Ivy stood and took a step toward her brother, but he wasn’t a little boy in need of a hug. “You haven’t failed me. You never could.”
“What am I to do?” He braced his hands on the cabinet. “I can’t find work. I can’t go back to school. We couldn’t afford the fees, and I don’t want to go to school anyway. I want to help. I need to help. How will we make do?”
How would they indeed? “I don’t know, but we will.”
“How?” Charlie wheeled around, his eyes wild. “Fern’s being selfish and petty. Your patients can’t pay their bills, so we can’t pay ours. How will we buy wood this winter so we don’t freeze? How will we buy food?”
Ivy didn’t know, and words wouldn’t come.
Charlie groaned and brandished his piece of bread. “I’m nothelping the Allies, not supporting my family. I’m a useless mouth. That’s all I am.”
“You—you’re not.”
Charlie tossed the bread back onto the cabinet and stomped out of the kitchen.
Ivy sank into her chair. She couldn’t help Gerrit, couldn’t help Charlie. They couldn’t help her either. “Lord, help us all.”
St. Peter’s Parish
Sunday, August 20, 1944
Gerrit poked at the vegetables in the soup Opal Jouny had prepared for Sunday lunch.
Beside Gerrit, Charlie sagged back in his chair, his own soup untouched. “Even if it were safe for ships to sail, they have nowhere to go. We’re completely cut off.”
Grim nods circled the table. Three days earlier, the Allies had taken Saint-Malo. From Jersey, Gerrit had seen the fires in the port city.
“The war will be over soon.” Arthur sipped his blackberry leaf tea. “The Allies are almost in Paris, they’re sweeping through Brittany, and they landed in southern France last week.”
Opal frowned as she stirred her soup. “It seems cruel to pass us by.”
“It’s sound military strategy.” Bernardus tapped the table. “The Channel Islands are essentially serving as an Allied prisoner of war camp for over twenty thousand German soldiers. The entire 319th Infantry Division is trapped here, plus all the naval forces.”
Ivy swallowed a spoonful of soup. “But if they’d left, we’d be free.”
“Bernardus is correct.” Arthur nodded in a confident way. “If the division had left, the Allies would have had to fight them in France. This hastens the end of the war.”
Gerrit’s rations had been reduced, along with those of all thebesieged civilians and German soldiers, but he had no appetite. “Please excuse me.”
He rose and left through the back door. The heaviness of coming rain pressed in the air, pressed his raw heart.
“Gerrit?” Ivy said from behind him. “What’s wrong?”
Hadn’t she heard the conversation? “We’re cut off.”
“It was coming.”
“Now it’s final.”
Standing two meters away, Ivy clasped her hands in front of her stomach. “You’re frustrated because you can no longer help the Allies.”
By the open kitchen window, Gerrit rapped his fist on the granite wall. “I never helped.” His voice climbed and sharpened. “What good are maps of Jersey if the Allies never come here? And the diagrams I sent—they were for structures we modified from the standard models. They’re unique to Jersey.”
“I’m sure—”
“They’re useless.” Gerrit whacked the wall again. “Lately I’ve drawn diagrams of standard structures—structures found throughout France and Germany. Those would be useful. But they’re stuffed in your aunt’s scrap bag. I have no way to send them to France.”
“I know, but...”
