In the Shadow of Blackbirds(71)

“That’s probably her.”

“Oh.” I sank back in my chair and furrowed my brow. “So. He seems an honest man to you, then?”

Gracie snapped the locket shut. “I don’t know about that.” She bowed her head. “He wasn’t always nice to Stephen.”

“What did you see him do to Stephen?”

“I know …,” said Gracie, scratching the back of her neck. “He sometimes stole Stephen’s photographs off the wall and burned them.”

Aunt Eva’s jaw dropped. “He burned his brother’s photographs?”

Gracie nodded. “Stephen was worried that all of his work would be gone by the time he returned from the war, so he packed up most of his pictures and negatives and hid them about a week before he left.”

I leaned forward. “Do you know where he put them?”

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t even tell his mother what he was doing with them. He was probably afraid she’d slip and mention their whereabouts to Julius. She thought he might have purchased a safe-deposit box in a bank or a post office and stored them there.”

“Why did Julius destroy Stephen’s photographs?” asked Aunt Eva.

Gracie’s eyes moistened again. “My cousins always fought like a pack of wild dogs, and their fights turned vicious after Stephen’s father passed away. Aunt Eleanor considered asking Julius to move out, but she always favored him a little, even if she never said so out loud. She and Julius escaped her terrible drunk of a first husband together. She always felt sorry for him starting life with a bully for a father.”

I traced my fingernail along a scratch in the tabletop and pondered the missing photos. “Stephen gave me two of his pictures before he left for training … but the rest must have already been stored away. He never mentioned anything about hiding the others, but we didn’t have all that much time together … I don’t think that’s why he’s troubled. I don’t know …” I looked to Gracie. “I met one of his friends from his battalion at the Red Cross House yesterday.”

Gracie hunched her back the same way her brother had when I questioned him about Stephen’s condition.

“What that friend told me about Stephen’s last days in France was upsetting and confusing to hear,” I continued. “May I mention what I heard?”

She gave a nod that was more a quiver of her round chin.

“He said Stephen didn’t die in battle.” I hesitated a moment, for the air was thickening. “He said he lost his mind over there in the trenches. The army tried to help him in a field hospital, but he just got worse. They had to send him home.” A searing pain clogged my lungs, but I breathed through it and forced myself to keep talking. “Did you know about his discharge?”

Gracie’s lips shook. Her eyes watered until a flood of tears ran down her cheeks. “We were supposed to keep it a secret.”

“Why?” I asked.

“All the Emberses’ friends boasted about their boys receiving medals, or they could at least say their sons died in combat, fighting for liberty.” She sniffed. “None of their young men were sent home in shame. Aunt Eleanor … she worried Stephen would be viewed as a coward … and a traitor. She even blamed herself for the way she raised him. Stephen was always so quiet and artistic. I can’t even imagine a gun”—Gracie squeezed her face into a pained expression as the flow of tears streamed harder—“in that boy’s hands.”

I held on to her wrist. “He made it back to Coronado, didn’t he?”

She sniffled and attempted to steady her voice. “His mother had to fetch him from a hospital on the East Coast. A nurse went with her. They found him sitting in a bed, not speaking, shaking, just staring with eyes that looked like he was watching Death breathe in his face.”

I winced.

“They brought him home sedated,” she continued, “and hid him up in his room. Aunt Eleanor investigated the nearest asylums, but she said they all used barbaric water treatments. Patients were chained to beds. The doctors wanted to sterilize them all so they couldn’t transfer their madness to future generations.” She stopped and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief tucked inside the black sash of her dress. “Aunt Eleanor insisted on keeping him at home, waiting until he came out of his shock enough to go to some of the places offering to help recuperating servicemen.”

I lifted my face. “How did Julius feel about that decision?”

“Well …” Gracie sniffed. “He said he didn’t like it, but Stephen didn’t make any noise during the first week. None of Julius’s customers knew he was up there. Julius told us to keep saying Stephen was still overseas. This was all around the time Mother died from the flu, and I didn’t know what to do. Julius said if Stephen got bad enough we should just tell people he’d gotten shot in combat and put him away.”

A profound sadness settled in my bones. I wanted to lower my head and cry for everything I’d ever lost in my life, but I pushed my arms against the table, elbows locked, to keep myself upright. “What happened after the first week? Did he start making noise?”

“Yes.” Gracie sniffed again. “He started to wake out of his fog a little. He wasn’t yet talking, but he started yelling whenever he heard certain noises—the buzz of the doorbell, the telephone ringing, the flashlamp, the Naval Air Station planes. Anything loud and sudden panicked him. He even kicked his mother in the stomach once when one of the planes flew over the house. Julius had to take her to the hospital to make sure she didn’t have any internal damage.”