She nodded her understanding. Several long moments passed in quiet, aside from the rain pounding the roof and into the pool. Dried leaves floated in the water collected in the deep end. She rested her hand on Barney’s back and understood the comfort Tom drew from the dog’s presence. He smelled, he was wet and muddy, and he was a rascal—but underneath it all, Barney made a loyal companion.
“I think it’s wonderful that you and Tom are so close, given your family backgrounds,” she said, eager to change the subject. “My family had servants, too, and I didn’t befriend any of their children. I wish I had. I was too much a coward to try.”
“How do you mean?” The side of Luke’s hand brushed hers as he petted the old dog, too.
“I overhead something that was never meant for my ears.” She took a deep breath, resolving to make the story a short one, no matter the size it took in her memory. “I was almost seven years old and had been playing hide-and-seek with my cousin Lauren. She had just turned fourteen and had come to Manhattan for Christmas break. I went to the kitchen and folded myself into a cabinet. Then the cook and her daughter, Hannah, who was my age, came in.”
When Elsa paused in the telling, Luke urged her to take it slow. “I’m in no hurry.”
“I felt sorry that Hannah was working and wondered if her mother would let her play with me and Lauren for a while instead. I hoped Hannah would play with me even after Lauren returned to Chicago. I was lonely and thought Hannah might be, too.”
She drew in the air she needed. “But the longer I stayed in that cabinet listening to them, the more I realized that Hannah was happy already. She and her mother sang songs while they worked and told stories. They laughed together, deep from the belly, in a way I’d always been forbidden to do.”
Luke frowned. “You weren’t allowed to laugh?”
“Not more than a feminine titter behind my hand. Anything else wasn’t ladylike, you see.”
Luke shook his head. “I’d like to hear you laugh deep from the belly sometime. But go on. What happened next?”
She chuckled. “Lauren burst into the kitchen and asked if I was there. The cook said no, which tickled me to no end. But when Lauren tramped upstairs, Hannah said she used to wish she could switch places with me. When I heard that, I was ready to show myself, declare her my bosom friend, and share everything I had with her.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t. Hannah wasn’t finished. She said, ‘Miss Elsahas fine clothes and a million dolls. Her hair is so shiny, and she smells like roses. But I decided for all that, I’d rather not be her.’ She went on to say it was better to stay who she was and have her mother’s love because she had never seen my parents hug me. Or laugh with me. She supposed they didn’t even put me to bed. And she was right. That’s not what we did. She said she felt sorry for me. And that was before I contracted polio.”
“My parents didn’t put me to bed, either,” Luke offered.
“No?”
“Nope. The governess dressed me in my best clothes every evening and paraded me in to see them for fifteen minutes before they had their dinner. And then I marched out again, leaving them to dine alone.”
“Yes,” Elsa breathed. “That was exactly it. It never bothered me much, though, assuming that was how everyone’s family was, until I heard that Hannah pitied me. After that, I wasn’t brave enough to ask her to be my friend. It probably wouldn’t have worked very well even if I had. How did you and Tom manage it?”
“Honestly, I didn’t talk to him much before I left home for college. I didn’t realize how much he’d looked up to me until his father told me after I’d graduated. If I had given any thought to his view of our family—which I can’t say I did—I’d have figured he would have looked up to my older brother instead. I sure did. Then again, Franklin was usually busy training under my father to help run the business, so he wasn’t around much.”
“Does he still help with the business?” she asked.
Luke shook his head, and even in the shadows, she could see his expression close off, putting an end to the topic of his brother with as much finality as if he’d already changed the subject. She didn’t push.
An overhanging branch swayed above the glass roof, the leaves acting like a sail in the wind. A small limb broke off and landed with a splash into the pool.
Barney lifted his head at the sound, alert enough to look around a few moments before settling back down again.
“Is Tom going to be all right in this storm without you and Barney?” She’d feel terrible if he needed their support more than she did.
“Don’t worry about it. He’s usually fine when it’s just rain. It’s the cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning that really mess with him, making him think he’s back in the war.”
“But it doesn’t affect you the same way?”
“No.” Luke buried his hand in Barney’s scruff. “Our experiences were very different. I was already in France in 1914, studying architecture. I had graduated from Harvard that spring, so I was twenty-two when the war began in Europe. I couldn’t sit back and watch. I joined the French Foreign Legion as an ambulance driver.”
Elsa wondered if it was typical for salvage dealers to have Harvard degrees in architecture, with studies abroad to match. But all she asked was, “Is that how you know about weak chest and lung muscles?”
He nodded. “Among other things. I got to know a lot of patients that way, checking on them as I could after delivering them to hospitals. Ol’ Barney here was there, too. He could run low over the ground, carrying canteens of water around his neck to soldiers we couldn’t reach yet. And he found the living among the dead, men we might have missed. Saved their lives. He saved Tom’s. Likely more than once.”
“Why, Barney!” Elsa cupped his chin and lifted it, noting the grey hair on his muzzle. “What a good boy you are.” The dog closed his eyes and rested the weight of his head in her hand. She thought she saw him grin, and a swell of emotion clogged her throat.
Luke stroked the dog down the length of his back, scratching at the base of the tail. “After a while, I felt like I wasn’t doingenough, picking up the pieces of broken men. I needed to fight the men who were breaking them in the first place. So as soon as training opened to Americans in France, I became a fighter pilot. Tom signed up to fight as soon as he could. He was seventeen. He had no idea what he was getting into.”
