Ivy set aside a patient chart and picked up Thelma Galais’s. In the past month, Thelma had declined rapidly, as if the diagnosis had given her permission to go home. Every day, Ivy visited, wanting to boost her spirits. But if anything, Thelma was more peaceful.
Curled up in the armchair by the electric lamp, Ivy finished her chart notes, with the persistent heaviness of grief in her chest.
More sour chords and grumbles from Charlie. His fingers formed taut triangles on the keys.
Ever since theOrmerarrived in St. Helier this afternoon, Charlie had acted jumpy.
Ivy capped her pen. “I saw RAF planes today.” Charlie had never mentioned any attacks.
“Hmm?” His head notched up, but he didn’t meet her gaze.
“A hard day at sea?”
A terse shake of his head. “I’m fine.”
No, he wasn’t. He’d once told her every slight from friends, every accolade in school, every humorous incident. She expected more distance as he became a man, but not like this. Something serious had gnarled his hands.
Ivy filtered her sigh through her lips to conceal her concern. Her chart notes complete, she opened her sketch pad so she could finish her drawing of a horse for Demyan Marchenko.
He was recovering from his injury and had been transferred to the Hooper farm in Trinity Parish in the northeast, which sheltered two other escapees.
When Demyan was healthy enough to work, the ring planned to dye his hair black and issue false papers. In the meantime, his confinement had made him restless, especially after months of slavery. Ivy brought books, but what he loved most was watching the farm horses from his window. He kept threatening to steal away for a ride.
Ivy let her pencil sweep curving lines for the horse’s tail. Perhaps her drawing could satisfy his longing and keep him indoors.
The clock chimed eleven o’clock.
Already? Since she liked to go to bed before the electricity turned off, she’d set the clock to chime five minutes beforehand. She hated to waste precious candles and matches, but she lit two candles and placed one on the piano top.
She didn’t wish to retire until Fern came home, so Ivy could share the latest Red Cross message. Mum and the boys were safe and sound at Ivy’s grandparents’ home in the English countryside, and Dad and Bill were busy with their regiment, which trained soldiers somewhere in England.
The electricity flicked off. Eleven o’clock—when curfew started now. The Germans kept changing it. “Fern isn’t home yet.” She didn’t have a curfew pass as Ivy did.
Only a grunt from Charlie.
The front door opened and closed downstairs. Thank goodness. Curfew violators could be arrested and fined.
Ivy shielded her candle as she went to the top of the stairs. “I’m glad you’re home. Curfew—”
A giggle bubbled in the darkness downstairs. “I assure you, I was perfectly safe from arrest. I saw a show with my friends from College House.”
A building requisitioned from Victoria College that served as the German field commander’s headquarters, and another chord from Charlie dripped sour acid in Ivy’s gut. But voicing her disdain for her sister’s companions would solve nothing. “What show did you see?”
“Show?” Fern emerged from the darkness into the faint glow of Ivy’s candle. “Oh, nothing to speak of. A trifle.”
Fern climbed the stairs with a sleepy-eyed smile, a smile familiar but from the past, and Ivy couldn’t place it.
“Did you enjoy it?” Ivy asked.
“Oh yes.” Another giggle bubbled up, bubbled into Ivy’s memory to the last time she’d heard that giggle and seen that smile.
When Fern had been falling in love with Bill.
The sour acid chewed into Ivy’s stomach, contracted it with pain. No. It couldn’t be.
“Oh, dear. Poor Ivy.” Fern paused a few steps below Ivy with her hand on the banister. “Look at you in your ratty old dress at home on a Saturday night. You ought to make friends and live life.”
Ivy’s tongue snagged on her objections. “Not like you.” Her words didn’t make sense, but she couldn’t think well enough to correct them, not when confronted by that dreamy smile.
