“I don’t want to work in a fish cannery all my life,” he’d say as he lay on his back gazing at the clouds. “If I could do anything in the world, I’d build and sell my own kites.”
“Why can’t you?” Delia was good at planning and calculated what it would cost to build kites and rent shop space.
During long, sunbaked afternoons, they dreamed about what it would be like to own a kite shop. At night they charted the heavens using books checked out of the library. They snuck onto the rooftop to watch meteor showers and lunar eclipses. Finn used his money from the cannery to buy a wind gauge for measuring the velocity of the wind. Delia kept a notebook to record the data, while Finn talked about designing gigantic kites that could defy gravity.
More than anything, Finn wanted to make a box kite, which was the king of kites. Its long, rectangular frame provided more stability to lift it higher into the sky than any other kite.
Their first attempts at making their own box kite failed because it was too heavy. Finn saved enough money to buy silk fabric, although they still didn’t know if their second attempt would be light enough to fly. It required two people to run at top speed to launch it, so Delia borrowed a pair of trousers from one of the younger boys at the orphanage. Now that their secret was out, a lot of the other kids tagged along to the park to watch. Even Sister Bernadette came to cheer them on.
They took the box kite to a field with a huge wide-open space for them to take a running start. They waited for a breeze, then jogged slowly in tandem, gradually working up to a run. Finn took the lead, holding the flying line, while Delia carried the box kite a few yards behind. The wind was strong in her face, and she angled the kite, running fast until the wind lifted it away.
“Run, Finn!” she yelled after him. He lengthened his stride, racing across the meadow as the cumbersome box kite struggled to gain altitude. It wobbled and hovered, and then it happened. Like magic! It was as if the hand of God lifted the kite to soar up into the air.
It was magnificent! Delia and Sister Bernadette held each other as Finn ran laps around the field. Others in the park stopped towatch and shout their praise. Finally, the kite stayed aloft on its own. Finn didn’t need to run anymore. Instead, he just held the line, panting from the exertion, but she could see his smile from all the way across the park.
The day Finn launched the box kite gleamed like a diamond in Delia’s memory. Even now, after all this time, it had been the happiest day of her life. She doubted another could ever touch the pure joy and innocence of that day.
Delia shook away the memories. She ought to be downstairs, helping Wesley prepare for next week’s cases instead of wallowing in old dreams.
As much as she once loved Finn, she hated what he had become. To use his marvelous gift of flight as a weapon of destruction was an abomination. Even worse, she had spent the last ten years comparing other men to Finn and inevitably found them lacking. Even Wesley paled in comparison. Could a girl ever truly forget her first love? Finn rescued her during the worst part of her life. Even though he had let her down, a part of her would always love what they once had. Those early years were pristine, like the idyllic world inside a snow globe, untouched by the chaos outside.
Delia abruptly stood from the abandoned cable spool. She and Wesley were the perfect team, and it was time to make her move and convince him that their age difference didn’t matter.
Finn was her past. Wesley was her future.
5
Finn braced himself for bad news after submitting to tests and X-rays of his damaged leg. Two different doctors and a surgeon had examined him, and afterward he was wheeled into the Army surgeon’s office to get the results.
Dr. Sullivan sent him a tight smile as he took a seat behind his desk to face Finn. “I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”
“Am I going to lose my leg?”
“That depends on what we find when we operate,” the doctor said. “The X-rays show that the fracture in your tibia isn’t healing like it should. There’s a gap between the fractured segments, and you’re going to need surgery to correct it. I’ll put you under a strong dose of anesthesia, then open up your leg. I will realign the tibia with screws and a metal plate. I’ll stitch you back up and slap a cast on it. Then we wait to see if it heals properly.”
The prospect of surgery terrified Finn. To be put under and let some sawbones slice him open and bust up whatever minor healing had already happened? It went against everything he knew.
“And if the screws don’t work?”
“In that case, we may have to take the leg,” Dr. Sullivan replied.
“What if I don’t have the surgery?”
“At best you will live in pain for the rest of your life. At worst you’ll get gangrene, lose the leg, and die from the infection.”
Finn digested the information in silence. He had been lucky not to have died during the crash landing in Belgium. He’d been lucky Mathilde Verhaegen rescued him before the Germans got to him. He was lucky to have escaped the periodic search parties that had been sent out to find him during those pain-filled days hiding beneath Mathilde’s floorboards. Following the crash, his leg was treated by the town’s veterinarian, the only person with medical training Mathilde trusted with her dangerous secret.
“If the surgery works, how long before I can go back to France?”
“You’re not going back to France,” Dr. Sullivan said flatly. “Captain Romano told me you’ve been appointed to a Stateside assignment.”
Finn rocked back in his seat, dumbfounded. “What’s the assignment?”
“He wouldn’t say, but he stressed that you’re very important to the cause, and you’re staying right here in New York.”
He shouldn’t have signed those papers to join the Army. Maybe it wasn’t too late to get back to France and join up with the Frenchies again. Or he could sign up with the French Foreign Legion. He signed on to the war to fight the enemy, to do so while in the cockpit of an airplane, not stay home in New York while his brothers-in-arms did the heavy lifting. Though he was willing to lay his life on the line for a cause, he felt no obligation to Captain Romano and his Stateside assignment.
The problem was that he needed his leg fixed before he could do anything. Once it was fully healed, he’d figure out a way to shake off Captain Romano as well as his mysterious assignment.
