by Sarah Sundin
“All right. Take it off so I can get to work.” Georgie unbuttoned the back of the dress. “Now that we all have sundresses, we need a party to wear them to.”
“What are you up to?” Suspicion lowered Rose’s voice.
“Victory’s coming any day, and we’ll need to celebrate. Wouldn’t a beach party be fun? For all the officers around here?”
“A party?” Kay rolled onto her side and propped her head in one hand. “I like that idea.”
However, Mellie smelled a setup. Tom was an officer around here. She stepped carefully out of the sundress so as not to dislodge the pins.
Georgie took the dress. “We could set up a barbecue pit on the beach, have some fellows play dance music, and I had another idea.”
“Uh-oh.” Rose grinned. “I know that tone of voice.”
“Hush, you.” Georgie flapped a hand at her friend and arranged the fabric on her lap. “Did you meet that pharmacist at the 93rd Evac? Hutch, they call him. Very sweet but quiet and lonely. He misses his fiancée and isn’t happy in his job. But he has a telescope and knows all the constellations and their stories. And I heard the 93rd is at San Stefano now, just up the road, so I’ll finagle him over here to show us the stars during our party.”
Rose rested her chin on her forearms. “Watch out, Mr. Pharmacist. Georgiana Taylor has a new project.”
“A project?” Mellie buttoned her light blue uniform blouse.
“I need one.” She knotted the end of the thread. “I’m done with Rose, done with you.”
“I’m a project?”
“Sure.” Georgie gave her a fond smile. “And now look at you. No matter where you go, I know you’ll make friends. But I hope you’ll stay. You have to come to the party. We’ll get Tom there, and he’ll see you in that dress, and you’ll tell him who you are. Isn’t that romantic?”
Mellie rolled her eyes and zipped up her trousers. That would be a disaster.
Kay flopped onto her back. “Speaking of Tom, you got a letter for him? It’s been days, and he keeps bugging me.”
“I do.” Mellie’s voice came out leaden. She forced herself to walk to her cot and pull out the letter. She stared at it, hating how the words would break Tom’s heart. “This is the last one.”
“The last one?” Rose said. “Y’all have a fight?”
“No.” She fingered the envelope. “He gave me an ultimatum. If I don’t reveal my identity, the relationship is over.”
“Oh my goodness. Are you telling him?” Georgie said.
Mellie shook her head. She hadn’t told the girls because she wanted to make the decision on her own. Now she’d printed the decision in ink. “It wouldn’t be fair to him. He says he’ll love me no matter what I look like, but I know he doesn’t find me attractive. Can you imagine how embarrassed he’d be? He’d feel obligated to put up a pretense, but eventually he’d tell the truth and break it off, and we’d both end up heartbroken.”
Georgie shoved the sundress off her lap. “But you’re so cute. We’ll set up a meeting, and he’ll be pleased as punch.”
“Remember what happened with me?” Rose said. “I thought Clint had to be deranged to like me. Maybe Tom’s deranged too.”
“I wish.” Mellie managed a tiny smile. “No. I know how he feels, and I want to protect him. I don’t want to embarrass him.”
Kay snorted and got to her feet. “Oh brother. You’re not protecting him. You’re protecting yourself.”
“Excuse me?” The letter crinkled in Mellie’s grip.
“Come on, Kay,” Rose said. “Didn’t you hear her?”
“I heard her.” She pulled out her compact and flipped it open. “She said it’s less painful to reject him than to watch him reject her.”
“That’s not what—” Her breath caught. Yes, that was exactly what she said.
Georgie pulled the material back onto her lap. “That wasn’t what she said at all. She said she wants to protect him. She loves him.”
“Love?” Kay dabbed powder on her nose. “If you loved him, you’d want to please him. He wants to meet you. If you loved him, you’d give him that.”
“But I—”
“Yeah. But you.” Kay snapped her compact shut. “It’s about you. About you not getting hurt. You’re being selfish.”
Rose and Georgie gasped.
“I’m not,” Mellie whispered. “I do love him. But he can’t love me.”
“You know what? You’re right.” Kay strode to Mellie and snatched the letter from her hand. “You feel sorry for yourself. Of course he can’t love you. Who would?”
“Kay!” Georgie said. “How could you?”
Kay marched to the tent entrance and flipped a hand over her shoulder. “If you can’t pull yourself together and see yourself as we do—well, I don’t want to hear it. I spent years feeling sorry for myself, but I pulled myself together. I have no patience for it in others.” She flounced out of the tent.
Mellie gaped at the tent opening. Rose and Georgie voiced protests behind her, but Mellie could only hear Kay’s words.
Truth rang in those words.
“Hey, ladies.” A nurse peeked into the tent. “Lambert called an emergency squadron meeting. Let’s go. Where’s Kay off to in such a hurry?”
To deliver the letter to Tom, and Mellie’s heart writhed in agony.
“We’d better get going.” Georgie hooked her arm in Mellie’s and dragged her outside.
Rose took Mellie’s other arm. “Don’t listen to a word she said. With a face like hers, she’s never had a reason to feel sorry for herself.”
As they walked to headquarters, Rose and Georgie comforted her, bolstered her, and supported her decision. But Mellie couldn’t speak. Was her decision kind or selfish? Was she trying not to inflict pain or avoiding it?
Rose and Georgie hauled her into the stuffy headquarters tent, crowded with the nurses and technical sergeants stationed at Termini, all seated on crates.
Lieutenant Lambert stood. “Looks like everyone’s here. I wanted to introduce our new nurses, Lieutenants Mary Gerber and Evelyn Kerr.”
Goosie and Evelyn stood. Evelyn gave a polite nod, but Goosie waved maniacally.
Lambert smiled. “They’ve already made an impression and will be a welcome addition to our squadron.”
Mellie held back a sigh. Yes, they would. Evelyn was sweet, and Goosie was—well, Goosie. Mellie wouldn’t be missed.
“We’re sending Sylvia home to recuperate fully, and another nurse will also leave—for a very happy reason.”
Happy? Mellie frowned. Nothing happy about it.
But Lambert smiled at Wilma Blake Goodman. “We were honored to attend the wedding of Wilma and Jim back at Maison Blanche, and now that marriage has been blessed. Wilma will return stateside to care for that blessing.”
Wilma blushed and lowered her gaze, and the room erupted in joyful murmurs.
Mellie’s mouth hung open, and her tongue dried out. What did this mean?
The chief nurse held up some papers. “I’m pleased to announce Mellie Blake will stay.”
Georgie and Rose squealed and squeezed Mellie’s arms.
Lambert thumbed through the papers. “I have a petition circulated by Georgie Taylor, and signed by every nurse and tech in the squadron, including those in Mateur and Palermo, asking for Mellie to be retained.”
Mellie swiveled her gaze to Georgie.
Her friend wore an expression filled with warmth and triumph. “Everyone.”
“Most of the signers included comments—that Mellie’s hardworking, kind, knowledgeable, and never complains. Sergeant Early said she’s the only nurse he’ll fly with, and underneath that, a nurse wrote, ‘Please keep Mellie so we don’t have to fly with him.’ Several women seconded that comment.”
Laughter resounded through the tent. Early’s face reddened, and he shot Mellie a grin.
She could only stare. Everywhere women and men smiled at her. They wanted her here?
Georgie put
her arm around Mellie’s shoulders. “You said it would be best for the squadron if you left. I proved you wrong.”
“Everyone?” Mellie’s voice hiccupped.
“Even Vera and Alice,” Rose said.
Georgie enveloped her in a hug. “I’m so glad you’re staying. Are you?”
Mellie nodded on Georgie’s shoulder and hugged her back. “I am. I’m so happy.” A year before, if someone had told her an entire squadron would sign a petition for her, she never would have believed it. Even now, she could barely comprehend.
After the meeting was dismissed, Kay walked over. She dangled Mellie’s letter for Tom between her fingers. “Still think he could never like you?”
Mellie’s mind reeled. She pushed herself up on quivering legs and wiggled out of Georgie and Rose’s grasp. “I need to think. I need some time alone.”
“We’ll go with you,” Georgie said.
Mellie patted her friend’s shoulder. “Honey, alone means alone.”
She escaped from the tent into the morning sun. A dozen air base bicycles stood outside the tent, available for anyone.
Mellie mounted one and pedaled a wobbly course through the base. When was the last time she’d ridden a bike? Probably not since grade school.
By the time she reached the access road, her course straightened. But the course of her thoughts wavered.
She’d earned the friendship of Georgie and Rose. Even Kay. If Kay didn’t care, she wouldn’t confront her. And the squadron liked her. So she wasn’t unlovable, and she had to stop seeing herself that way.
Mellie rode through an olive grove, and the shade of the trees speckled her vision. Her decision to refuse Tom’s ultimatum seemed right, but was it selfish at the core?
She loved Tom. But what was best for him? What did he need most of all?
Tom didn’t think anyone could love his complete self. He already knew Annie loved him—inner self to inner self. But he didn’t know that all of Mellie loved all of Tom.
Didn’t he deserve to know? Didn’t he deserve to know he’d earned someone’s love, name and all?
Mellie wiped the sheen from her eyes and turned left onto the road into town. Somewhere there had to be a turnoff for the beach, where she could sit in the sand and pray. “Lord, what’s best for him? Please help me make the right decision.”
Tom’s face swam in her mind. He needed to know he was capable of winning a woman’s heart.
A sob burst out. But the price. To give him what he needed, she had to set her heart before him. She had to offer the look of love in her eyes while absorbing the rejection in his.
“It’s too much, Lord. How can I?” The bike sped downhill past low stone walls draped with magenta bougainvillea. “It’s too much.”
She stopped and planted her feet. Too much what? Too much mercy?
Hadn’t the Lord shown the greatest mercy of all? Hadn’t he offered the world the depths of his love while absorbing the ultimate rejection in his beaten and crucified body?
Mellie buried her face in her hands. If Jesus bore the cross to show his love, couldn’t she bear Tom’s polite rejection to show her love? He deserved the gift, whether or not he chose to accept it.
She pedaled down the road and navigated a series of hairpin turns toward the Mediterranean. Offering Tom her love was the right thing to do. It was merciful. And it would be the most difficult and painful thing she’d ever done.
Mellie rounded the last turn and stopped short. She stared at the sight and imagined the wonder on Tom’s face if he saw it.
A plan bubbled in her mind, a tiny spring, and it flowed in a little ribbon, meandering and widening and gathering strength from other streams.
She turned her bicycle around and pedaled hard, up the road, across the access road, and onto the base. Her lungs screamed for air and sweat dribbled down her sides, but she kept going.
Outside the mess tent, Kay chatted with Vera and Alice.
Mellie hopped off the bike, let it clatter to the ground, and strode up, panting hard. “Do you . . . have that . . . letter?”
Kay’s green eyes widened. “Um, yeah.” She pulled it from her trousers pocket.
Mellie ripped it in half. “Would you . . . please help me?”
Kay smiled. “Again?”
46
Milazzo Airfield
Sicily
August 17, 1943
“What a mess.” Tom took off his helmet, ran his fingers through his hair, and plunked his helmet back on.
“Made perfect sense to me.” Sergeant Ferris jutted out his chin, but the hollow look in his eyes told the truth. He’d made a whopping mistake.
Tom inspected the bomb crater on the runway they’d built only the day before. Milazzo lay at the base of a narrow spit of land that thrust north into the Tyrrhenian Sea less than twenty miles from Messina. The flat terrain made a perfect location for an airfield complex close to the Italian mainland. Today both American and British troops converged on Messina, and the Twelfth Air Force was fit to be tied that their brand-new airfield was down on a crucial day.
Larry kicked a rock into the crater. “What do you think, Gill?”
Tom shook his head and clipped Sesame’s leash to his belt. The bomb severed the telephone line that ran in a culvert under the runway from the control tower to the tent complex. If the line had been left in place, they could have spliced it together and used it to pull a new line through. But Ferris had ordered his squad to pull out the old line.
Larry groaned. “We’ll have to cut away the PBS, lift the square mesh track, lay new line, put it back together again. Good thing PBS is easy to mend.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “But that’s half a day’s work.” They couldn’t afford to have the runway down when the men at the front needed coverage by fighter planes.
“Better get started, huh?” Larry said.
“There’s got to be a better way.” Tom squatted at the end of the culvert and peered through. Too narrow for a man.
Sesame nudged him. Whenever Tom got low to the ground, it meant playtime.
Light filled his head. “It’s not playtime, boy. It’s work time.”
Tom beckoned to a Signal Corps man standing by a spool of telephone line. “Rosen, isn’t it? Bring the line here. Ferris, get your men to clear the rubble from the culvert. I need a straight path.”
Larry squatted next to him. “What’s up?”
“Sesame.” He unhooked the leash from the collar and tied telephone line in its place. “He’ll fit in there.”
“You think he’ll go in?”
“He’ll need a nudge. But he’ll come to you. Go to the other end of the culvert and call him when I tell you.” Tom opened a ration tin and cut Spam with his pocketknife. “Ferris, fetch some square mesh track. Enough to cover the crater so Sesame won’t take the easy way out in the middle.”
Head down, Ferris recruited a handful of men to roll over a seven-and-a-half-foot wide roll of square mesh track.
Tom checked the line on Sesame’s collar. “Want some Spam?”
His stubby tail wagged like a metronome.
“Yeah, that’s a good boy.” Tom looked over to the center of the runway. Ferris’s men rolled SMT over the crater. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Okay, boy. Here’s the Spam.” Tom tossed a couple of cubes into the culvert.
Sesame licked his chops and ran into the tunnel. Now to keep him in and coax him through.
“Call him, Larry.” Tom held his clipboard over the entrance, leaving a slit for the line to pass through. “Rosen, give him plenty of slack.”
“Here, boy!” Larry called from the other side of the runway. “Here, Sesame!”
Tom beckoned to Bill Rinaldi and had him hold the clipboard. “Don’t let him out.”
“Here, Sesame,” Larry said. “Who loves you? Larry loves you, not mean old Gill.”
Tom grinned and jogged to the covered crater. No openings big enough for little dogs. He clapped Da
vis and Fitzgerald on the back. “Looks good. Don’t let him escape.”
“Here, boy!” Larry called. “I’ll get you a steak, not that Spam mean old Gill gives you.”
“Where are you going to get that?” Tom joined his friend.
“I’ll carve it out of Ferris’s behind.”
Tom laughed. “I’ll help. We’ll have a fine barbecue.”
Soon a little nut-brown face poked out of the tunnel, and Sesame scrambled into Larry’s arms. The dog gave Tom a wounded look and licked Larry’s face.
Tom brushed dirt off the white stripe down his dog’s nose. “Yeah, Ses, you love him now. Wait till you ask for your steak, and he’s in the brig for cannibalism.”
“Not cannibalism. Ferris is a weasel not a human.”
Tom glanced at his squad leader across the runway. He might be a weasel, but he was a humbled weasel.
Rinaldi ran over with Tom’s clipboard. “Let’s hear it for the lieutenant, boys! He saved us hours of work.”
The men cheered, and even Ferris joined in, if halfheartedly.
The applause felt good. Instead of cheering bloodshed, they cheered a job well done. Things were shifting. Tom raised Sesame’s paw. “Here’s your real hero.”
“Yeah,” Rinaldi said. “And he’s a whole lot better looking.”
“I’ll say.” Tom walked out to the crater. “Okay, Ferris. You know what to do. Fix the culvert wall, fill in the crater, lay new SMT and PBS. Let’s get this strip up and running.”
“You heard the man,” Ferris yelled. “Get to work, you clods.”
Yep, Ferris would take out his frustrations on his squad, but the runway would open soon.
Tom gazed to the west, where toast-colored hills met blue sky and blue sea. Would any cargo planes come today? Any mail?
Each day another layer of resignation settled heavy on his heart. Over two weeks had passed since he’d sent his ultimatum. Annie didn’t want to meet him or tell him her name. She wouldn’t even say why. Almost a year of friendship was just fading away.