Crossings (44 page)

“What?” He threw the word at her like a rock.

“Could we step inside?” He had never invited her to come in.

“Why?”

“I'd like to speak to you alone.”

“There's no need for that.”

“I think there is.” Her eyes bore into Nick's, and he moved Johnny gently aside and strode into his library. She was quick to follow him in.

“I want him this weekend, if that's all right with you.”

“I'll check and let you know. I'm not sure of our plans.”

His hands itched to slap her face. “Call me tonight. The child's going to need time to adjust to all this. It'll do him good to come back here soon.”

“How do I know you won't run off with him?”

“I won't do that to him.” And she knew Nick well enough to know it was true. “What did you want to talk to me about?” His eyes were hard.

“My check.”

“What check?”

“The child support. Since Johnny's coming with me now, I assume that begins today.” He stared at her in disbelief, and then without a word he yanked open a drawer, dropped a checkbook on the desk, and bent to scrawl her name and his and the amount, and then handed it to her with a shaking hand.

“You make me sick.”

“Thanks.” She smiled at him and left the room and he followed her back to the front hall, where Johnny stood beside his bags. There was no avoiding it. The end had come. The war was lost. Nick gave him a powerful hug and rang for the elevator to take him down as Johnny cried. The bags were loaded one by one, and Hillary firmly took Johnny's hand. They stepped inside, and as the child bent his head and cried, the doors closed and they disappeared and Nick stood in the doorway, all alone, his head bent against the wall as he cried.

ohnny moved in with his mother on the night of December 3. Liane read the results of the trial with grief for Nick three days later. She had feared it would come to that. It was rare for a father to win custody, yet like him, she had hoped and prayed. That morning, she folded the newspaper with an air of despair as her uncle looked at her.

“What's wrong?” He had never seen her look quite like that before, and it was a moment before she spoke. He wondered if something awful had happened in France, but he hadn't noticed it when he read the paper himself, and at last she spoke.

“Something rotten just happened to a friend of mine.” “Anyone I know?” She shook her head. He had probably read all about the trial, but she had never told him that she knew Nick Burnham. She felt a lead weight on her heart as she imagined him handing over the child. She stood up then. She had work to do. But all that day thoughts of him preyed on her mind, and this time when she picked up the phone, she didn't set it down again. She asked New York information for Burnham Steel, and when the operator dialed and the phone was answered at the other end, she asked for Nick. But they told her that he was away. She did not leave her name, and she wondered where he'd gone to lick his wounds. She even wondered if in desperation he might call her, but he had no way of knowing she was on the West Coast. Their ties to each other had long since been cut, and it was just as well. She knew that she could never have gone on with the affair without tormenting herself about Armand, yet in Nick's case precisely what she had wanted to avoid had happened anyway. He had lost custody of his son. And now he had nothing at all. And then she smiled at herself, and realized how absurd she was. They hadn't seen each other in seventeen months and he'd been divorced for nearly a year. He probably had a charming lady friend by now, perhaps that was why he'd gotten divorced. But if he did, she hoped that the woman was kind and put balm on his wounds now, if one could. She knew how desperately he would feel the loss of his only child to a woman he hated.

“You look like someone died.” George remarked on her mood again later that night. “I think you work too hard at that foolish Red Cross place.” And it was Saturday too. He disapproved of that even more than her working there on weekdays.

“What we do isn't foolish, Uncle George.”

“Then why do you look so depressed? You should be out having fun.” It was an old refrain between them now.

She smiled at him. At least he's stopped trying to fix her up with his friends’ sons. He had realized a year before that she wouldn't budge. All she lived for were the letters she got from Armand. They arrived dog-eared and limp, smuggled out through the Resistance in the South of France, and sometimes they were stalled for weeks before someone went to England or Spain, but eventually the letters reached her, and each time she would heave a sigh of relief and report to the girls that Papa was well. It still amazed George that she was so determined to hang in. There were plenty of women he knew who wouldn't have been as true. He had known some of them during the last war, he thought, smiling. But Liane was more like her father than like him. He admired it about the girl, although he thought her foolish too.

“You would have made a good nun, you know,” he teased her that night.

“Maybe I missed my calling.”

“It's never too late.”

“I'm in training now.” She always played dominoes with him and they bantered with each other night after night. It was hard to believe now that another Christmas was at hand, and she'd been in San Francisco for a year. It seemed as though the war had already gone on for a thousand years, actually more than two years in France, and Armand was still all right, she thanked God every night. He hinted now sometimes at the work he did, and she knew about André Marchand. But there was no sign anywhere that the war would end. The bombing in London still wore on, as the British carried on their brave fight, and although Germans were dying by the thousands behind Russian lines, they showed no sign of giving up the fight. And it all seemed very far from where she sat, until that same night, December 6, when she lay in bed, unable to sleep. She got up and walked around the silent house, thinking of Armand, and at last she wandered into the library and sat down at the desk. She liked writing to him late at night, it gave her more time to gather her thoughts, and she often did that. She hadn't slept well in months, and tonight she wrote for a long time, knowing that much of her letter to him would be blacked out. He could write to her through the underground, but she could not reach him by the same channels. Her letters had to reach him through the German censors in Paris. She tried to be aware of it as she wrote, and at last she yawned as she wrote the address, and stood looking out into the December night. And then, feeling better again, she went to bed.

But the next morning, she still had a troubled feeling as she rose. Her mind was filled with Armand, and she pored carefully over the paper as she always did, looking for reports of the war in Europe.

“Was that you I heard prowling around last night, Liane? Or was it a burglar?” He smiled at her over their breakfast on Sunday morning. He knew about her midnight forays now. The first time he had heard her, he had snuck out of his bedroom, holding a loaded handgun, and they had both screamed and jumped.

“It must have been a burglar, Uncle George.” “Did he get the Christmas presents?” Elisabeth bounded into the room. She was nine years old now, and the days of Santa Claus were over. She was far more concerned that a burglar might have made inroads in the enormous stack of presents gathering in an upstairs closet.

“I'll have to check.” Liane smiled at her daughter as she went out to the garden with her sister. They were happy in San Francisco, and although they still missed their father, they had adjusted well, and the ugliness that had struck diem in Washington had never happened here, thanks to George's caution in not referring to his niece's husband as a Nazi. Liane was grateful to him for that, and she left for her day at the Red Cross with a lighter step than she had the day before. She wondered how Nick was faring after the shock of losing custody of John, but she knew from her own sorrows that time had a way of softening life's blows. She was sure that it wouldn't be easy, but in time the agony would be less acute, just as it was now when she thought of him. He had stayed on her mind for a long time as she carried on her quiet life in San Francisco. She was often surprised at how near he seemed when she closed her eyes and remembered their crossing on the
Deauville
. But now he was beginning to seem like a distant dream. And sometimes at night, as she slept, her dreams of him would get confused with those of Armand, and she would awake not knowing where she was, or with whom, or how she had come there, until she looked out the window and saw the Golden Gate Bridge or heard the foghorns, and she would remember where she was, far from them all now. Nick was a part of the past, but a part she still cherished. He had given her something no one else ever had, and his words had stood her in good stead for the past year and a half. She had needed every ounce of the strength he had reassured her she had when they left each other. She needed it each time she waited three or four or five weeks for a letter from Armand, or read a news report that filled her with terror, or thought of Armand working with the Germans in Paris. She needed it every day, every hour, for herself, for the girls, even for Uncle George. And she needed it as she turned on the radio in her bedroom after returning from church with the children. She often listened to the radio, for the latest news, but as she did now she stood transfixed in the center of the room, unable to believe the words she was hearing. Six great battleships had been sunk or seriously damaged in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the Air Corps was left with only sixteen serviceable bombers. The Japanese had made a surprise early-morning attack on Hawaii, leaving scores of dead and wounded, and there could be no doubt now, the United States had been pulled into the war with one swift, vicious gesture.

Her heart pounding, her face pale, Liane raced downstairs to find her uncle, and she saw him standing in the den, listening to the news himself, with tears streaming down his cheeks. For the first time in his life his homeland, the country he held so dear, had been invaded. Liane went soundlessly to him, and they clung together, listening to President Roosevelt's words a few moments later. There was no question about it. America was at war now. It remained only to be confirmed by the Senate the next morning, and three days later, on December 11, Germany and Italy declared war, and Congress passed a joint resolution accepting a state of war for the United States. For Americans, a new day had dawned, and a sad one. The entire country was still in turmoil over the attack on Pearl Harbor, yet everyone wondered if the Japanese would be even bolder, attacking major cities on the mainland. Suddenly nothing was certain or safe.

n the morning of December 7 all was panic in New York too, but the terrors were not quite as acute as they were on the West Coast. Hawaii was a little remote, although the realization that America's shores had been attacked brought everyone to a screeching halt that morning. And Roosevelt's announcement to the nation, declaring war, was almost a relief. The United States could roll up its sleeves and fight back. The Americans’ only hope was that the Japanese wouldn't get to them first, and attack the rest of the country as they had Pearl Harbor.