“Three months ago now, I think. I’m losing track of the days. We had a small bridal salon in the Rue Legendre, but she got sick and the boche came. I thought since I had nursed her, I would be prepared. But that first day, seeing those poor boys . . . I wasn’t ready.”
“Of course you weren’t, but you stayed anyway. That was brave.”
I peer at the red-and-green American Field Service patch on his sleeve. I’ve heard stories about the American drivers, how many of them had joined up before the United States even entered the war and had come over at their own expense, earning them the nickname the Gentlemen Volunteers.
“There’s a lot of talk about the drivers. They say you volunteer to come and that you actually pay your own way. Is it true?”
He makes a face. “It’s not as big a deal as it sounds. Most of us are rich boys from Princeton and Yale, looking for adventure.”
“Which are you?”
“Yale. Like my old man and his old man. Or was.”
“You left university to do this? Why?”
He shrugs, but there’s something evasive about the gesture, as if the subject makes him uncomfortable. “I wanted to do my part. And I liked the AFS’s motto—that freedom and mercy shall not perish from this earth.” Another shrug. “Anyway, here I am.”
“Your family must be proud.”
“My mother’s been gone almost three years, so it’s just my sister and my father now. And proud isn’t exactly the word I’d use. The Purcells have always been navy men, and I was expected to fall in line. My father was set to pull the required strings to get me into Officer Candidate School when I graduated, but I didn’t want that. Any more than I wanted to get roped into the family business. Needless to say, he was pretty steamed when I told him I’d quit school to sign up.”
I survey the damage to his face. We’ve all heard stories of AFS drivers killed in the line of duty or detained and questioned by the Gestapo for aiding escaped prisoners. “Perhaps he’s just concerned for your safety and thinks you’d be safer as an officer in the American navy.”
The corners of his mouth twitch with something like a grimace. “No, I’ve just spoiled his plans.”
“Are you . . . being careful?”
He tips his head to one side, studying me in return. “Does it matter to you that I’m careful?”
My cheeks go hot. He’s nothing to me and isn’t likely to be, but I tell myself it’s a perfectly valid question. “I think it must matter to your father and sister.”
His smile slips, replaced by something flinty and unreadable. “There isn’t time to be careful. You do what you’re sent to do. If you’re lucky, you get back in one piece so you can do it all over again the next day.”
“How do you do it? Aren’t you afraid?”
“Every single day.”
“But you do it anyway.”
“Same as you.”
I shake my head, unwilling to concede that his work and mine are in any way similar. “You save lives. I change sheets and write letters.”
“Don’t think for a minute that writing a letter to a soldier’s mother or sweetheart isn’t saving his life. It’s a lifeline, a reason to keep going.” He pauses, running a hand through his thatch of blond hair. His expression is deadly earnest. “We’re all doing what we can, Soline, and we’re all scared silly. But we show up every day, because it’s important stuff. All of it—all of us—important.”
I’m trying to think of something to say when I hear my name. I turn to find Adeline standing in the doorway, pointing to her wristwatch. I throw her a nod and stand. “I have to go.”
Anson pushes to his feet, catching my hand. “I’ll miss you, Soline Roussel.”
His voice, low and warm, makes my pulse quicken. “Don’t be silly. You can’t miss someone you don’t know.”
He shoots me a roguish grin. “You’re Soline Roussel from Paris, France. You’re kind and beautiful, and once upon a time you and your mother owned a bridal salon. Now you spend your time nursing soldiers. I’m Anson Purcell, Yale dropout. My family is from Newport, Rhode Island. My father is named Owen, and he builds racing yachts. My mother’s name was Lydia. My sister is Cynthia—Thia for short—and she wants to be a French Impressionist when she grows up. There. Now we know each other, which means I can miss you properly.”
Something warm and unfamiliar spirals in my belly. My world has been one of women, brides and their mothers, Maman. No one has ever flirted with me, but I recognize it when I hear it, and I can’t blame him. It’s easier than talking about war and death. But I’ve been warned about Americans, all disarming smiles and apple pie. I take an awkward step back, pulling my hand free.
“I have to go. The patients need their lunch.” I turn toward the door, then glance back at him over my shoulder. “Try to be careful.”
I feel curiously removed from my body as I walk away, as if my feet aren’t quite touching the floor. Adeline is waiting with an arched brow and a sly cat’s grin.
“And what was that about?”
“Nothing,” I reply quickly. A lie. Because even in that moment of flushed confusion, I know it was the very opposite of nothing. “He lent me a handkerchief on my first day, and I was just saying thank you.”
“Over coffee?”
I reach for an explanation but quickly give up. Nothing I say will wipe the grin off her face. “It was nothing, Adeline. He was kind to me.”
She chuckles knowingly. “They usually are—kind. But be careful, chérie. This isn’t the cinema. The hero, however handsome, isn’t always a safe bet.”
“Do you think he’s a hero?” I ask, sounding every bit as dreamy as I feel.
“Well, if he isn’t, he certainly looks the part. And the AFS must think so. They’re terribly picky about who they accept. Then, I suppose they have to be. It takes a special breed to do what they do. Which is why you should be careful with your heart, little girl. Attachments are dangerous things in wartime.”
I nod obediently, but in my bones, I know it’s too late. An attachment has already been formed, at least for me.
Adeline claps her work-reddened hands as we approach the orthopedic ward, where a cart stacked with metal mess trays awaits. “Voilà! C’est très bien. We’ll feed the men, and then you and I will have some lunch, and you can tell me about this handkerchief.”
I don’t know where I would be without Adeline. She’s helped me find my footing, introducing me to the other volunteers and stepping in to smooth over my blunders.
I remember one day in particular. We had a flurry of casualties come in and everyone was scurrying to make up fresh beds. I’d just left the laundry with an armload of linens and was coming around a corner when I blundered into the hospital’s resident physician in charge—Dr. Jack, as he’s known—soaking him with a scalding cup of coffee.
Sumner Jackson’s temper is a frequent topic of discussion among the nurses. But as I looked up at him that day, at his dripping white coat and thundercloud face, I realized the rumors hadn’t done him justice. He was tall and broad with thick shoulders, heavy brows that sat low over his eyes, and a nose that reminded me more of a prizefighter than a surgeon.
I gulped out an apology in French, then in English, then in French again, all the while trying to keep my armload of sheets from tumbling to the floor. As usual, Adeline appeared to rescue me, explaining that I was new and still a little clumsy. I held my breath while he looked me over with his dark, flat eyes.
Finally, in place of his scowl, the hint of a smile appeared. “Mademoiselle, it is my considered medical opinion that coffee, while highly effective when taken internally, is of little value when applied to the skin. Perhaps a little slower around the corners in future.”
And with that, he stepped around me and moved off down the hall, leaving me with knocking knees and an armload of coffee-spattered sheets.
In the weeks since, I have learned a great deal about Sumner Jackson, about his personal mission and the extraordinary len
gths he has undertaken to make sure no German soldier ever occupies one of our beds. The patients we tend are either French, Canadian, English, or American. For the most part, we’ve stopped paying attention to their nationalities. All we know is that the beds are full and so are the bedpans.
Some of the men—boys, really, not much older than I—are from prison camps and are sent back when they’re well enough. Others, the worst of them, are shipped home, too mutilated to return to the battlefield. And some die. Sometimes after seeming to make a full recovery. It’s always a shock to arrive in the morning and find a bed empty or already occupied by an unfamiliar face. The stories are always the same. A sudden turn for the worse. Sepsis. Hemorrhage. The doctors did all they could. It’s always so sudden, so horribly and tragically unexpected.
In the beginning I asked questions, but no one seemed to want to talk about those empty beds. The living are what the doctors and nurses are about. And as I have quickly learned, it is what I need to be about, too, if I want to remain at the hospital. I’m to do as I’m told without question or comment and keep my nose out of matters outside my purview.
And so I do as I’m told. I keep my head down and make myself useful, seeing to meals, stocking supplies, fetching and carrying whatever needs fetching and carrying. But my favorite duty is writing letters for soldiers who can’t write for themselves. Perhaps it’s to do with what Anson said in the mess that day—that writing letters saves lives too.
The words I take down are often sad, but they’re always brave. It’s hard sometimes not to cry as I write, knowing that somewhere there’s a mother or a wife or a fiancée who would soon read them and would weep with a mixture of gratitude and anguish. Maimed but safe. Blind but spared. Alive but forever changed.
There was no way of knowing when or even if the letters would arrive. Personal correspondence would sit in a pile for days, even weeks, waiting to be inspected by the censors. Finally, after being cleared, they were put on a ship or a plane and with any luck would reach their destination in four to six weeks. If they arrived at all.
Still, the men write—some of them every day—glossing over the muddy, bloody grind of war with false assurances and newsy bits of this and that. It’s hope they’re sending home, a slender thread tethering them to someone across the sea. To mothers and wives and sweethearts all enduring a hell of their own. Weeks without word. Prayers gone unanswered. Letters that never come.
And telegrams that do.
SIXTEEN
RORY
June 23, 1985—Boston
Rory grimaced as she wrestled her curls into a ponytail. She looked like she had during exam week, hollow-eyed and pale after pulling too many all-nighters.
It had been three days since her meeting with Soline, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that their chance acquaintance had been meant as a kind of wake-up call, a reminder that life rarely unfolded the way it did in novels. Love didn’t conquer all, heroes weren’t invincible, and lovers rarely rode off into the sunset together. Broken hearts stayed broken.
She glanced at her watch, then back at her face. She wished she’d gotten up early enough to at least blow out her hair. Or better yet, phone her mother to say something had come up and she couldn’t make brunch, but it was too late for that now. The Veuve was already on ice, and she was going to be late. Again.
She was on her hands and knees, rooting under the bed for her left shoe, when the doorbell rang. She headed for the door, expecting a child with braids selling Girl Scout cookies or a pair of well-dressed young men handing out religious tracts. Instead, she found Soline Roussel standing in the hall, holding a white pastry box tied with Sugar Kisses’ familiar black-and-white logo.
“Bonjour,” Soline said brightly. “I hope you’re hungry.”
Rory opened her mouth, but nothing would come out. She couldn’t have been more flustered if she’d opened the door and found Princess Di in the hall. “What are you doing here?” she managed, stepping aside to let Soline enter.
“It’s your turn.”
“My turn to what?”
“To tell me your story. I told you mine; now it’s your turn to tell me yours.”
“I don’t have a story.”
Soline arched a nearly black brow. “No?”
Rory felt her cheeks go hot under the pointed gaze. There was something troubling about those dark-chocolate eyes, a combination of warmth and steeliness that made her feel agonizingly transparent. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Monsieur Ballantine was kind enough to give me your address.” She smiled then, creating a fan of tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. “You see? I know my way around him too.”
“But . . . why?”
Soline’s expression softened. “The last time we met, you left my house in tears, chérie. I don’t know why, but I’d like to.”
Rory smothered a groan. To say the memory was cringeworthy would be the understatement of the year. “I’m sorry about that. My life’s kind of upside down right now, and it just hit me all of a sudden. I apologize for rushing out like that, without thanking you or saying a proper goodbye. It was rude.”
“It was no such thing. But I didn’t come for an apology. I came to make sure you were all right. I’ve been worrying about you these last few days, and it occurred to me that I didn’t have to. I could come and see for myself that you were all right.”
Rory dropped her gaze, embarrassed that this reclusive woman had felt the need to schlep across town to check on her. “You didn’t have to come. Really. I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me, Rory. It’s all right to be sad.”
Rory’s head came up slowly. The words, so different from her mother’s well-meaning stoicism, seemed to unlock something in her chest, like a door suddenly swinging open.
“Do you have coffee?” Soline asked when the silence grew awkward.
“Coffee?”
“I brought breakfast. Pain au chocolat and chausson aux pommes.”
Rory blinked at her, nodding slowly. “Yes, I have coffee.”
Rory led Soline to the kitchen, hoping she wouldn’t notice the basket of unfolded laundry on the couch or the jumble of snow boots still sitting in front of the coat closet. They hadn’t had snow since March.
In the kitchen, she gathered the containers from last night’s takeout and slid them into the trash, then set about consolidating the dirty dishes in the sink. After a few minutes, she gave up. A sink full of dirty dishes was a sink full of dirty dishes, no matter how neatly they were stacked.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said as she finished measuring out the coffee. “I don’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen these days. Cooking for one isn’t much fun, so it’s mostly takeout now, and things sort of pile up.”
“It’s true,” Soline said, grabbing a knife from the nearby block to snip the twine on the pastry box. “Cooking for one isn’t fun. But one must eat, and not always from cartons. Have you plates for the pastries?”
“In the cabinet to your left. There should be napkins there too.”
She watched as Soline worked her gloves off and began transferring pastries to a plate. She had no idea what her landlady was doing in her kitchen, but she suddenly realized she was glad. Though she did wonder how Soline had managed to get all the way to the South End without a car. “Please tell me you didn’t carry that box on the T and then walk all the way from the station.”
“Of course not. I took a taxi. Come and sit.” She waited for Rory to join her at the table, then slid the plate of pastries toward her. “Que désirez-vous?”
Rory found herself wishing she’d paid better attention in French class. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak much French—well, any French, actually.”
“I asked: What is your pleasure?”
“Right. The apple, I think.”
“And I will have the chocolat.” Soline slid a croissant onto her plate, then shook out her napkin and laid it in her lap. “All right,” s
he said finally, licking powdered sugar from her fingers. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
Soline cocked her head, one brow raised. “Are we going to play games, you and I?”
“I still don’t understand what you’re doing here. Why do you care?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because it’s my turn?”
“Partly, yes. But it’s more than that. You remind me of someone I knew once.”
“Who?”
“Me,” Soline said, pausing to sip her coffee. “Life has done something to you, taken something from you. I don’t know what or how long ago, but you can’t find your feet again. This gallery of yours, you want to pretend it will fill the hole life has carved in you. But deep down, you know it can’t. And you’re afraid nothing ever will.”
Rory swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. It was true. Every word. But how? “Did Brett say something to Daniel? Is that how you know all this?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how?”
Soline’s smile was both brief and wistful as she lowered her mug. “We’re kindred spirits, you and I. Strangers who share a common past.”
Rory wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this. “I don’t understand.”
“We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too. Because we’re afraid of being fragile. Of being damaged. That’s what makes us kindred spirits, Rory—our bruises.”
A chill crept up the back of Rory’s neck. Coming from anyone else, the words might have seemed ridiculous, the kind of woo-woo stuff one might hear from a palm reader at the fair. But she’d felt it too, hadn’t she? The eerie overlap of Soline’s story with her own.
“It’s just so hard to get my head around. The way we met, the way your story feels so . . . familiar.” An unexpected rush of tears suddenly clogged her throat. She turned her head, wiping at her eyes. “I’m sorry. We’ve seen each other twice, and I’ve managed to burst into tears both times.” She sniffed noisily, shaking her head in disgust. “What an idiot you must think me.”
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