant information we brought to our search, my travel companion’s were not. Everything about her appeared to have revived in anticipation of the adventure. Her voice was stronger. Even her coloring had improved.
She held my phone in her hand and summarized the Wikipedia page I’d pulled up during our last pit stop. “Kinley, Missouri. Population just under five hundred. Farming community. Nearest hospital is in Bolivar, about thirty miles away. The boonies, in other words.”
I tried to concentrate on the details she was reading and failed. For three days, I’d attempted to put my encounter with Nate out of my mind so I could fully enter into the excitement of this trip with Darlene. For three days, I’d told myself that I’d made the right move by asking him to leave, that I’d shown strength and resolve more than anger and contempt. For three days, I’d tried to shake off a gnawing bitterness that had grown more acidic with each recollection of Julie’s name. I hadn’t succeeded. All the positive self-talk I could muster hadn’t eased an intensified sense of lessness and loss.
“It’s buzzing again,” Darlene said, snapping me out of my morbid reverie, holding the phone out so I could see Nate’s name on the caller ID. “Are we going to answer it this time or see if he leaves a message?”
“Message.” She didn’t know that there had been a dozen other attempted calls since our encounter in the loft. Just hang-ups—no voicemails.
Darlene sat in silence for a while and I wondered what she was choosing not to say. Then she glanced at the screen. “Hey, it looks like he got a clue and left something this time.” She held the phone up for me to see. “Tell me how to get to it and I’ll play it for you.”
“I don’t need to listen to it now,” I said.
She heard the petulance in my voice and didn’t reply.
“I can see you pursing your lips, Darlene. And I’ve known you long enough to know what it means.”
She hesitated a moment. “It’s just that if there’s something urgent . . . an accident or your house burning down. You’d want to know, right?”
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