When she had stepped onto that ship and departed Canada’s shores, she had been searching for more meaning in her life. A chance to be useful in a place that needed help. She had donned a blue gown and pinnedon a veil, then she’d rolled up her sleeves and experienced so much more than she had ever imagined possible. Horrors, yes, but there had also been friendships. She thought of Minnie, then of Lillian and Hazel, and even Nurse Johnson. She hoped they were bundled up as comfortably as she was right now.
Just before sleep could pull her under, Jerry Bailey’s poor, scarred face came to mind. Not for the first time, she wondered where he was. She had allowed herself no option but to believe he had survived the remainder of the war. And now? Was he at home, only a few miles from here? Were he and his brother sitting with their parents, maybe dancing to the gramophone in that big room he’d spoken of? She smiled at the thought, letting herself imagine she was there as well. She pictured the moment he offered his hand to her. She saw the way he watched her, wrapping his arm around her waist so they could move to the music. And for a moment she wished would never end, all she could see were those dove-grey eyes.
nineJERRY
The Windsor Memorial Cemetery was a quiet place. The wind held its breath as Jerry and John passed beneath the arched iron gates, their boots crunching softly on the frozen grass. A couple of chickadees provided the only other sounds, chattering and whistling to themselves as they darted between the shrubs lining the edge of the grounds. The last time Jerry had been here, it had been to visit Frank’s grave. He glanced toward the spot where his childhood friend had been buried thirteen years before, then he turned away.
Uncle Henry had said their parents were buried toward the north end. From across the cemetery, Jerry could see rows of fresh graves along the tree line, the rounded mounds of dirt a silent evidence of the recent influenza scourge. Many of the graves lacked headstones, several were marked by wooden crosses, most were layered in fallen, frost-burned leaves. Their aunt had mentioned putting up a stone, so the brothers scanned the few markers, searching for the Bailey name. When his gaze landed on the large grey stone at the head of two graves, their humped surfaces dried to hard dirt by the wind, Jerry felt a sharp twist in his chest.
ROBERT CLYDE BAILEY
1869–1918
ELIZABETH FRANCIS BAILEY
1873–1918
The names were carefully painted in black with a small red heart connecting them, likely their aunt’s loving handiwork. A dry, faded clutch of late wildflowers lay at the base of the stone.
“John,” he called softly, and his brother came to his side.
Slipping off his tweed hat, Jerry knelt and traced the painted lettering with his fingertip, feeling as numb as the cold stone itself.
John placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go in the morning and hire a mason,” he promised. “See that they’re marked properly.”
Jerry nodded, absently turning his cap in his fingers, remembering. Four years ago, when he and John had waited to board the train, his nerves had buzzed with a youthful eagerness, and his only thoughts had been of what might lie ahead. Standing on the platform in his crisp new uniform, he’d kissed his mother’s damp cheek while his father stood stoically by her side. Back then, they’d all thought that if anyone was going to die, it would be one—or both—of the brothers, not their parents. The very idea of coming home at the end of it all had been far from his mind. But even if Jerry’s thoughts had gone forward in time, he never could have imagined a homecoming like this. He would give anything to hug his mother one last time, to hear his father’s rumbling voice.
He scooped up a handful of dirt and sifted it through his fingers.Dust to dust, he thought. All those days and nights underground, his body aching, his soul strung tight with dread. Above the tunnels, in the fetid, smoky air, the dying had lain submerged alongside the dead, floundering in the mire. When all that mud finally dried, it would feel like thedust in his hand. Eventually the bones lost within it would as well. What had any of it been for?
“Ready to go?” John asked.
Jerry looked up at his brother and took in the tight, closed lines of his face. He knew the torment going on beneath the surface. He knew it like he knew his own.
“Yeah, there’s nothing for us here,” he replied, rising. Dusk had closed in while they were here, he realized. It had been a very long day. “It’s just you and me now.”
But if there was nothing for them on the cold ground of the cemetery, Jerry felt the opposite as soon as they walked through the door of their house. Memories clung to every object in every room; echoes of laughter hung in the empty air. For a moment, the brothers stood side by side in the living room, barely breathing, then John broke away. He strode toward the shelf on the wall and grabbed a bottle of whisky by its neck, then he swept past Jerry and up the stairs to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Jerry couldn’t move. He swore he could still hear the gramophone playing. In his mind he saw his father curl a strong arm around his mother’s waist, leading her in a dance. Jerry had sat right here on the old blue couch so many times, memorizing the 1-2-3, 1-2-3 pattern of his parents’ feet, as well as the sure way his father’s hand pressed against the small of his mother’s back. The love he saw between them, warm and certain and full of light.
All of it gone now.
Weighted by weariness and aching with loss, Jerry lowered himself onto the couch and reached for a cushion his mother had once embroidered with small pink flowers. He remembered the hours she’d sat by the fire, squinting in the dim light over her needlework. Closing his eyes, he hugged the cushion to his chest and rested his chin on the petals, needing just a moment. To rest. To quieten the memories.
He awoke with a start, alarm roaring through his chest when he realized he wasn’t gripping his rifle. The Germans could have—
The familiar room swam into focus: the floral wallpaper, the pale drapes, the rows of books on the shelves. The cushion that had soothed him to sleep had fallen off the couch. He reached for it then tucked the pillow under his head and lay back down. His bed seemed impossibly far away.
Jerry was stiff but slightly rested when he woke the next morning to the sun spilling yellow into the living room. He stepped outside and walked toward his father’s shed, noting along the way that the barn was empty; John must have already taken the car to the stone mason. He was glad his brother had taken that job on. Jerry didn’t want it. At the shed, the door’s rusted hinges creaked, then the yeasty scent of the still filled his senses. His father hadn’t been gone long enough for it to dissipate altogether.
Inside, Jerry gazed around with a kind of wonder. If not for the complete silence, he could almost believe his father was still there. He’d left everything as he always had, including the neatly arranged wall of tools with the screwdrivers in one row, wrenches in another, all ordered from smallest to largest. Above them were the little boxes fastened to the wall, filled with nails and screws. A few empty wooden crates were still piled precariously in the corner, and the floor was littered with swirls of shaved wood and the occasional rusted nail. And of course, there was the still.
“How do you keep everything so tidy?” he remembered John asking their father many years before. The boys had been sorting screws for him while he sat on his stool writing in his leather journal. “I never know where anything is.”
Smiling gently at John, their father had closed the black book then slid it into a drawer at the side of his workbench. “That’s why this book goes here, and those tools go there. Everything has its own place, and you have to put it back before you walk away from it. That’s why you run into trouble, John.” He tapped his pencil against his temple. “If you pay attention to the little things, the important ones will fall in line.”
It was just a moment in time, but it was one Jerry knew he would cherish forever.
Now Jerry opened that same drawer and wrapped his fingers around the book he remembered so well. His thumbs skimmed over the soft leather, recalling the last pair of hands to hold it. Then he settled onto his father’s stool and cracked the book open, taking in the familiar handwriting. The outside world fell away.
