The braided hemp cord was not new. It had been gnarled and twisted from weather and from wearing it in the shower, as Stanley never took it off. Only now Devon had it. When Stanley had left before, there’d been no trace of him, and Devon thought he was going crazy. Because Stanley cared and had listened and because he loved him, he’d taken off his good luck charm and left himself vulnerable for Devon.
Devon turned to survey the empty cottage. There, in the middle of the living room floor, was Devon’s phone. He was sure he’d left it plugged in to charge during the night, so Stanley must have used it for some reason.
Picking up the phone, Devon saw a diagonal crack in the shape of a lightning bolt going up its middle. Devon tapped on the screen, and though it was cracked, the phone brightened into life.
On impulse, Devon thumbed to the photos, and saw there was an additional image of a bright, explosive light. It was the last image on the camera; the time stamp indicated the photo had been taken just after midnight.
That Stanley had left on purpose was now obvious, and that he’d gone to finish his mission was even more clear. He was a soldier and could not allow himself peace from war until he’d completed his mission. He’d gone back the same way he had the first time, by scaring himself with the phone’s flash, which to him looked like exploding mortar shells.
Devon’s mouth opened with an almost silent cry of despair, and he gripped the ID tag in his fist so tightly it hurt. If he could go back in time and find Stanley, could he bring him home before the worst happened and the mortar shell actually hit Stanley this time? But how could he? He didn’t know. He’d only ever seen Stanley disappear the one time, and when Stanley had come back, he had been running across the green grass and into Devon’s arms. Everything was beyond his control. It wasallbeyond his control. The only thing he could do was search, like he’d done before, just to be sure.
As fast as he could, he got dressed. He stuffed the phone in his pocket, pulling on his jacket even as he was opening the door. He raced out into the rainy morning.
In that first moment, it became obvious that his search would be for nothing, and that nothing would be the same.
Beneath the gray sky the trenches were still the same, grass covered corduroy rows of melted earth that backed up to the church. In between was the same shoulder-high trench that led to the memorial. Except now instead of white crosses, row on row, there was a wide field of rain-wet green grass and a single tall memorial of the purest white marble.
As Devon got closer, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, he could see that there was a knee-high fence of white-painted concrete posts around the memorial. Chain links had been welded into place between the posts and were also painted white, though the paint waschipped so that rust showed through, as though it had been there a long time.
As he read the inscription, Devon knew the truth of it. Stanley’s mission had been a success. He was the only soldier to have fallen because there was only one name that was listed:Wilifred Sullivan, and the date,November 10, 1917.
It was clear to Devon that he had two distinct memories, both of yesterday, when the memorial had included a graveyard, and of today, right now, when the memorial was only for a single soldier who had given his life to save everyone.
This memorial, the way it was now, meant that Stanley wasn’t coming back to Devon, for Stanley had completed his mission and had died. Whether he’d been buried beneath the memorial or his body had been shipped home didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was gone. Forever. Devon was alone with only memories, with emptiness, and the ghostly feel of Stanley’s hand on his face, as though saying goodbye.
He felt the tears slipping down his face before he could stop them; they left tracks of cold that mixed with the rain on his cheeks. His mouth trembled, and he turned away from the memorial. He made a sound that came out like a dog’s bark, an animal cry, and he knew that the pain in his heart would never heal.
It wasn’t just his own loss; it was Stanley who’d given his life to save his buddies, the radio, and the rest of the 44thBattalion. Devon had an idea that if he went to check the records, the story would be different from what he remembered. The inclement weather, the cold front that had lingered and affected the turn of events, would matter still, but only up to a point. The village of Ornes would no longer have a sign memorializing the senseless disaster because the roads were too muddy to truck in supplies to allow any comfort in the trenches. Yes, it would have been miserable, but on November 10, 1917, the 44thBattalion, by some miracle, by Stanley’s carrying the message, had gotten out.
Leaving Devon alone, forever.
By the time he got back to the cottage, it was raining evenharder, the pounding of raindrops on the slate roof sounding out high notes and skittering sounds. Devon shoved open the door and walked to the rifle he’d left on the kitchen table. He picked it up, holding it in his hands, letting the moment linger as the wood warmed against his skin. The rifle he’d once drooled over now only represented the horrors of war, the loss of innocence. The waste of it all.
He lifted it and smashed it against the stone fireplace until it was nothing more than tinder and pieces of wood on the floor. Then he hurled the canteen against the wall, for what did it matter? The sturdy canteen dented with a low thunk and fell to the floor.
The only thing left was Stanley’s ID tag, and this Devon picked up with shaking hands. He fumbled with the knot and tied it around his own neck. The hemp rope twisted in places and was rough on his skin, but he clenched his hand around the tag until it hurt and willed himself to stop crying, to be still.
He saw the pieces of rifle on the floor, the canvas-covered canteen with a dent in its middle, the remains of a life nobody would remember but him.
Through the open doorway to the bedroom, where the light was still on, he could see the rumpled bedclothes. If he squinted, he could see the scratch the bayonet’s blade had left. The cottage was an empty echo of its former self, as though the rain pressing down intensified the loneliness that had been a part of it long before Stanley had arrived. Now that he’d gone, Devon was alone, swamped by the ache in his heart, tears drying on his face.
On the counter was his work, his laptop, his canvas notebook, and his spreadsheets, printed with weather data so essential to his thesis.
He stilled the impulse to chuck everything in the fireplace and set a match to it, for not only would that be a futile and wasteful gesture, he’d promised Stanley that he’d finish. That he’d tell the story the soldiers who had been in the war could not. Except now that story was different, so his thesis would have to be adjusted. But he would do that because he’d promised Stanley. Stanley, who had listened while Devon had gone on and on about his paper. Who’d looked at Devonwith whiskey-colored eyes and seemed happy to be with him, listening with a smile on his face.
Shucking his jacket and wiping his nose with the back of his hand, Devon moved everything to the table, spread out his papers, opened his laptop, and with one last tug on Stanley’s ID tag, got to work.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The thing of it was, Stanley already knew the second half of the code, so there was no point in running all that way to the major and risking certain death. No point at all in taunting fate. He was halfway up the side of an empty trench where a miasma rose from the dead bodies beneath the mud when he realized what he needed to do. He needed to wait in hiding for the appropriate amount of time, and then return as if he had, indeed, gotten the second half of the message.
He crept over the top of an unmanned trench and tucked himself behind a howitzer that had been blasted into lumps. The smell of fuel that had leaked into the earth made the reason for the lack of soldiers clear. One single match would have caused a huge fire, igniting cloth and men and all the fuel within reach.
Stanley didn’t have a match, didn’t even have his rifle or his canteen. He’d left everything for Devon. Closing his eyes, he sent all of his hopes and dreams and love as fiercely as he could into the future. Then he hunkered down and prayed that nobody would come upon him, find out his mission, and consider him a coward for hiding out instead of running all the way to the appropriate trench. There was noway he could explain how he already knew the second half of the code. Just no way.
He counted to one hundred, thoughts of Devon in his head, and counted to a thousand, imagining every smile on Devon’s face, the touch of his hand on Stanley’s skin, the whisper of his breath across Stanley’s mouth. There had been a kind of freedom in loving Devon, a sense of having come to a safe place that he could call home. If his mission were successful, then maybe time would let him go back there. And if not, then at least Stanley would have done some good in the world to have been worthy of the time he’d been able to share with Devon.
In the silence of the space between volleys from the Germans and the returning fire of the American soldiers, Stanley heard the larks singing. A spindly, frail series of notes rose into the pewter-colored sky with the braveness of the mightiest soldier, and the poignancy of those who had already fallen. Along the trench in front of him was a stand of three bright red poppies. They were the last of the season, tumbled by the wind and torn by the poison in the air, but still so red and vibrant that to look at them made Stanley want to cry, but he didn’t.
