Out of Splinters and Ashes

by Colleen L. Donnelly

  “You know my grandfather is gone?”

  Emerson didn’t close the three steps between us. “I know he’s not far. Not geographically, anyway.”

  “What else?”

  “What else? You mean besides your grandmother, now that I know that too? At least people seem adjusted to her, from what I’m told. Or maybe you mean what else besides a possible criminal investigation regarding your grandfather? A possible court martial? Aiding the enemy? Do you realize how serious that is?”

  My mouth fell open. My gut roiled. Things couldn’t be that bad, not as ugly as Emerson said. Surely not as ugly as Dietrich made me think. “No! That investigation isn’t about my grandpa, it’s about Lieutenant McCoy. You know that. And I should have told you about Grandma, but since she’s so peculiar, are you sure you want to marry me? Or do you want to break the engagement because you believe we are tied to an enemy?”

  Emerson faltered, then hurried forward, destroying the three steps between us. “Catharine, no, I’m not breaking the engagement or accusing you. And I’m not entertaining stories against your family. I’m trying to manage what’s out there, and what’s being said. Miles is too.” He reached for my arms, to hold on so three steps couldn’t happen again.

  Court martial? Aiding the enemy? “Grandpa wasn’t even in the service when the war began.” I twisted away. “We didn’t even have an enemy back then.”

  “Catharine… You can’t blame Miles for…”

  “I don’t. I blame you.”

  “Blame me? I’ve done nothing more than trust Miles to handle my image.” Emerson’s hands rose again and then dropped. “Look, I’m sorry. Maybe I should have asked you, or at the very least let you tell me what you knew before I listened to him. You can tell me everything you know, even things from your childhood we’ve never talked about, so nothing like this happens again. How would that be? Complete honesty for us and my campaign, beginning now.”

  I saw Ibsen as I stared at my fiancé. Nora’s husband, Torvald, trying to trap her into the doll’s house that suited him more than her. Maybe Grandma felt like a Nora of sorts, so she escaped to Non Bookends. Where stories went on and on until at last she found the answers she needed. “Maybe over dinner tonight. I can’t now.” Even if I could, I couldn’t now.

  The style fell out of Emerson’s hair, the wind shifting the black into a disarray that made him human instead of a man running a campaign. “After we shop for the outfit you’ll need for this weekend. I’m all ears after that. Let’s get this cleaned up and behind us so I can keep moving senate responsibilities forward.”

  I glanced at my watch, stared at its hands instead of Emerson’s hair. “I need to keep moving also. Frank is waiting for me. My marathon’s coming up shortly.”

  Emerson wrapped his fingers around my arm. “Wait, Catharine. Don’t go run. You weren’t interested in winning anyway. Let’s talk now instead of later. You need to get everything out in the open, and I need you with me this weekend. We’ll get through this. After all, it’s only an investigation. Pretrial, mostly.”

  It was wrong to love an enemy. It was on Emerson’s face no matter how hard he tried, no matter how casually his hair tossed with the breeze. I put a half step between us. “Maybe you want to wait and see how this investigation turns out.” He let go of my arm. It was wrong to love an enemy, and it was just as wrong to be seen loving one. I turned and ran, feverishly, leaving the plea of Catharine fading behind.

  Chapter 34

  Cate appeared from between two buildings and disappeared in a solid run down the street. Dietrich stopped. Their paths had nearly crossed. He stepped back and veered toward the campus. He was here to relax, let the myriad of data stored in his mind realign and fall into place.

  He stopped again and glanced back at the empty sidewalk where she’d run. Where her fiancé appeared, stepping out from between the same two buildings she had. Emerson turned the direction she’d gone, but he walked instead of ran. “If you really want to catch her, you need to try,” Dietrich whispered. Even he knew that much. Emerson’s senatorial clip was a halted walk now, one that stayed well behind his fiancée, one that would be easy to trip up if Dietrich was so inclined. Dietrich watched Emerson go. Cate had enough to contend with. Enough.

  Dietrich glanced at his watch. Time was ticking away. Crawley was gone, a complication that would slow Dietrich’s plans, walking into an investigation that had been going on in pretrial conferences before Crawley officially knew. McCoy had diverted the focus elsewhere as the army pried into his activities before and during the war. Journalistic collaboration, often not honest, gave Dietrich this much information. A traded favor with a contact in Washington who fed him the background on McCoy and the investigation in exchange for the sole right to publish the story himself when it was done. Randall Templeton. Dietrich had agreed to Randall’s terms because Randall was ruthless, quick for a kill, and Dietrich needed quick. If Crawley had committed some crime, really had run the Olympics under a false name, had been in Berlin, then…

  He hurried to his car. Crawley’s trial wasn’t far away. He’d use his journalistic privileges to gain entrance. It was time to see the little runner’s grandfather.

  Chapter 35

  “I’m family,” I told the soldier at the door to what must have been a courtroom of sorts. I’d never been in this part of New York and certainly never to this building. It reeked of age, high ceilings, and plastered walls cold and stiff from solemn procedures. “Can I go in? George Crawley’s my grandfather.”

  I tried to hear through the heavy doors behind the soldier, his erect posture a formidable barrier I needed past.

  “This isn’t a public hearing,” he said, his lips barely moving.

  “I told you, I’m not public, I’m family, and this is not a hearing. It’s an investigation, and my grandfather is not on trial. He’s a witness, so please let me through.”

  “Charges have been preferred,” he said, still barely moving.

  “Charges? Preferred?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss the pending case. You may wait out here while the judge is in conference.” He nodded toward benches lining the hallway.

  I hedged, then marched to where he’d indicated, the creak of the seat and my purse hitting it creating a dull echo down the hallway. Everything was muted here, even the paint, the color I imagined bile to be if it had years to fade.

  I set up a drum roll of fingernails on the bench’s wooden armrest, a steady rat-a-tat-tat to annoy the mummified soldier blocking the door. Preferred. He should speak English.

  I drummed louder and faster to resurrect him so I could go in. Another beat arose along with mine, farther down the tomb, a slower, steadier cadence that grew even louder than my own.

  “Officer McCoy.”

  Three army officers appeared in the hallway to the left, pausing at the juncture of an intersecting hall, speaking to what looked like another guard. I quieted my fingers as the military footsteps resumed, their steady rhythm becoming stronger as they neared. I eyed the man in the middle. McCoy—much older, but still stolid.

  “Excuse me.” I was on my feet and in front of them, the two escorts each taking hold of one of McCoy’s arms and steering him around me, until they stopped in front of the lifeless soldier who blocked me from Grandpa.

  “Lieutenant McCoy,” one of the escorts said. The mummy nodded and opened the door behind him. I scurried to steal a glance into the room my grandfather was surely in, a room that resembled a square of this hallway—the same drab color, vacuous atmosphere, nothing photogenic at all except for the backs, the shoulders, and the few stern faces I caught glimpses of before the mummy shut the door and McCoy was gone.

  “There are a lot of people in there,” I said as the soldier settled back into his posture. “Why can’t I be in there? I could sit in the back with the others.”

  He glanced at me, a tiny glimmer of humanity there and gone as he shook his head. “Not while the lieutenant is in there. H
e’s preferring charges.”

  “What do you mean by preferred charges?” It wasn’t my store voice.

  He glanced down the hall to where the other guard had been when McCoy came through. “In an army court, a commander can prefer a charge against anyone he knows has done wrong. It’s initiating a charge against the wrongdoer.”

  The temperature of the hallway plummeted, and my own body warmth went with it. I opened my mouth and stood there with it agape. This was against McCoy, not for him. Against him, not for him.

  “If you would like to wait…” The soldier nodded to the bench where I’d been.

  I took a step backward. If only Emerson were here…an attorney, a potential senator…more than family, the way he offered… I inched farther until the wooden seat bumped the backs of my knees and I dropped into the spot where I’d been.

  My hands lay blue in my lap, my fingertips white around arcs of red where I pressed them together. The hallway became my morgue, the mummy of a soldier my only companion, the tomblike silence hammering my ears.

  So this was how a grave would feel, how furtive could go away, and how cold could make a person unable to care. I heard a click and I cared again, even the mummy moved. The door behind him opened as he grabbed its handle and swung it wide. McCoy marched back out between his escorts, quicker this time, his face everything I’d heard Grandpa say in his living room. Diligent, a solid force that never wavered. I was invisible to them. They whisked past in step, marching to a drumbeat that kept them in time. They rounded the corner into the hallway they’d first come from, the guard there ushering them forward with a “Sirs,” and they were gone.

  The door clicked shut as the soldier in front of me pushed it closed. I felt him looking at me. I felt his pity—as if I’d just been run over and there was nothing he could do. I rallied to stand and to demand he explain what had gone on behind the door, but a tap from its other side bent him to his duty. He latched onto the knob and drew it open. Two men appeared, one tall, the other even taller. Like Grandpa. I tried to stand. Blond hair. Hazel eyes with blades of gray looked at me from the doorway, surprised eyes above a corduroy jacket.

  Chapter 36

  Dietrich’s fingers wrapped around my arm and raised me to my feet.

  “Come with me,” he commanded.

  “I will not come with you.” I wrenched at a grip that didn’t let go.

  “You won’t be able to see him.” Dietrich looked down at me. “And he won’t want you to.”

  “You know this girl?” His friend, nearly as tall as Dietrich, snorted a surprise.

  I shot him a glare. I wanted to ask the mummy if it was true I couldn’t see Grandpa and that he wouldn’t want me to.

  “Crawley’s granddaughter,” Dietrich explained over my head.

  Another hand latched onto my other arm. I felt like McCoy as Dietrich and his darker haired friend half led, half carried me down the hallway toward the outside.

  “Let me go.” The main door opened and fading sunlight hit my eyes. My two escorts toted me down the front steps as I blinked against the light. “I said, let me go. I will talk to my grandfather.”

  “Fat chance,” Dietrich’s friend said. Another snort.

  “That’s her car over there.”

  “How do you know what or where my car is?” I found my footing and tugged free from Dietrich and his snorting friend. I wheeled and faced the two, the word PRESS greeting me from their jackets.

  I knew my grandfather and how he had probably looked in that investigation room…charging room…but the picture two unscrupulous reporters would paint of him was much uglier—of Grandma, too, and Non Bookends—the sort Emerson would dread, and Miles be wary of. “So much for truth and facts. You’re nothing but a two-bit reporter.” It was a screech. I’d never screeched before, but I’d never been engaged before or had enemies turning my fiancé and family into foes.

  The gray lines in Dietrich’s eyes sharpened. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t know who he is?” his friend asked me without a snort.

  I looked to Dietrich’s friend, lanky in lankier clothing, ignoring the hand Dietrich raised to silence him.

  “That’s no reporter.” The friend nodded at Dietrich, then backed away. “Come on, Dietrich, I’ll give you a ride back to your hotel.”

  I knew who Dietrich was. He was my enemy, my whole family’s enemy, that I had disliked from the first time I met him.

  “Go on.” Dietrich waved to his friend. “I’m riding with her.”

  “You will not be riding with me,” I announced as Dietrich ushered me by my elbow toward my car. His friend shrugged and sauntered off, a pen pointed toward me, a roll of his eyes to Dietrich.

  “Who is he?” I imagined a target on his friend’s back.

  “Let’s go, and I’ll explain what’s going on.” The loll of his accent made his words sound softer, an offer to help, a chance to escape…the rain, like in Amabile. I glanced up, counted the spears in his irises, then looked back at the building my grandfather was still in. “They won’t let you see him. I can tell you why.”

  I fumbled with my purse as I stared at the cold concrete steps. My heart was bounding up those stairs while my enemy stood near my car. An enemy offering to tell me why.

  I was betraying my grandfather, denying my grandmother. I slid into the car’s seat, stretched to the other side, and unlocked the passenger door.

  “Let’s go,” Dietrich said once he was inside. His long thighs stretched to the dash, his knees butted against the glove box. Emerson fit there. The seat was fine for him…if he had come…and for Grandma, also…if she had. But this man was too much. He overpowered my car with his legs and his presence. I rolled down my window for air, started the engine, and drove.

  “Charges were brought against your grandfather.” Dietrich’s words rose above the road’s noise. “His lieutenant charged him with conspiracy with my country before the war.”

  I raised a hand, and Dietrich paused. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Anyway, Lieutenant McCoy said your grandfather attempted to pass US information to the German military in Berlin in 1936. There were deaths because of that information, and the trials and convictions in my country have now spilled over into yours.”

  I shook my head. My grandfather was never in Berlin. He came home a hero of sorts; he came home wounded. He came home from Poland and France. I stared at the road in front of me, a long thin ribbon of pavement that dropped off the edge of the world.

  “In your army, a commander can make a charge if he has enough evidence.”

  Evidence. My heart thundered. Grandpa, silent about his military days, refusing to talk about them, destroying everything from them. Even hiding his wounds left over from them. For Grandma. Not for me, because of me. I glanced at a passing sign. We’d gone five miles, and I had no idea how we’d made it that far. I stared at the road in front of me, at the nose of my car plowing forward.

  “Your grandfather was assigned a defense attorney, although he can hire a civilian one also, if he wants.”

  He’s not the man I was engaged to. Had Grandma been right all these years? Had she been forced to harbor a criminal, and only she knew? I shook my head. No. She didn’t know about the army coming. Grandpa wasn’t a traitor, he wasn’t some woman’s fictional lover. He was a wounded soldier with a dissatisfied wife.

  “My grandfather was not and is not a criminal.” Not my store voice. I reeled to the side and glared at Dietrich, caught by a look that mirrored the distress I felt, but I slapped my palm on the seat between us anyway.

  He glanced from me to the road my car was barreling down. “Maybe drive with both hands.”

  I stared ahead and set both hands on the steering wheel. “Why are you here? It was bad enough you were in my grandmother’s store.” I turned to him again. “Where did you come from, and when will you leave? Who are you? What in the world are you doing?”

  He lo
oked from the road to me, splintered gray spikes scattered throughout the hazel. “I told you. I was looking for a runner. I need to know if you knew any of this about your grandfather.”

  Chapter 37

  Dietrich waited for the runner he hadn’t expected to find on his mission to the US to answer him.

  “My grandfather was never in Berlin. And he was never a runner. I’m the first in the family. He doesn’t even like running. In fact, he’s always trying to get me to…” Cate’s knuckles whitened as she leaned into the road.

  He watched her profile, the fragile sharpness as she stared straight ahead. The army was suggesting what the picture had indicated to Dietrich but he still wanted to disprove—that there really had been a tall, lean, fast American in Berlin around the time of the war. Amabile’s lover, who couldn’t be, wouldn’t be Erika’s lover also. If he could clear Crawley, he would be satisfied there wasn’t such a person. If he could just get past the brown waves beside him framing Crawley’s granddaughter’s brittle profile… He should have gone home when the three US Olympian names he’d come here with didn’t match. He should have gone when Marvin Shanks seemed to be George Crawley. If Dietrich hadn’t been such a stickler for detail, he could have returned to Germany quietly. He could have if he hadn’t met them—Cate and her grandmother. Now Cate was a complication.

  Dietrich never allowed complications. He turned to the side and stared out the window, at the window, at his reflection, a thin sheen on the glass. She was there, too, the little runner. Soon it would be Cate alone in the reflection, if what looked like a mirror on Non Bookends’ wall really wasn’t.

  Cate was leaving other cars behind, the way thoughts and faces raced past in his mind. McCoy had claimed Crawley was passing information, a list of names, to a German in Berlin, possibly a girl, a part of a German spy ring used by the German army. Dietrich had nearly come to his feet, his face and hands white like the little runner’s now, when a woman was insinuated into some traitor’s scheme. That traitor Crawley, according to McCoy…which complicated Dietrich’s situation even more. He would call Randall from the hotel tonight and make sure he maintained his pass privilege to the trial, even though it would go public quickly. In the meantime, Dietrich would make sure he and Randall did more legwork than any army attorney. He had to get his hands on that mirror. The filthy aura had to be off his family—a traitor and an enemy for a lover. And he’d do what he could for Cate…