by Sarah Sundin
“No! Esther, don’t.” Helen followed and took hold of Esther’s arm.
She didn’t even slow down. “It’s bad enough Carver’s in prison. We can’t let them snatch away your baby boy.”
For the benefit of the crowd, Helen plastered on a smile and lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “They won’t. I have a good case.”
“Do you? Have you heard the rumors? They’ve turned this town against you. You don’t stand a chance.”
Helen spotted Vic chatting by the front door, and she tugged Esther’s arm. “God will protect Jay-Jay. I know he will. Even if I lose, he’ll protect him. But we have to do what’s right. We have to have the courage to stand and fight.”
Esther looked deeply into Helen’s eyes. “Sometimes the Lord wants us to fight, but sometimes he wants us to surrender. Surrender can require a lot more courage than fighting.”
“But you shouldn’t. You have every right—”
“I’m giving it up.” Esther pried Helen’s hand off her arm and glided up to Victor with a wide smile. “Good day, Lieutenant. May I speak to you outside?”
Vic’s gaze darted to Helen, and surprise melted into relief. “I’d be delighted.” He held open the door for Esther.
Helen recovered in time to follow them outside to the oak tree at the edge of the church property. She couldn’t let this happen.
Under the tree, Esther turned on Vic and stuck her finger in his face. “I have lost all respect for you. You’re willing to sacrifice a woman and child to save your career.”
He drew back his shoulders. “How dare—”
“You deserve to be reprimanded, maybe even disbarred, but I won’t let you hurt Helen and Jay-Jay in the process.”
Helen gripped Esther’s arm. “Please don’t. This isn’t your concern.”
“He made it my concern.” She snapped open her handbag and pulled out a form folded in half. “Carver asked me to bring this to church and pray over our decision. Looks like the Lord answered my prayer.”
Vic’s cheeks went white. “You won’t prefer charges?”
“No, we won’t.” She held the form high and ripped off little pieces right into Vic’s face. “I leave you in the hands of the Almighty. I suggest you repent of your sins and pray for mercy.”
“You . . . how dare . . .” Vic brushed paper scraps from his face and uniform.
Esther cocked her head and gave him a sweet smile. “The words you’re searching for are ‘thank you.’ ”
His mouth contorted. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And I forgive you. I refuse to let you drag me into the gutter of bitterness. Now, get rid of this custody case and tell your mama to turn off the gossip mill.”
He gave a single nod. “I promise.”
Helen clamped her tongue between her molars so she wouldn’t say what she thought of his promises.
Esther took Helen’s arm. “Come along. You can have Sunday dinner at the Novaks with me while the good lieutenant has a little talk with the Carlisles. He will, won’t he?”
“I will.”
As Esther led her away, Helen glanced behind her. Vic narrowed his eyes and raised the thinnest smile, the smile of victory. But the victory was hers. She hadn’t married him.
Helen hung up the gold jacket that matched her gold and green plaid dress. She bent down to help Jay-Jay.
“Where have you been?”
She tensed at Mr. Carlisle’s harsh tone and draped a little blue jacket on the coatrack. “We had dinner with the Novaks and supper with George and Betty. Didn’t Dorothy tell you? I couldn’t find you after church, and I asked her to tell—”
“Tell? You don’t tell—you ask!” His hand sliced up and slapped her across the cheek.
She cried out and pressed her hand over her sore cheekbone. “Ask? I don’t have to—”
“Everything’s changed. You can’t take away my grandson without permission.”
“But—but that’s only if you win . . . wait, didn’t Vic come by?”
Mr. Carlisle’s face stiffened. He turned and walked into the living room and sat in his armchair with Time magazine.
Helen took two dragging steps closer. “Didn’t Vic come by? He promised he would.”
“He came.”
“Did he tell you the Joneses aren’t preferring charges?”
“Yes.” He turned a page in the magazine.
Helen’s leg muscles quivered. “So you’ll drop the custody case.”
“No.” He gazed down his thin nose at the magazine. “That would be unwise. You’re an unfit mother. Today’s behavior confirmed it—ranting like a madwoman to Mrs. Llewellyn, failing to ask permission, and Victor said you tried to talk that Jones woman out of her decision, the opposite of what I told you to do.”
“But . . . but . . .” She felt her son lean against her leg, and she groped for his warm little hand.
“Only a precaution. You can live here as long as you behave, but I can’t let you take my grandson away to live in a dangerous home.”
She couldn’t think of a more dangerous home than this one. Everything inside her screamed. His promise meant nothing. Esther’s sacrifice was in vain. But she clamped her mouth shut. As Esther and Ray had shown, courage came in many forms—surrender, peacemaking, fighting—or in Helen’s case, escape. “Come on, Jay-Jay. It’s bedtime.”
Thank goodness, he didn’t argue as she led him upstairs. She had to think, to plan, to act. Mr. Ward said the Carlisles couldn’t force her to reside there before the trial or afterward if she won the case. If she stayed, the violence would escalate. She had to get out tonight.
Help me, Lord. She closed Jay-Jay’s bedroom door. “What a good boy you are. Let’s get your pajamas on.”
She sang a song while she helped him, and her mind whirled over plans. “For story time tonight, let’s do something different.” She pulled Mother Goose off the shelf. “You point to a rhyme and I’ll recite it.”
“Okay, Mama.” Jay-Jay sat cross-legged on his bed with the black-and-white checked book. “Miss Muffet.”
“ ‘Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,’ ” Helen said in a singsong voice and pulled a suitcase from the closet. She recited “Wee Willie Winkie” and “Old Mother Hubbard” while she filled the suitcase with Jay-Jay’s necessities, leaving room for her own.
Later that night, when everyone was sound asleep, she would sneak out with the suitcase and her little boy, who slept like the dead. She’d go to Betty’s house tonight.
Then she’d do the unthinkable.
She’d beg for help. The thought burned behind her eyes. She would admit failure and cable her parents for money. They might refuse, but if she told them of the custody case, they might relent. She needed rent for the room over Mr. Lindstrom’s store. She’d look for work in Pittsburg, the next town down the river.
Tears dribbled down her cheeks, but she kept chanting Mother Goose rhymes. This wasn’t the life she’d planned on.
The bedroom door swung open, and Mrs. Carlisle walked in. “There’s my angel. Your mommy didn’t let me see you all day.” She stared at the suitcase on the floor. “What’s this?”
Helen sprang to the door and shut it, then grasped her mother-in-law’s hands. She had to appeal to her as a woman, as a mother, as a fellow victim. “Please. Mr. Carlisle hit me today. You know what it’s like. It’ll get worse and worse until he beats me senseless. I need to leave. I promise I won’t leave town. I just have to get out of this house.”
Mrs. Carlisle looked down at the suitcase with a sad longing Helen had never seen before.
“Please.” Helen squeezed her bony hands, trying to convey her compassion, her necessity, her pain. “You know what it’s like. Please let me go.”
Mrs. Carlisle’s gaze shifted to Helen. “If you go, and he finds out I knew . . .”
Her mother-in-law would get beaten and hard. Helen’s mouth drifted open. The blood sucked from her face, and the hope sucked out of her heart.
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sp; Tonight one of them would get beaten. In the flat brown of Mrs. Carlisle’s eyes, something sparked. Control. For the first time since her wedding day, she had control.
The older woman yanked her hands free and flung open the door. “James! She’s running away! She’s stealing our baby!”
“Oh no!” Skeletal hands clawed at Helen’s throat. She dumped the suitcase contents into the top dresser drawer, scrunched them down, tried to close the drawer, but what did it matter? She couldn’t get out, could never get past the man thundering up the stairs and into the room.
“She tried to leave, but I stopped her.” Mrs. Carlisle pointed to the suitcase splayed open on the floor.
“What’s this?” He shook the suitcase in Helen’s face.
She backed up, and cold, white fingers closed around her throat. She had no defense, no excuse. “I won’t—I won’t leave town. I promise.”
“You won’t leave this house!” He swung the suitcase and struck her in the head.
Blazing white pain erupted in her skull, and she fell, curled into a position she knew well, knees to her chest, arms over her head.
The blows pummeled down on her—her side, her arms, her legs—until the suitcase fell apart. Then he cursed her and kicked her, and Helen cried out for him to stop, to please stop, and Jay-Jay wailed and begged him to stop, and Mrs. Carlisle stood in the corner, clutching her sides, her eyes cold and lifeless, and she didn’t say one word to stop him. As if she could.
As if anyone could stop him.
When he tired, he dragged her into her room and locked her in from the outside and said if she ever tried to take Jay-Jay out of the house, he’d have her arrested for kidnapping.
Helen lay coiled up on the hardwood floor, salty blood and tears mingling in her mouth. She’d never get away, never get out. The Carlisles would win custody, and this would happen over and over until he killed her.
No Japanese torpedo would save her now.
A sob convulsed her, and pain shot through her chest. He must have broken a rib or two. She hugged herself hard to brace against her tears, her searing grief.
Then a thought formed. The Carlisles didn’t care if she lived or died, stayed or left. They only cared about Jay-Jay. Mr. Carlisle would never beat him, just as he’d never beaten Jim.
A black thought, but it shone in its blackness like obsidian.
She couldn’t save her son, but she could save herself.
And she grasped it in all its gleaming, cold, hard blackness.
42
England
Monday, April 30, 1945
Dr. Robinson snipped the last wire, and Ray’s jaw sagged open. With effort, he closed his mouth, but it flopped open again. He massaged his jaw muscles, both stiff and weak from six weeks’ immobilization.
“Can he talk now?” Major Siegel hovered behind the physician.
“Yes,” Ray croaked. He cleared his throat. “Yes, I can talk.” His voice came out thin and unrecognizable.
Dr. Robinson smiled at Ray. “You can have soft foods. Are you ready for your first meal?”
“You bet.”
“His last meal, actually,” Major Siegel said. “And we’ll take care of it. Come, Herr Oberleutnant.”
Dr. Robinson stood and faced the major. “He’s still my patient. I haven’t written the discharge order.”
“Then write it, Captain. He has an appointment.”
Yeah, an appointment with the firing squad. Ray’s heart settled into the void of his stomach.
The physician bent over the chart, muttering about how soldiers should stick to their work and keep their noses out of doctors’ work.
Ray ran his hands over his lap down to the worn knees of Johannes’s Luftwaffe uniform, which smelled a lot better than the last time he’d worn it.
“Well, Gottlieb, does it feel good to wear your uniform again?”
“It never felt good to wear the uniform of the enemy.”
The major let out a dry chuckle and handed Ray the flight jacket and Helen’s scarf.
Ray fingered the soft gray wool, wound it around his neck, and clutched it in both hands. If only he could have sent Helen a letter to say how much he loved her. His family too. But it was better this way. Everyone had mourned his death. If his brothers found out they could have prevented his execution, the guilt would be unbearable.
“Is that from your Mutter?”
“No. The girl I love in California.”
“Still won’t give up? Stubborn man.”
“A Novak trait.”
Major Siegel held up a pair of handcuffs. “Get your jacket on.”
Ray sighed and put on the flight jacket. The uniform still fit loosely, but he’d gained a few pounds on his liquid diet. For what good?
Siegel handcuffed Ray behind his back. “Let’s go.” He nodded to two MPs and his adjutant.
Ray turned to his physician. “Thank you, Dr. Robinson. I appreciate your care and kindness.”
The doctor glared at the major. “Sounds like an American accent to me.”
“He’s good, isn’t he?” Siegel led Ray out of the ward, down the stairs, and outside.
Ray lifted his face to a cool breeze and a flock of cumulus sheep. This was the first time he’d been outside in weeks, and his last time ever.
What irony. An American pilot who had flown over thirty combat missions and committed acts of sabotage behind enemy lines was about to be executed as a spy.
And no one would ever know.
At least he’d die knowing what he was made of and at peace with the Lord.
When they reached an Army truck, Major Siegel tied a blindfold over Ray’s eyes, and Ray said good-bye to the blue.
Antioch
Past midnight, in pallid gray moonlight, with the obsidian thought before her, Helen lurched into action.
She untucked the top sheet and laid it flat on her bed. Then she piled in necessities—work outfits, undergarments, nightgown, shoes, gloves, and a beret that wouldn’t be squashed.
The blackness of her plan oppressed her. She was abandoning her child. What crippling pain and smothering guilt she’d bear the rest of her life. But what a horrific choice she faced—stay until Mr. Carlisle killed her, or leave and lose everyone she loved.
She wanted to live.
Her window looked down on the overhang above the back porch. She could toss her bundle onto the lawn, climb onto the overhang, and ease herself down. What were a few more injuries?
The rest of her plan floated in a nebulous haze. Walk to Pittsburg, use her little bit of cash for a train ticket to San Francisco, stay at the YWCA until she found a job and a room. She could get lost in the city.
Her throat tightened, but she blinked away the haze of doubt. She had to regain control.
From the dresser, she grabbed her manicure kit, cosmetics case, and hairbrush. Then she opened the top drawer.
Ray’s stack of letters, tied with a ribbon. Fresh pain jabbed her.
She clutched the letters to her chest and sank to her knees. What would he think of her plan? He always understood, but who could understand this?
She gripped the letters in one hand and her aching side with the other. She’d lost him, killed him, and now she’d leave everyone else she loved. But it was for the best. A cripple girl who injured herself and killed the men she loved. She’d destroy Jay-Jay too. He’d be better off without her.
She had failed as a wife, a mother, a woman. She deserved the beating. She deserved to lose her son. She deserved pain and shame for the rest of her life.
One envelope slipped from the stack.
Helen groped for it. The envelope felt thick and uneven, and she removed the leaf Ray had sent, silvery gray in the moonlight.
Waves of grief buffeted her. Ray had courage. He hadn’t cared about his life, only about doing the right thing. He had slain his dragons.
Helen was fleeing hers.
A sob bobbed to the surface. “Oh, Lord. What can I do?”
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nbsp; She cradled the leaf in her hand, as fragile as her son. If she closed her hand, the leaf would crumble to pieces. What would happen to Jay-Jay if she left him?
A new thought formed, soft and white and lustrous as a pearl. What if she had it backward? What if leaving Jay-Jay would destroy him? Had she ever hurt him? No, not once. She took good care of her son.
What harm would come to him if she left? He’d be raised by the Carlisles, taught that a man should be cruel to his wife, taught that his mother didn’t love him, and never taught to control his temper. He’d turn out like his father. Maybe worse.
Hadn’t God given Jay-Jay to her? Yes, to Helen. Would he do that if he thought she would destroy him? Perhaps if God trusted her, she should trust herself.
The pearl of truth expanded, glowed, and shattered the obsidian lie.
She struggled to her feet. “I won’t—I won’t leave without my son.”
That overhang ran under Jay-Jay’s window as well as Helen’s. And while her door was locked, his wasn’t.
She stashed Ray’s letters in her purse and tied the corners of the bed sheet together. Her window slid open without a sound. Helen took off her espadrilles, tied the ribbons together, and hung them around her neck.
Wincing from the pain in her side, she climbed onto the overhang, the shingles rough under her bare feet. She sidled over to Jay-Jay’s window, gripped the frame, and pushed upward. It didn’t budge.
She groaned. If his window didn’t open, she’d have to drop to the ground and come through the front door, increasing the chance she’d be caught.
“Please, Lord.” Another push, and it wiggled, squeaked in protest, and banged open.
Helen ducked below the windowsill, but no sound rose other than the blood whooshing in her ears.
She retrieved her bundle, pushed it through her son’s window, and climbed through.
Jay-Jay lay on his stomach, his rump in the air, his middle two fingers in his mouth, a baby habit he’d outgrown. A dark circle fanned around his face on the pillow. It was damp.
The poor thing had cried himself to sleep. For her. She had to rescue him before his compassion turned to callousness.