“Yes,” she said. “Yes, absolutely.”
Faye lay awake that night, touching the tips of her fingers together, remembering the roughness of peeling paint in her search for the tack hole. William had said big losses leave big holes, and she’d felt the puncture of his words.
As a little girl, new to America, she’d had nightmares she could never remember beyond the terror of them. Little girls spinning endless circles,ashes and ashes, a door bolted shut, the churning green sea. Thomas would come running when the screaming started, kneel beside her, shush her gently. Five hushes in a row—shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Faye tapped her fingertips, thinking of William, thinking of that uncle’s lost bride, of loss and of her own aching loneliness. Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh.
She burrowed under the covers, let her mind wander around that hazy dreamscape, a childhood riddled with holes. No, that was too sad to think about! Think instead about William’s lips. Would there be more kisses? She imagined making snowmen with William, ice skating with William, sipping cocoa by a fire. She pulled the quilt to her chin. She had no need to cry like she had as a child, drawing company to her bedside for a few hushed moments. She was in love with William. Of that, she was sure. She dimmed her eyes, imagined his face golden with stubble on a pillow facing hers, his hands the ones that tapped her yearning body beneath the covers, delicate and tickling like wings of white moths, until she fell into a dreamless sleep.
It was late autumn, the leaves past peak, the sky jay blue and feathered with clouds, pumpkins on porches and stoops when William showed up unannounced on a Sunday morning, dressed for a day outdoors—dungarees, a chunky fisherman’s sweater the color of oatmeal, and a green plaid overshirt. “Come take a ride with me.”
They drove up the coast road, along Penobscot Bay through harbor towns to the state park outside Camden. There, they walked the carriage road hand in hand to the top of Mount Battie that looked over rust and gold hills to the blue harbor and distant islands below.
“This view! It’s breathtaking! Like an oil painting!” Faye laid her hand over her heart, which fluttered from the short climb and more. Her stomach was in knots too.
William spread a Pendleton blanket on a flat of granite. He stood behind Faye, one hand on her shoulder as he gestured with the other.“That’s Acadia,” he said, pointing north. “And Owl Head just there. Such a clear day. We got lucky. Hot cider?” William asked, pulling a moss-colored thermos from his knapsack.
She’d known from the moment her father opened the front door that he’d expected William that morning. She had run up the stairs to change in a hurry, heeding William’s advice to wear slacks and a sweater and comfortable shoes and to grab an overcoat. She’d brushed her hair behind her ears, tucked it in with long pins. She applied a quick dab of lipstick and pinched her cheeks into color. It would have to be good enough. Her nerves had silenced her most of the way up, though she was able to express to William in the touch of her hand, with a smile, that she was listening to him, that she was happy to be with him.
“Cider sounds perfect,” she said now, rubbing her hands together for warmth.
William handed her a cup and poured one for himself. “Let’s sit,” he said.
She sat, twisted herself into a comfortable position, then reached up and took William’s cup so he could sit too. The sun turned his hair copper as an oak leaf. He was meant for this season and this spot. She sipped her cider, wishing she could think of something to say besides the obvious—how nice it was to be with William, how lucky she was that he was her boyfriend.Boyfriend.She couldn’t believe how easily that had happened despite how unlikely it had seemed to her. And yet here she was, completely taken with him.
William set his cup on a rock. “I want to tell you some things about me.”
Faye saw that William was trembling. “I’d like that,” she whispered, trying not to say the wrong thing.
“I was young when I enlisted. Not quite eighteen. Too young, but my father was loyal to this country, and he signed the papers. My mother was angry. She said I should wait. But after the Japs bombedPearl Harbor, I ached to join the fight. I thought I’d go to the South Pacific, but they sent me to Germany.”
Faye’s spirit crumpled, and she had to look away.
“I don’t think I understood, but my unit, well ...” William faltered. “Listen, I’ve seen terrible things. I’ve done terrible things. For my country. But what those Nazis did to the Jews. People forget. But we were there. My unit was at one of the camps, Faye. There was a child. I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl. This child was so thin. I thought it must be a ghost. Imagine that! I asked my buddy if he saw it, and he could only nod. Our COs made civilians go in and see what was done in their name. I still hear their voices. I would be happy to never hear another word of German.”
“I know, William. You don’t have to tell me more.”
“No, I need to tell you. Please, let me. And then I would like to never speak of it again. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
“I understand that. Believe me,” Faye said. What else could she say? While William spoke of guns and tanks, fields and streets and mud and bullets, the rubble of German buildings and of German bodies and German victims, of his nightmares and his dreams of returning home to Maine, to his parents and a quiet life, to the sweetheart he left behind, Faye’s dread mounted. She’d unclenched her fist of a heart, had allowed herself to love William, to want something as simple as a peace-filled life with him and the safety he might provide if he truly loved her in return. He was still in mourning. This thing between them was not meant to be. How had she allowed herself to believe otherwise? Her chest tightened as he continued.
“Pauline and I wrote to each other and, when I returned, we got married. I was happy. Happy the war was over, happy the Nazis were defeated and the Japs too. Happy to come home to Pauline. I had been so full of myself going in. Like I said, I was a kid after all. Then I got home, and all I wanted was to forget. I still do—want to forget,” he said. “Who wants to talk about war?”
Faye flattened her palms against the granite, grounding herself. He was right. She did not want to talk about it. Over the years, she had come to understand the war the way Americans did: through grainy photographs and newsreels and documentaries. What the Germans had done, their cruelty.
William looked down as if gathering memories or courage. He sighed. “Pauline got pregnant right away. She was strong and healthy, but when the baby came—we picked out names ahead of time so I knew what she wanted. I knew we would call a boy Sterling.” At the mention of the child’s name, William faltered again. Faye wished she could stop this, make his pain go away. She knew what he was trying to tell her. There could be no one else for him. “There was a tear, you see. In Pauline’s uterus. In the artery. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. And Sterling, the cord was around his neck. I lost them both in one day.”
“Oh, William!” Faye tilted her head back as she squeezed his hand, though she was certain he was slipping away. “I understand. She was the love of your life.”
“Yes,” William said. “My heart has been broken. But that silver maple out past the barn? The one you said last week looked like it was on fire, the colors were so beautiful? I planted that for Pauline and Sterling. But Faye.” William reached into his shirt pocket, then shifted to bend on his knee in front of her. “You’ve helped me find something I didn’t think I’d feel again. A tree and memories are not enough. I don’t want to live in the past. You’ve mended my heart, Faye. And now I want a life with you, if you’ll have me. I love you and will love the life we can make together.” He held up a simple gold ring with the tiniest of diamonds. “Marry me?”
Together.Faye gasped, pummeled by waves of emotion.Was this possible? Was it real?Maybe she’d been thinking about it all wrong. Maybe her heartwasa fist. Not clenched shut, though. No. Strong and ready. She could see it. This husband, the children they would have. A beautiful life. “Yes, William. To all of it.” Relief welled in her. She andWilliam would choose the future, and the heavy door would shut on the past. For both of them.
William put the ring on her finger, and they kissed. William rolled onto her, and they kissed more, the rock beneath Faye cold and hard, the skies above her cloudless and shimmering.
Chapter Three
1946: Ireland
A fight broke out in the gymnasium of the old barracks moments before the doors would open for Irish families to begin the weekly process of choosing their very own German orphan to take home. It was always this way—the boys, sick with adrenaline, off-gassing their excitement and fears on each other with jabs and pokes and shoves. Gisela was exhausted by anticipation, by hope rising only to be dashed. She and her younger sister Elisabeth, both nine years old, had been mistaken for twins, both with bobbed hair the color of molasses, button-brown eyes to match. They wore their traveling clothes—ill-fitting boots, brown wool dresses over sagging wool tights, and floppy orphan jackets hastily crafted from German army uniforms—so they would be ready to leave immediately if a foster family chose them. Gisela could not understand why the boys continued to fight after all they’d seen and endured. But then again, she thought, maybe they would always have to fight for scraps of food and love and attention. When the doors opened and sets of men and women entered, Gisela dragged Elisabeth to a quiet corner, away from the fray of their fellow orphans desperate to be the right child to milk Irish cows, to clean Irish pots or cut Irish turf. Surely some of the families were good and charitable, Elisabeth had told her. That’s what the children, and what was left of their families, had been promised, after all. Operation Shamrock, they called it. A reprieve forGerman children from hunger and despair in the aftermath of a war that Ireland had not fought.
