“What about it?”
Vivian pictured the soldier from the cafe. He planned to hit the town tonight. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock. If she hurried, she might be able to catch him.
“You’re not going by yourself,” Luanne implored.
Vivian was already back at the closet. “Not to worry. I’m meeting someone.” After a few more hangers, she honed in on a cherry-red dress with tiny white polka dots. Flared and sleeveless, it would make a snazzy number for the jitterbug. The plunging neckline on its own would regain Isaak’s attention.
Ian, rather. Ian’s attention.
“And who is this someone?” Luanne demanded as Vivian wiggled into the fabric.
“Just a GI I met at the cafe. He’d asked me on a double date, but I turned him down. Anyway, he’s a dandy fellow.”
“Are you sure he still plans to be there?”
“Absolutely.” Because he had to be-so Vivian could make right by her mistake. She quickly brushed out her hair, pinned a white silk flower by her temple, and retouched her makeup. With the seams of her stockings reasonably straight, she buckled the straps of her shoes.
“I don’t know,” Luanne murmured. “Maybe I should go after all.” She untied her scarf, exposing a head of pinned curlers.
“Nonsense. You’re practically ready for bed.” Vivian dabbed her neck and wrists with her Californian Poppy perfume. “I can get along just fine. Don’t you fret.”
Luanne met her gaze in the mirror, clearly torn. “Please, be careful. And wake me when you get home, so I know you’re safe.”
“Yes, mother hen,” Vivian playfully agreed. Though if all went well, she would be frolicking away until dawn.
A dozen catcalls later, she felt the impact of her mistake.
Going to the club alone would have been just fine in her usual wear, but the brazen red dress invited more attention than Vivian had bargained for. The initial gawking of men was admittedly flattering, and she wove through the crowd with both chin and chest lifted. But as their gazes became like fingers, roaming up and down her body and hovering over her cleavage, she regretted not bringing her sweater.
I’ll hardly need one, she had told Luanne before heading out the door. I’ll be too warm from dancing all night.
Obviously, she hadn’t considered other benefits it offered.
“Hey, angel. How’s about cuttin’ a rug?” A sailor with a wide forehead and crooked teeth grabbed her hand.
“No, thank you,” she said, pulling away. “I’m here with somebody.”
After all this trouble, Ian Downing had better be here tonight.
She continued to scan the room. Fort Hamilton was a major embarkation center, and every serviceman awaiting deployment appeared to have congregated in this dance hall. Uniformed men outnumbered the dolled-up ladies tenfold. Cologne clung to the curtain of smoke. Through the haze, band members onstage tapped their keys and blew their horns while a woman at the microphone sang “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
“Sakes alive, ya sure are a looker.” She traced the comment to a red-haired marine with freckles spanning his nose.
“Sorry, I’m here with somebody,” she said, the response now a reflex.
“So am I,” he said. “Ain’t she a beaut?” He held up his date of a silver flask. “Care for a personal intro?”
She shook her head and turned away, and that’s when she spotted the private. In his starched khakis, Ian Downing stepped out from one of the room’s large white columns. He was speaking to a couple: his buddy with a steady, she guessed. Walt and ... Carol, was it? Even halfway across the room, Vivian recognized Ian’s sparkling white smile.
She adjusted her posture, conjuring the air of Jean Harlow. The starlet, even in a silk nightie, would feel sensual, not bare. As Vivian strode through the teeming area of tables and chairs, she prepared her explanation. How she had fibbed about a fiancé, leery of dating a stranger. How after careful thought, she had reconsidered his invite.
Vivian was ten feet away when a buxom blonde appeared. She brushed Ian’s nose with her finger and giggled. He leaned down, planting a kiss on her lips that implied it wasn’t the first. Then his friend pointed to the exit, and the two couples headed that way-directly toward Vivian.
She spun around, frantic, and veered to the right. Again she moved around the tables and chairs and returned inadvertently to the grinning marine.
“See that? Knew you’d change ya mind!”
A peek to the side confirmed Ian was gone. She felt ridiculous over her error, followed promptly by irritation. She was here to have fun. With or without a date, that’s precisely what she was going to do.
The marine swirled his flask around. “It ain’t gonna bite ya.”
Hard alcohol had never appealed to her, but if partaking meant shedding the title of a prude or old biddy, so be it. She accepted the container but held it low as she unscrewed the top. To her knowledge, the USO prohibited booze. She downed a hefty swig, igniting a blast of white heat. A Roman candle had exploded in her chest. Her lungs objected with a series of coughs.
“Better take it easy with that stuff.” She knew that voice-and it wasn’t the marine’s.
Vivian turned to find Luanne’s brother. In an Army uniform, Gene Sullivan stood with his arms folded, his buzzed black hair free of a hat. Running into him here seemed an odd coincidence, particularly since he disliked these places even more than Vivian did.
But then she realized: “Luanne sent you.” The sentence came out hoarse, no smoother than a croak.
“She thought you might need help getting home.”
“Yes, well-” She cleared her throat. “I appreciate the concern. But I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Whatever suits you.”
The remark clashed with his manner. For he continued to stand there, eying the flask in her grip. This was his standard bearing-more of a subtle brooding than razor coolness. The only difference between now and in high school was his thickened jaw and broadened build, reinforcing his role as a protective brother. If permitted, he would likely even stay Stateside to keep watch over Luanne.
But Vivian was not his sister. Nor was she a damsel to be rescued.
“I’ll be fine on my own, thank you.”
He nodded toward the band. “I’m just here to enjoy the music.”
She squared her body with his, irked by the challenge. After years of appeasing others at stiff formal functions, she deserved a single night without judgment. An evening without greetings, curtsies, or bows. No ankles crossed, head leveled, pinkies up, eyes down.
In a defiant toast Vivian raised the flask-presumably whiskey, undoubtedly cheap-and threw more gulps down her throat. These went down easier, only a series of low flames. She withheld her grimace, acutely aware of Gene’s scrutiny, and returned the drink to its owner.
“I believe I’m up for that dance now,” she said, hooking the marine’s arm.
Clearly unsure when he had asked, the man hesitated for a second before escorting her off. They found space among couples in the midst of the Lindy. In an effort to mimic, the marine twirled her in circles, not catching the beat, and flung her in haphazard patterns. Several times she had to apologize for stepping on other people’s toes. At one point, she suspected a different song had begun, though she couldn’t be sure of a thing. Faces were blurring and the room was spinning. Her stomach roiled with liquor.
“I need ... to stop,” she told her partner. But he continued to toss her about, oblivious to all but the tempo in his head. She struggled to break free, his grip holding tight. “Please,” she said louder. “I don’t feel well.”
Trumpets assaulted her ears and smoke polluted her lungs. Then, on a dime, the movement stopped. Gene had his hand on the man’s shoulder and spoke to him in a hush. The marine nodded and ventured away. Had Gene slid him a bribe, made an officer’s threat?
Vivian’s pride resented the intrusion. Unfortunately, with the sway of the room she
found the need to clutch him for balance.
“Still wanna stick around?”
She shook her head, a bit too quick, and the whole place tilted at an angle.
“C’mon, twinkle toes.”
Her gaze, like her hands, didn’t budge from his forearm as she followed him through the mass. She stumbled once along the way, but Gene prevented her fall.
“The floor,” she said, “it was moving.”
“It does that sometimes.” She heard a smirk in his voice. Finally, they were outside. The night air was crisp and clear. Like drinking water in the Sahara, she couldn’t take in enough.
“So,” he said after a bit. “You well enough to walk?”
Salvaging her composure, she nodded without looking his way. She plodded beside him on her own, determined not to stagger. Headlights from passing cars stung the backs of her eyes. They were five blocks from the club-though who was she to keep count?-when a huge swish rolled through her belly. She stopped, hoping to still the motion. But it rolled again, with an added tide of nausea.
“I think I ... need ... to sit.” Just then, thank God in heaven, she spotted stairs to her right. She lowered onto the concrete steps, an apartment building above. The music still ricocheted in the caverns of her mind. Every note felt like a pebble adding weight she could not uphold. Her brain became a boulder. She needed to lay it down.
Her head was almost to the step when a hand netted her cheek.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not on that.” Gene flung something aside that clattered when it landed. A tin can? A metal lid?
“Okay,” he said. “Go ahead.”
She relaxed her neck and landed on a ... soft . . . surface. Not concrete. More like fabric. Trousers. Gene’s leg.
The position was too intimate, even for a non-prude, non-biddy. But her limp form refused to shift, both too heavy and too comfortable. Vivian decided she would sleep here, until her bare arm caught a shiver.
“You leave a coat back there?” he asked.
She tried to shake her head, unsure if she succeeded.
After a moment, Gene patted her upper arm. The tentative gesture transitioned into short yet gentle strokes. The heat of his skin contrasted against the coolness of her own. She let her eyelids drop, lulled for an instant back in time, back to when Isaak, too, had soothed her in such a way. She had missed this more than she realized-not just Isaak’s presence, but the sheer wonder of being touched.
Vivian released a shuddered breath. With it came flashes of her behavior. What a spectacle she must have been. She curled her hands beneath her chin, her knees up to her chest. How foolish she was acting, and long before tonight.
“I just wanted to forget,” she whispered, wholly wishing that she could.
Gene’s hand paused on her arm, and for a second she expected a reply-a mock, a chiding, a suggestion they continue home. But he simply resumed his strokes, and for the first time in years she didn’t feel so alone.
23
Audra flipped her pillow to its cool side, and a shiver ran down her neck. Five minutes passed. Then ten. The digital screen glowed like a taunt: 1:22 A.M.
She rotated the clock on her bedside stand to make it face the wall. Through the gap in the doorway, left open so she could hear Jack when needed, the night-light shone in yellow. It sliced a beam down the middle of her bed, dividing the vacant half and “hers.”
She pondered potential sleep aids: hot bath, warm milk, a book. No doubt, thanks to Dr. Shaw, the discussion about a book today was the source of her insomnia.
Finally giving up, she kicked off the comforter. If she wasn’t going to rest anyway, she might as well be entertained by the author’s preposterous theories. Who knew? Maybe she would learn the Queen of Sheba had come back as a poodle. Worst case, the text would be dry enough to knock her right out.
In the living room, she clicked on a lamp. She plopped onto the couch with the book.
From Beyond.
“Beyond what? Sanity?” She bit off the sneer, told herself to keep an open mind, to stop being so cranky. She was reading this for Jack, to gain even a dash of helpful insight.
Starting at the beginning, she skimmed the introduction. Memories from reincarnation, it stated, typically faded by age six or seven.
The tidbit punched a small but distinct hole in Dr. Shaw’s theory.
Still, she forged on to the first account, in which a five-year-old Ukrainian boy often rambled about needing to practice for a large performance. He played no instrument, didn’t dance or sing. But during a visit to his aunt’s, having never touched a piano, he sat down at her Wurlitzer and poured out the Moonlight Sonata.
Supposedly.
In Prague, a young boy suffered from a phobia of blades. If even a small butter knife was set out for dinner, he would break into wild hysterics. Eventually, he described being murdered in another life. He cited the birthmark on his rib cage as the place where he’d been stabbed. A transcendental scar. On a similar note, several other kids described having phantom pains, indicative of wounds that had ended their previous lives.
The next chapter featured an Australian girl with asthma. After recovering from a severe attack, she recalled being strangled in an alley. She named specific landmarks, all verifiable yet absent from modern maps.
A couple in India spoke about their daughter and her claims of being a courier in the French Revolution. They chalked it up to imagination until she suddenly spurted phrases in antiquated French.
The stories went on and on, testaments to another realm. Effects of tragic deaths sometimes carried over, they said, while other souls sought closure to unfinished business.
Before Audra knew it, she had sped through half the pages. She couldn’t deny goose bumps had risen from each similarity to Jack—birthmarks, phobias, and foreign speech. But how much was lore? Were they tales created just to sell a book, or to draw attention to families starved for the spotlight? That’s not to say nuggets of truth weren’t there. Even the National Enquirer based many articles on fact before distorting or exaggerating to craft alluring headlines.
But Audra had no interest in those. She had come to revere the provable. What she could hear, smell, and touch were the nuts and bolts of her world. In fact, with decent effort, she could derive explanations for every factor of Jack’s case. Except for one.
His knowledge of the engraving.
Odds were low that she and the soldier had both misheard the phrase. She should have studied the necklace closer to properly investigate. The more she learned, the more she could eliminate. And that elimination, she decided, would lead her to the actual cause.
Audra moved over to the kitchen table. She opened her laptop and launched an online search. This time she would be more thorough.
Using anything Jack had mentioned, she entered a series of keywords. They led to a wide range of sites: historical time lines, military tributes, veterans’ memoirs, memorabilia collections, World War Two reenactments, and more.
She had no idea there were so many people these days who enjoyed dressing up as Nazi officers, accessorized with authentic Lugers and even German shepherds, to spend their summer weekends playing war.
Shaking this off, she reworked her keywords. She added, deleted, and changed their order, seeking the right mix of ingredients for a recipe that worked. She skimmed numerous accounts of saboteurs and spies. They were men and women on both sides of the war, including Nazi agents captured on the East Coast. This one piqued her interest, especially since many had been sentenced to the electric chair for their crimes. A disturbing link to Jack’s drawing.
In the end, however, there was nothing her son couldn’t have gleaned from a PBS documentary. More important, there was nothing connecting the combination of words with the crash of a plane.
Once again, she reviewed her search.
WWII aircraft German U-boat Nazi spies New York Florida electric chair
She reinserted Himmel, this time at the front. Upon her pressing Enter, the t
op of the screen restated all of her words but with a question: Did you mean: Hemel?
The search engine was suggesting she had misspelled a name. A slight tremble settled in her hand as she clicked her agreement, refreshing the results. Jakob Hemel jumped out in snippets from the content of two different sites. She followed the first link.
After a good amount of sifting, she located the name in a long list of servicemen. He had served in the German air force! But ... during the First World War. There was no relevance she could see to Nazis or swastikas. No indication he was killed in action.
She reversed to her prior search. Breath held, she clicked on the second link, only to face a message: Server cannot find the page.
“You’re kidding me,” she said.
She tried again, and again, but her efforts failed. She sought out the home page of the site with the link, to no better result. A separate search for Jakob Hemel produced nothing remotely related.
Frustration piled inside, layer after layer. She was probing for other options when a muffled scream jarred her.
Jack. Another nightmare.
For a moment, she had forgotten their grueling routine. At least she was already awake. She hurried down the hall and found him thrashing around on his mattress.
“We’re gonna crash!” he hollered.
“Jack,” she ordered, “you need to calm down.” She grabbed hold of his wrist and cast. “Listen to me. You’re just dreaming. It’s not real.”
“We gotta get out!” Eyes open, unseeing, he shook his head with vigor. What she wouldn’t do to take his fears away, gather them in a ball, store them in her own soul.
“Wake up for me, buddy. Just wake up. Please.”
“Help me!”
He fought against her, and she did her best to maintain her strength. But after two weeks of nights like this, she was tired. Mentally, physically, emotionally. How much longer would this go on? Months? Years? What if he only got worse, no matter where they chose to live?
Hit by a spate of exhaustion, she felt tears mounting behind her eyes. “You’re all right, baby. You hear me?” Her voice cracked. “You’re safe in here, Jack.”
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