“Join the club,” Cole said. He spat out what he could of the plaster dust. “Sorry. I think I inhaled the living room.”
“There’s soda in the liquor cabinet. Unless you fancy a drink.”
“After that, I fancy two drinks.” He smoothed her hair back out of her eyes. “When I saw those bombers headed for your house…” He couldn’t finish.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Rebecca said, getting up. She looked around. “My poor house.” The clanging of fire bells caught her attention. “I’ve got to be going. They’ll need me at hospital.”
Cole stood. He pulled a sliver of wood from her hair. “You’d better give yourself a minute. You’ve just been through hell yourself.” He didn’t want her to go.
“Why did you come?” she asked.
He looked at her, dumbfounded. “That’s a hell of a question to ask at a time like this.”
Rebecca said, “I wasn’t very kind when we last spoke.”
“I’m just being chivalrous. Don’t read too much into it. You were a damsel in distress, that’s all.” That wasn’t enough — it was much more than that. “It’s just…” He couldn’t find the words and knew that anything that he tried to say would sound false. He laughed. “Yeah, I’m glib all right. I can’t string two words together.”
“You puzzle me at times. I was dreadful to you and yet you came to rescue me. Is that it?”
“Why do you care why I came?” he said.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it, Jordan? I do care.” She brushed herself off and moved into the parlor, pulling debris away from the liquor cabinet before opening the shattered glass doors. “This was a present from Daddy for my marriage. Not just the cabinet — the house and everything in it. I never fully explained why I became a nurse. I became a nurse because I wanted my own life. I didn’t want to live in my father’s shadow. I wanted to feel needed, that what I did mattered.” She handed Cole a glass. “You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said, remembering. I feel like an ornament on your arm, he had told Ruth after a few drinks one night. Don’t be a fool, she had replied, rolling over and going to sleep. He never spoke to her again about his feelings.
“Greg was the most charming man that I ever met. Handsome, educated, a vast circle of friends. We had a storybook romance, married, honeymooned in Italy, and when we returned home to this house, which Greg would only live in as a concession to my daddy’s wealth, I prepared to go to work one day. ‘We’ll have none of that,’ Greg said. ‘Not for a wife of mine.’ I love him but I realized that I was just another part of his perfectly balanced, carefully chosen life. I was well on the way to becoming my mother. I was certain, there was no doubt in my mind, that Greg would soon follow the same path that my father had chosen, that eventually I would not be enough for him.”
“You’re working. That should mean something.…”
“Greg’s in Africa. Perhaps he’s dead. No one is certain. Now you’ve come into the picture. Am I a part of your perfectly balanced life thousands of miles from home?”
“Is that what you think?” Cole said, his temper rising.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You reveal so little of yourself.”
“Lady,” Cole said, “it’s not like that. Don’t lump me in with anybody else — not your daddy or your husband, because I’m neither. I’m just a sailor. Okay, I’ve played the field. I told you that. I never hid the fact that I did. I’m here because I was scared to death that you were in danger. When I’m not with you I think about you.”
“That’s all very—”
He moved closer. “I’m not done yet. You talk about need. No one ever needed me. Not ever. I could have been another sofa in the living room for all that mattered. And I’ve made it my business to make sure that I never needed anyone. You said something about half a life. Maybe you’ve got half a marriage, Rebecca, and I didn’t figure that out until just now.” He set the glass on the liquor cabinet and pulled Rebecca into his arms and kissed her deeply. She resisted at first but finally gave in, her soft lips yielding to his.
“Jordan—”
“Listen to me,” he said. “I was alone before I met you. I’m not now. Maybe I’m being selfish about the whole thing but I don’t care. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. I couldn’t stand to hurt you. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to be alone again.”
“You say ‘I’ so very much. Does your world revolve around only what you want? What you need?”
“Okay. So that makes me selfish.”
She laid her head against his chest. “You must understand, darling, not everyone can live their lives for themselves alone. I cannot be that way. Regardless of my feelings for you. Please understand. Please know that I want nothing more than to be with you. It is not as simple as you think.”
Cole held her at arm’s length so that he could look into her eyes. “It is,” he said defiantly, ready to fight to keep her. “We care about one another. That’s all there is.” He wrapped his arms around her protectively, the thing that he had most wanted to do in the square when they first walked together. “That’s all there is,” he said again, but he knew that it wasn’t. There was Rebecca’s devotion to a man who might be dead.
Chapter 8
Cole stayed with Rebecca as long as he could before she went off to work. He wanted to make love to her, but he knew it would have been wrong — she would have to be the one to say when. He’d salvaged his MG, changed the tire, and after skirting the worst areas of destruction, pulled up to the sentry post and presented his credentials.
“The Old Lady got it tonight, didn’t she, sir?” the sentry asked.
Cole followed the sentry’s gaze and looked over his shoulder at the glowing horizon. London was burning again. “Yes, she did,” Cole said, thinking of Rebecca.
“Still,” the sentry said, “she’s a tough old bird, she is. She’ll come out of it.”
Cole agreed but the sentry had not seen the carnage that he had seen, and it was that and nothing more: carnage. A woman’s torn body, one arm gone, her head lolling back and forth as if to protest her death as she was passed down from the rubble of what once was her home. A fireman tried to provide the last bit of dignity to the corpse by keeping her legs closed and her tattered skirt wrapped close to her body; there were no words fit to describe that single incident. One of a dozen that Cole saw as he drove back to the base and that stayed with him as he entered the photo analysis room.
He found the bottle that he and Markley had shared earlier. He held it up to the light. A thin film of liquid covered the bottom. Markley had been more than generous to himself.
He took a swig, pulled the bundle of Leka Island photographs from a file drawer, and began methodically laying them, one after another, a studied cadence, on the light table. When he reached the end of the light table he began again, and again, and again until Leka Island covered the surface table. He flicked on the light, lit a cigarette, and began to study the photographs.
Something was going on there, he knew. Or something was going to go on there. He laid the lens on the prints and began his journey up and down the rows of photographs. Antiaircraft sites. He reached without taking his eyes off the images and found a red grease pencil in the track at the end of the table. He marked the site — three of them, all on the east side of the island, covering the cluster of smaller islands. He continued on and found new buildings barracks or structures of some kind. These were better quality photographs than anything he’d seen before. He turned one over and read the stamped date, time, and sortie number. This had to have been N-for-Nancy’s last run.