by Sarah Sundin
Vic rubbed her lower back. “Don’t you see, darling? It’s all for the best. Filing the appeal wouldn’t have helped Carver, not a bit, but it would have hurt my family. That means you too. You don’t want to marry into a family with a bad name.”
She shook her head. That’s what she feared she was about to do.
He wiped her tears with his handkerchief. “Let’s forget about this and enjoy our evening.”
“I can’t.” How could she when everything inside her tumbled and twisted? “I need to go home.”
“Helen—”
“No.” She wrenched out of his arms and threaded her way through the crowd toward the coatroom.
“Helen . . .” His voice pressed up behind her, and he took her elbow. “You can’t leave alone. People will talk.” With a wide, flat smile, he helped her into her coat and escorted her out of the restaurant, tossing friendly greetings to everyone they passed.
Vic put his arm around her shoulders as they walked down Fourth Street. A stiff wind blew Helen’s hair straight in front of her like blinders, and Vic told humorous stories in a voice higher, louder, and faster than usual.
In Helen’s abdomen, a rock-hard pain developed.
What kind of man was she marrying? A man who cared—but not enough to follow through. A man who did right—until his reputation was at risk. A man who valued justice—but valued opinion more highly.
A coward.
They turned onto G Street, and the rock of pain pressed up against her stomach, her lungs, her heart. She’d accused Ray of cowardice for avoiding combat. He’d proven her wrong. To the death, he’d proven her wrong, and she couldn’t breathe.
The man laughing by her side was a true coward. A moral coward. And he’d lied about his actions. He couldn’t even be an honest coward.
He jiggled her shoulder. “Remember that? Sure, you do. I remember you standing in your parents’ parlor when my dad brought me in to see your father. You wore a pink dress. I loved you even then.”
She mumbled as if too windblown to reply.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Vic guided her around the corner onto Fifth Street. “My parents forbade me to swim in the river with my friends, afraid I’d drown, but it backfired on them. They never thought I’d sneak out my window, fall from the tree, and break both arms. They tried to protect me, but I got hurt in a different way. Goes to show some things are out of our control.”
“Out of our control,” she whispered.
He bounced into another story, but Helen held the other before her, cupped in her hands so she could inspect it.
She was marrying Vic to protect Jay-Jay, but would it backfire? Was she placing her son in a different type of danger? What would he learn from Vic? That truth and justice and courage could be embraced or discarded based on convenience. That some people were more deserving than others. To protect yourself first.
Victor Llewellyn might be a lesser evil than James Carlisle, but he was hardly a good man.
An inaudible moan flowed from deep inside, from the aching stone. Lord, what can I do? I have to protect Jay-Jay.
But could she protect him? He was out of her hands, out of her control. She had to trust the Lord to protect Jay-Jay. She had to do what Vic hadn’t done—the right thing.
The stone went into a spasm that jolted pain through her stomach. If she didn’t marry Vic, she’d be trapped at the Carlisles. She couldn’t work for Vic again, but without a job, how could she rescue her son?
She couldn’t. She had to marry Vic. With no money of her own, she had no choice.
Wasn’t that Vic’s excuse? That he had no choice? But he had. He could have done the right thing no matter the cost.
Shivers coursed through her. God loved Jay-Jay even more than she did. She had to let the Lord protect her boy in his way, a way she couldn’t plan or control or even imagine.
Vic rubbed her arm. “Cold tonight. You’re shaking like a leaf.”
Helen pushed back her billowing hair. Vic’s face shone with compassion and love. He adored her. He’d never hurt her. But that wasn’t enough.
The stone shifted and forced out her words. “I can’t marry you.”
“Excuse me?” Vic stopped right in the middle of D Street.
“I can’t—I can’t marry you.”
He laughed, high and staccato. “Wedding jitters. Mom warned me. Just relax. In two weeks this commotion will be over and we can set up our happy little home.”
“No, I can’t.” Her head shook back and forth, every muscle twitching. “You broke your promise. You lied to cover it up. You had a duty to your client and you failed. That’s against the law.”
His hand tightened on her shoulder. “Carver isn’t preferring charges against me, is he?”
Helen squirmed free. “He—he hasn’t decided.”
“What? Why would he turn on me after all I’ve done for him?”
“All you’ve done? But you haven’t done. You’re nothing but empty promises.”
“That’s baloney.”
“ ‘Though the world perish.’ ” Her voice quavered. “That’s what your motto says. ‘Let justice be done though the world perish.’ ”
“That’s the ideal. This is the real world.”
She clenched her hair at the roots. It hurt. “I can’t marry a man who doesn’t follow his own motto.”
He reached for her, his fingers splayed wide. “Be reasonable. It’s only two weeks before the wedding.”
“I don’t care. I have to do the right thing. I won’t marry you.” She twisted her engagement ring off over the first knuckle.
“Don’t be silly. Let’s go to the Carlisles and talk it out.”
The Carlisles? A cold wave crashed over her. If Mr. Carlisle found out she broke her engagement, what would happen? Although her security lay in God, she wriggled the ring back in place.
“Oh goodness. Oh no.” Shakes pulsed through her, and her vision blurred. “Please, Vic. Please do me a favor. One favor. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“What?”
She needed to find a job and a place to live. “Please don’t tell anyone I broke up with you.”
A harsh bark of a laugh. “What am I supposed to do? Act happy? For crying out loud, our wedding’s in two weeks. You want me to keep planning and smiling? Are you crazy?”
Helen pressed her hand over her eyes. “Please. A week. Give me one week. If not for me, for Jay-Jay.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“I can’t tell you why. Please believe me, this is very important. I need a week. Just this one favor.”
His upper lip twisted. “You have the audacity to break up with me and then ask a favor? You are crazy. What on earth do I get out of this?”
“I know it’s not fair. It doesn’t make sense. But please believe me. Please.”
“Talk to Esther.” His voice came out low and hard. “Talk her out of preferring charges. If I were convicted, I’d be discharged and disbarred. I’d be ruined. Talk sense into her.”
Helen looked up to his stony face. He knew the consequences beforehand. He knew his actions were illegal. “I’ll talk to her, but I can’t make any promises.”
He glanced away. “You’ll try but no promises? Fine. That’s what you’ll get from me. I’ll try to keep it quiet—for one week—but no promises.”
“Thank you. I—I’m so sorry.”
“Sure you are.” He marched down the street.
Helen turned in circles in the middle of the intersection, not sure which way was which. All alone in the dark. Utterly alone. “Oh Lord, did I do the right thing? I’m so scared.”
The wind rushed past, tangled up the branches of an apple tree, and a flurry of pale petals danced around her in the starlight.
She reached out. The petals brushed her fingers and cheeks, as they had when she’d fallen off her bike and Ray had helped her up. “How can I forget helping a pretty girl with flowers in her hair?”
Fresh tears spilled down her ch
eeks, but tears of peace. She had done the right thing. No matter the cost.
England
Wednesday, April 18, 1945
Dr. Robinson unwound gauze from Ray’s right hand. “Much better. We can leave the bandages off now. Do you understand?”
Ray nodded, his jaws still wired shut. His hands were shiny and pink. Swelling concealed the usual features of veins and tendons and knuckle wrinkles. But today he could finally be himself again.
Behind the physician stood Major Siegel, the Army Air Force intelligence officer who had often tried to interrogate Ray. “Können Sie jetzt schreiben, Herr Oberleutnant?”
He nodded, his heartbeat quickening. He could definitely write. Maybe he could see his brothers tomorrow, even today. They could cable Helen and his parents. Wouldn’t everyone be shocked and overjoyed?
Dr. Robinson frowned and passed the wadded-up dressings to a German POW medic. “Major Siegel, I’ve told you. His hands are too stiff, too weak, too unfeeling to write yet.”
Ray grunted and folded his hand into the writing position.
The physician’s jaw dropped. “How . . . ?”
Ray made loops in the air as if writing. Every day when they removed his bandages and soaked his hands in a saline bath, he had discreetly flexed his fingers to the point of pain, preparing for this day. He needed to tell his story.
Major Siegel plunked a notepad on the nightstand and handed Ray a pen. It slipped from his grasp.
“I told you, Major. You’ll have to wait.”
Ray shook his head, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and reached for the pen. Major Siegel picked it up and held it while Ray bent his pink sausage fingers around it.
With great effort, he scrawled, “May we talk somewhere private?”
The major read the note. “Sie können auf Deutsch schreiben. Mein Deutsch ist sehr gut.”
Yes, the major’s German was very good—better than Ray’s. He tapped the note and looked up into the officer’s square face.
He narrowed one dark eye. “Private?”
“Important,” Ray wrote. The patients were German, and recovered patients staffed the ward. An American MP stood watch, an American nurse supervised the POW workers, and Dr. Robinson made rounds, but Ray felt uneasy. The other patients debated over him—was he a heroic pilot shot down over Allied lines or a traitorous defector? When Ray’s identity was revealed, he’d be moved from the ward, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
“All right.” Major Siegel picked up the notepad. “Captain Robinson, do you have anyplace I can interrogate the prisoner in private?”
The doctor’s mouth bunched up. “He’s a patient, not a prisoner.”
“He is both, as you are well aware. Someplace private?”
The doctor grumbled. “My office. Down the hall, second door on the right.”
“My adjutant and I are armed. We don’t need a guard.” He waved to a skinny young lieutenant and beckoned to Ray. “Kommen Sie mit mir, Herr Oberleutnant.”
Ray stuffed his feet into his slippers and followed. The adjutant looked terrified, so Ray offered a smile. With the swelling and pain subsiding, he could manage some facial expressions.
Still the adjutant touched his hand to his holster.
If he could have, Ray would have said, “Howdy, Sheriff.”
Instead he followed the major down the sterile hallway. The POWs were housed somewhere in the English countryside in a real hospital building, not a collection of Nissen huts like most military hospitals in England. Presumably, so they could prevent escape by putting the POWs on the top floor.
“Setzen Sie sich.” Major Siegel pulled a chair in front of a wooden desk and seated himself in the physician’s chair.
Ray sat, motioned for the pen and paper, and forced out letters.
“You are a hard nut to crack, Herr Oberleutnant,” the major said in German. “You appear to be a defector with an intact Messerschmitt. But many questions remain.”
Ray shoved the notepad before the major. It read: “I am an American. My name is Capt. Raymond G. Novak, U.S. Army Air Forces, 94th Bomb Group.”
Siegel’s eyebrows shot up, and he blinked several times at the paper. “This is unexpected. So, you’re Captain Novak, are you?” He spoke in English this time.
Ray nodded in time to his ecstatic heartbeat.
Major Siegel opened his briefcase on the desk. “That would explain your command of English and your possession of American military issue items—the underwear, oddly enough, and items from an escape kit. And it would explain this Bible.”
His Bible! He reached for it longingly. Four weeks without God’s Word had been close to unbearable.
“Captain Novak’s personal Bible.” The major put it back in the briefcase.
Ray’s lips tingled. Siegel didn’t believe him.
“Do you know when Captain Novak was shot down? Where?”
Ray wrote, “January 15, outside Augsburg.”
“Very good. You must have been there. But do you expect me to believe an American airman hid in Germany for over two months?”
The biggest problem with an unbelievable story was when you needed someone to believe it. Ray stretched the atrophied muscles in his hands, already sore and cramped from the few short sentences he’d written. How could he transcribe his lengthy story?
His gaze fell on a typewriter on a small table in the corner. He sprang to his feet.
The adjutant cried out and pulled his pistol.
Ray thrust up his hands and cocked his head to the typewriter, keeping his eyes on the trigger-happy sheriff. Then he brought his hands low enough to mime typing.
“He wants to type,” Siegel said. “Go ahead, Gottlieb.”
Gottlieb. Finally, Ray could tell Johannes’s story and his own. He sat at the typewriter and rolled in paper, fumbling with the sheet, slick in his fingers. Typing required adjustments for his stiff hands, but Ray pounded it out—the lynching of his crewmen, Johannes’s murder, his decision to stay at Lechfeld, his translation of the manual and acts of sabotage, and his flight in the Me 262. He wrote in choppy prose and run-on sentences, not striking through his mistakes, avoiding capitalization and punctuation—to get it down before his fingers failed.
After a few minutes, Siegel stood behind him. Ray zipped out the first page and handed it over his shoulder, then kept going, filling three pages in one uninterrupted paragraph.
The major read the pages with a neutral expression, the perfect intelligence officer.
Ray’s hands throbbed and flamed as they had the day he landed the Messerschmitt. Had he included the crucial details?
Siegel wiped his hand over his mouth and revealed a slight smirk. “You expect me to believe this?”
Ray spun back to the typewriter. “every word is true to verify my identity please contact my brothers lt col jack novak air executive 94 bg and walt novak a civilian engineer with boeing consulting with 8 af.”
Walt was probably inspecting the jet right now and perusing the manual. Perhaps Ray should have penned a personal note inside.
Major Siegel reached around Ray and took out the sheet of paper. “Lieutenant, please escort the prisoner back to the ward.”
A sigh rushed out, along with Ray’s expectation of an end to his nightmare. At least Siegel would contact Jack and Walt. He only needed one visit to return to his life.
Ray stopped at the desk and scribbled another note: “Please, sir, may I have my Bible?”
Siegel placed the testimony in his briefcase, read the note, and lifted up the little black Bible. “Captain Novak’s Bible?”
Ray could almost smell the pliable leather and the tissue pages. He picked up the pen. “My Bible. My grandfather gave it to me on my twelfth birthday. I always carry it.”
Major Siegel’s face hardened, and the Bible shook in his grip. “How much information did you torture out of Captain Novak before you murdered him?”
Pale pink petals fluttered down from between the pages,
the blossoms from Helen’s hair. Ray’s hopes fell with them.
40
Antioch
Friday, April 20, 1945
Helen handed the job application to the manager at the Hickmott Cannery. A cannery lady. Her parents would be appalled, but it would be good, paying work for the summer.
The manager skimmed the application, then his eyes popped wide open. “Helen Carlisle. I heard you might come by. I—I’m afraid we don’t have any positions open.”
“Excuse me?” Giant ads in the Ledger begged for workers, declaring it a patriotic duty to send canned apricots, asparagus, and tomatoes to the front. “But—”
“Sorry. We just filled the last opening.”
Helen’s mouth went dry. He’d heard she’d come by? What had he heard and from whom? “If something opens up, please don’t call the number on the application. I’m moving. I’ll come back later and check. How long would you suggest?”
The manager slid her application away. “We won’t need any more help this year.”
This year? Nonsense. Cannery work was difficult, and girls quit all the time.
Helen headed up the road toward downtown. What was going on? All week she’d applied for work, avoiding friends of the Llewellyns and the Carlisles. After all, why would Victor Llewellyn’s bride need a job? She couldn’t openly seek work or a room until the news broke, but she needed both beforehand.
Behind her the San Joaquin River swept water down to the Bay, water as cold as the realization that the news had already broken.
Had Vic told his gossipy mother? Was that why no one would hire her? Was this the Llewellyns’ revenge against the woman who broke Vic’s heart?
Helen’s eyes prickled as she turned onto Second Street. Tomorrow, the week she’d promised him would be over. Without a job, she couldn’t rent a room, and if the Llewellyns turned the town against her, how would she find a job? If she left town, she’d be able to find work, but rooms were scarce and who would watch Jay-Jay?
The sweet spring air pressed heavy on her, bowing her head as she passed the businesses closing for the night, desperate to hire anyone but her.
What if the Carlisles had already heard?