Emmy knew how the war was progressing; she and Charlotte listened to the wireless most nights after the boys and Rose were in bed, and they had a two-day-old newspaper once or twice a week to keep them abreast of what was going on. Emmy knew that more than twenty thousand ordinary people like her mum and Eloise Crofton had been killed in the Blitz since September, and that hundreds of thousands had been made homeless. Coventry had been decimated not long after Emmy returned to Thistle House, and terrible raids had been inflicted on Manchester and Liverpool in the days leading up to Christmas. More than forty thousand British soldiers had been made prisoners of war on the Continent.
Emmy did not particularly want to talk about those things as she and Mac stepped outside, but how could they not? The war was what had brought Mac and her together and the war was the only reason he was in England instead of at home in the States.
Mac told Emmy he was afraid the year to come—1941—was going to be a long one. Things would get worse before they got better.
But then he took her mittened hand in his as they walked up Maugersbury Road. “I’m glad you’re here in Stow, even though I hardly ever see you. London’s no place for a young woman like you.”
Emmy didn’t know what to say to this. Mac didn’t know her at all.
“I wish I had news of your half sister,” he continued when she said nothing. “I hate to tell you that I don’t. And on Christmas, too. The one thing you can hold on to is that there’s no record of her death.”
“I almost wish there was, because then I’d know.” Emmy exhaled heavily, her breath puffing away from her in vapor.
They walked in silence for several seconds.
“You must be very close to her,” Mac finally said.
“I am,” Emmy replied. “She was—is—very fond of me. She looked to me for protection. I was more like a mother to her than an older sister.”
“Her mother wasn’t around much?” he asked.
“She... was around. She just struggled to make ends meet. It was hard. I think she did her best.”
“And the father you shared passed away a while ago, right?”
The mingling of her lives in conversation made Emmy feel a little dizzy, as though she were spinning in a circle and if she stopped, she would topple.
“Right,” she said simply.
“What was he like, your father?”
They were just short of entering town, a good place to stop. Emmy needed to be careful of what she said. And remember every word. She stopped at a picket fence that bordered a cottage of Cotswold stone and stared at the gray skies beyond.
If Julia and she had shared the same father—which was what Mac believed—then Emmy would have memories of him; she was the older by eight years. Emmy reasoned that if she could blend Emmeline and Isabel into one, she could certainly combine her nameless father with Neville.
“My father wasn’t a very responsible person. He had charm and liked to be happy, but he didn’t know how to think beyond the moment.” As Emmy said this, she wondered how much was true of her own father, whoever he was. He had certainly charmed Mum with no thought to tomorrow.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Mac stood close to her.
Emmy shrugged. “I’ve not spent any time mulling over it.”
He seemed surprised. “Really?”
“What good would it do? It won’t change anything. He was who he was. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life wondering why.”
Mac smiled. “Good for you.” He paused a moment. “So whatareyou going to spend the rest of your life doing? Assuming the Luftwaffe doesn’t kill us all.” He laughed lightly.
Emmy stared at the pointed slats of the fence. She didn’t have a plan for the rest of her life. Not anymore. “I really don’t know.”
A couple seconds of silence passed between them before Emmy realized she should ask him what his plans were. “What about you?”
Mac looked past the cottage, just as she had, to the colorless sky. “Well, if the Nazis don’t blow me to bits, I want to move back to Minneapolis or maybe Saint Paul, buy my own radio station, make a lot of money, marry, have a couple kids, retire at fifty.”
“That’s all?” Emmy said, and Mac laughed.
“I like knowing what I want out of life,” he said.
“Knowing isn’t having.” Emmy did not mean for it to sound bitter, but she tasted resentment on her tongue.
