A Girl Divided

by Ellen Lindseth

  She turned to Dick. “I need to talk to Lavinia. Immediately.”

  “She’s with the captain at the moment,” the officer said, shifting uneasily, as if he wished he were somewhere else. “He’s filling out all the paperwork for the investigation.”

  “Investigation?” She stiffened in protest. “Surely he doesn’t think she has anything to do with it.”

  “It’s SOP, standard operating procedure, for the navy, miss. Any death aboard ship needs to be dutifully investigated and documented.” He paused. “He’ll likely want to talk to you, too, since you were traveling together. There’s also the problem of what to do with his personal effects.”

  She blinked. Of course, his things . . . something had to be done with them. She hadn’t even thought of that. It wasn’t like Nathan needed his clothes or his papers or his personal kit anymore. He was through with earthly conventions. Unfortunately, she was not the best person for the job. Despite all they had been through recently, she knew appallingly little about his personal life.

  “I’m afraid I have no idea who should get them,” she admitted reluctantly. The tragedy in that simple statement brought tears to her eyes. Poor Nathan. Surely somewhere, someone loved him. A mother or father or sister . . .

  And yet if she were to die now, would she be in the same position? Was anyone left in her village to mourn her, and would anyone know to contact them if so?

  The thought chilled her.

  “The captain will also want to know if there’s anything the navy can do for you,” the officer went on, pulling her back into the present. “Anyone we can contact on your behalf? He isn’t keen on putting two women ashore with no male to help out.”

  She massaged the sudden pain in her temples. Oh Lord, she hadn’t thought of that, either. Nathan, no doubt, had had their entire journey planned out, but unless he had told those plans to Lavinia—which seemed unlikely, the more she thought about it—they had died with him. Unless . . .

  “Can the captain see me now?” she asked.

  Ten minutes later she was seated outside the captain’s office, waiting for him to finish with Lavinia. Genie was alone, which suited her just fine. Dick had wanted to accompany her, but she refused. She needed time to herself.

  The door latch clicked, and Lavinia came out, accompanied by a somber Kitty. For once Genie wasn’t stung by seeing them together, though it struck her as odd that Lavinia hadn’t asked for her instead. Still, her heart wasn’t so small as to begrudge the widow whatever comfort she needed. Not at a time like this.

  “Genie,” Lavinia cried upon seeing her. Her tear-ravaged face crumpled as she flung herself into Genie’s arms. The girl’s sobs tore at her heart, and soon they were both crying.

  “Miss, the captain will see you now.”

  Genie glanced up for Kitty, but she was gone. Typical. All her goodwill toward the woman dissipated. She tightened her hold on her friend, not at all happy that she was going to have to temporarily abandon Lavinia again. “I’ve got to go in.”

  Lavinia’s fingers dug into Genie’s arms. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t. I just need to see the captain.” She drew a deep breath as she untangled herself from the girl’s grip. Anger drove back her tears. Anger at Nathan for not being more careful. Anger at the war for forcing them into this situation to begin with. None of this should be happening. And yet it was.

  “We’ll be fine,” she continued, pushing her friend back slightly to make eye contact. “Wait for me, all right? I’ll be right out.”

  Lavinia nodded and blotted her face on her sleeve.

  Genie hurried through her interview as quickly as she could. In truth, she had little to add. No, she didn’t know if he had any family in the States. No, she didn’t know if he had made any travel arrangements for her and Lavinia once they reached New York. No, she didn’t know the address of the mission headquarters, or the name of anyone else who might need to know of Nathan’s death. But she might be able to find out, if she could go through Nathan’s things . . .

  The captain rejected the idea, but then, when she pointed out that she needed to retrieve her passport and other travel papers from Nathan’s personal belongings anyway, he grudgingly relented. But only if she agreed to take on the duty of bundling up all Nathan’s belongings and shipping them somewhere—anywhere, he didn’t care—just so he didn’t have to deal with the problem. Yes? Good.

  He gave her until supper to get it done, or else he would have one of his men see to it.

  Relieved and a little puzzled he hadn’t given the task to Lavinia, who was Nathan’s fiancée, after all, Genie hurried out to tell Lavinia the news. Only her friend wasn’t there.

  Fear prickled up Genie’s neck. Lavinia, even on the best of days, could be impulsive—frighteningly so—and today was not a good day. Her friend’s entire world had imploded not an hour ago. And there was Lavinia’s belief that she was cursed.

  Retrieving her passport would have to wait.

  With growing panic, Genie spent the next hour searching every deck, checking every stairwell, and triple-checking their shared cabin. Lavinia was nowhere to be found. Finally, in desperation, she sought out Kitty, who was lingering over lunch with Dick. The woman’s cat eyes flashed with dislike as Genie approached.

  Dick, on the other hand, looked relieved. “There you are! I was just wondering if we should organize a search party. Lunch is almost over.”

  “I’m looking for Lavinia. Have you seen her?”

  “I wouldn’t bother looking. If Nia wants to be found, she’ll let you know,” Kitty said, her lips curving ever so slightly.

  It took all Genie had not to slap the mocking smile off the blonde’s face. “Maybe Lavinia’s well-being is nothing but a joke to you, but I know her better, and I’m worried.”

  “You only think you know her,” Kitty shot back.

  “Girls, please.” Dick held his hands up. “A catfight will not help. Do you or do you not know where Lavinia is, Kitty?”

  When she didn’t answer right away, Dick pinned her with a hard look. Kitty shifted slightly in her chair and sighed. “Fine. She said she needed to get something from her fiancé’s cabin.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Genie snapped. The hurt that Lavinia had confided in Kitty but not her congealed with her fear, creating a hard knot in her stomach. Why hadn’t Lavinia waited for her? They could’ve gone together. After all, Lavinia knew Nathan had Genie’s passport as well.

  Lord, she was so, so tired. The tumultuous events of the morning crashed down on her like a rockslide.

  Dick was instantly beside her, his hand under her elbow. “Easy, there. Do you want me to come with you to find Lavinia?”

  As much as she wanted to sag against him and let his kindness override the horrors of the morning, she shook her head. She was too emotionally drained. “I need to do this alone.”

  He let her go, and soon she wished she hadn’t been so hasty. Her knees were shaking by the time she reached Nathan’s cabin. As she lifted her hand to knock, she wondered whether she was going to have to sit down in the passageway for a moment. No one answered, which didn’t mean anything. If Lavinia was inside, likely she wouldn’t want to give her presence away.

  Trying the latch, she found it unlocked. Inhaling for courage, she eased the door open. She swept her gaze around the interior. The last thing she wanted was to catch one of Nathan’s cabinmates in a state of dishabille. Her attention caught on an upper bunk.

  “Lavinia?” she gasped in shock.

  From her perch near the ceiling, Lavinia regarded Genie with a peculiar expression, as if she didn’t quite recognize her. In truth, Genie almost didn’t recognize her friend. Lavinia’s long hair had been hacked off with neither precision nor skill, leaving jagged ends sticking out in all directions like a black halo. Combined with the vacant, otherworldly blue of her eyes, the effect was disturbing. Terrifying, actually.

  “Lavinia, what’s going on?”

 
Lavinia tentatively touched her scalp, and a bubble of laughter escaped her, sending a chill down Genie’s spine. “You mean this? I decided that since he never once noticed, after all these weeks, I might as well finish the job.”

  “I see. Do you still have the scissors?” Genie asked carefully. There was no blood indicating her friend had harmed herself, at least not yet. She wanted to keep it that way.

  “I threw them over there.” Lavinia waved her hand across the room. “I didn’t need them anymore.”

  “I see,” she said again, this time with relief. Without taking her eyes off Lavinia, she eased the door closed and locked it. The last thing she wanted was someone else walking in and witnessing her friend’s odd behavior.

  “Did you want me to cut your hair, too? I didn’t think to ask.”

  “No. I like it this length. Actually, I’m here to pack Nathan’s things.”

  “Really? I thought you were here to retrieve this.” Lavinia held up Genie’s passport. It took everything Genie had not to leap for it.

  “That, too. Can I have it, please?” She extended one hand and held her breath.

  Lavinia cocked her head, her unblinking gaze never leaving Genie’s face. She whipped the passport behind her back.

  “No,” she said with a slight shake of her head. Her eyes became glossy with unshed tears. “You’ll just leave me. Like Nathan.”

  “I won’t leave you.” Her heart broke for her friend. “And Nathan didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

  One tear wound its way down her cheek. “Maybe I should follow him.”

  “No!” Then Genie continued more calmly. “Don’t. We’ll stick together, and things will be all right.”

  “Your aunt won’t want me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what my aunt wants,” Genie said firmly. “You’re my friend, and I won’t leave you in the lurch. If need be, we’ll find jobs and a place where we can room together. Dick was just talking about how easy it is to find work in the US now there’s a war on. We’ll stick together and be just fine.”

  Lavinia shook her head again. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do. When we get to the States, you’ll come with me to California. I won’t leave you behind.” Genie put her heart into the beseeching gaze she sent her friend, praying Lavinia would see and understand that she had meant every word.

  After a long, tense moment, Lavinia slid down from the bunk, her eyes haunted. “I won’t grieve him. I didn’t for John, and I won’t for Nathan, either.”

  Genie bit her lip, noting the slight tremble in the girl’s shoulders and her ruined hair. Whether her friend knew it or not, she already was grieving. “All right.”

  On a shuddering exhale, Lavinia handed Genie her passport. “I’m going to lie down.”

  Genie let her friend edge past her. “Did you find whatever it was you were looking for?”

  Lavinia paused at the door and then opened it. “I did.”

  “Are you going to go see Kitty?” Genie hadn’t meant to ask the question, but some small, jealous part of her wanted to know. Had to know.

  Lavinia’s fingers turned white as they gripped the door. “No,” she said, not turning around. “I’m done with Kitty. I’m done with all of it.”

  Chapter 26

  Nathan was buried at sea the next day, a Monday. Lavinia chose to stay in bed, claiming a headache from the overnight change in the weather. As Genie shivered in her winter sweater, under leaden skies, waiting for the naval chaplain to finish reading the funereal scripture, she wasn’t sure she could blame her friend. The ship’s crew stood at silent attention, their faces by turn somber or reflective. Nathan’s burial was an unwelcome reminder that death stalked them all.

  The chaplain’s voice died off, and the canvas-bound shroud slid off the stern of the ship and into the ocean. The dark waters churned and thrashed as the sea consumed the unasked-for offering.

  Genie looked away, unable to watch as the white bundle faded beneath the surface. A sorrow deeper than she had expected pierced her. Nathan had always been one of the constants in her life. He had been the rasp on which her identity had been honed, the unshakable pillar that marked the path down which she had traveled. Of all the people who now surrounded her, none of them had been with her in China. None of them had been in her home. None of them had known her father.

  A cold rain began to spatter as the sailors filtered away, their duty done. Finally, there was no one left to stand with her. She was well and truly alone.

  The rain started to fall harder, dampening her skin despite her wool dress and sweater. Wrapped in a fog of unreality, Genie hardly felt the chill as she drifted back to her cabin. Her friendship with Lavinia had yet to be repaired after the swimming disaster. It weighed on her, even though truly there had been no time with all the paperwork and preparations for the funeral—things that had fallen on Genie, since Lavinia had pretended to be asleep and had refused to see anyone, including a very angry Kitty.

  It also weighed on her that she had less than a week to figure out how to get them from New York to California on her own. Nothing in Nathan’s personal effects had indicated that anyone would be waiting for her when the ship docked. In fact, there was no evidence he had even tried contacting her aunt.

  “I’m back.” Genie closed the cabin door behind her. Lavinia didn’t reply. She lay huddled under the covers, a motionless lump, exactly where Genie had left her.

  Sighing inwardly, Genie shrugged off her sodden sweater and hung it to dry. “The chaplain did a nice job.”

  Lavinia made no indication that she had heard.

  Genie reached out and gave her friend’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You alive in there?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Lavinia said coldly.

  Genie took a deep breath and then let it out. Patience, Genie. Grief could do strange things to a person. It wasn’t Lavinia’s fault that her world had been turned upside down yet again. To be honest, she wasn’t doing so well herself, with all her worries about the future.

  Suppressing a shiver, Genie plucked the wet wool from her skin as she crossed over to her trunk to get a dry outfit. “You ready to get up and get something to eat?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Surviving.” She shrugged out of her wet things. “Whether we like it or not, life goes on.”

  “For people like you, maybe.”

  Genie’s fingers paused on a button. “What do you mean, ‘people like me’?”

  Lavinia rolled away and pulled the covers up.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” Genie hurriedly tucked her blouse into her skirt as she rounded the bunk bed. “Your curse didn’t have anything to do with Nathan’s accident.”

  “I watched him die, Genie.” Tears welled in Lavinia’s already swollen eyes. “I tried to help him, but he was . . .” A choked sob tore itself from her throat. “Why does everyone who loves me die?”

  “Not everyone,” Genie said in exasperation. “Marcus loves you, as do I, and we’re still around. As is Kitt—”

  Lavinia sat bolt upright, her tear-stained face hard. “No! Don’t even say her name. I hate her.”

  “Whatever for?” Genie asked, surprised and a little alarmed by her friend’s sudden vehemence.

  “Because this is all her fault. All of it. I wish we had never met.”

  “Kitty had nothing to do with Nathan’s failing to pay attention to the stairs,” Genie said, her exasperation returning. “The fault is his and his alone.”

  Lavinia didn’t answer. Instead, she fell back on the cot and buried her face in the pillow.

  Genie perched on the edge of the bunk and stroked her friend’s back. “I know it feels too soon, but we have to make plans for the future. First, are you coming with me to California to live with my aunt? You know I want you to. Both because you’re my friend and because I need your help getting there. I can’t do it alone.”

  “Yes, you could,” came Lavinia’s muffled reply.

  “The
n how about I don’t want to.”

  Lavinia rolled to face her. “Why? You haven’t needed anyone up until now.”

  “That’s not true. Nathan handled everything.”

  “Yet you complained about it at every turn, and now you’re free.”

  “Yes, but I never wanted to be this free.” She took Lavinia’s hand when her friend would have rolled away again. “And I certainly don’t want to be free of you.”

  “Why? You would be better off if you were.”

  Genie could have screamed in frustration. “Lavinia, that’s it. No more secrets. What is this curse I should be so afraid of? Tell me.”

  “How do I explain something that has no explanation? How do I describe the anguish of wanting something so desperately, only to have that one thing elude you, over and over? No, worse, to have it ripped away irreparably by death or disaster?”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  Lavinia sat up and took Genie’s hand. “If you could have one thing from life, just one, what would it be?”

  Genie’s chest constricted at once. “A chance to go home.”

  “And then what? Live with your father the rest of your life?”

  “Why not? He needs my help to complete his dream of translating the Bible.”

  “His dream, Genie. Listen to yourself. What about your dream? When you were home, did you long for nothing?”

  Had she? An uncomfortable restlessness pricked her as ghosts seemed to stir at the edges of her memory. Ghosts of childish dreams of real adventures, of being brave and banishing demons, and then returning as a heroine. As someone important. Someone worthy of respect.

  She gave her head an angry shake, scattering the ghosts. “We were talking about curses, not dreams. Stop trying to change the subject.”

  Lavinia withdrew her hand and sat back. “I’m not. For me, they are one and the same. I have only ever wanted to love and be loved in return.” Her face crumpled. “I was so close this time, but now Nathan is dead, and I am alone again.”