Summer of '69(83)

“Where?” Kate asks.

“To Cambodia,” Bill says. “He was sent on a special mission to Cambodia.”



Cambodia, Kate thinks as she falls into bed. Tiger has supposedly been sent on a mission to disrupt the flow of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Kate is skeptical. Is this information reliable? Bill Crimmins has proved untrustworthy; what’s to say that he’s not making this up? Although it would explain why there have been no letters.

When Kate asked Bill Crimmins how long he had known about Cambodia, he said, “I found out only a few days ago. I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you.”

This answer made Kate livid. Granted, she hadn’t seen much of Bill Crimmins the past few days, but he’d just sat through an entire musical with her without giving a hint or a clue that he had news of any kind. When he entered the kitchen, he had been whistling! The news obviously didn’t weigh on him at all. If Kate hadn’t asked him directly, would he have kept the information a secret so that he and Pick could continue to live in Little Fair?

Yes, undoubtedly.

Kate was so furious—and so, so upset about Tiger in Cambodia, which was a place she couldn’t picture and that she wasn’t sure she could point to on a map—that she ordered Bill Crimmins to move out. He could stay until the end of the weekend, she told him. But that was it.

Even in the dark kitchen, she had seen Bill’s face turn ashen. “But it’s July, Katie,” he said. “Where are we going to live? All the summer rentals are booked and I couldn’t possibly afford one of those anyway.”

“I agreed to let you stay because you told me you could help Tiger. You promised.” Kate wasn’t sure that Bill had promised, exactly, but the message in his letter had been clear: He would use his connections to keep Tiger safe. But he hadn’t, and now he had to face the consequences. A good-faith effort on his part wasn’t enough, not when Tiger’s life was on the line.

“Pick has a job here,” Bill said. “He’s working his tail off every single day. And I have a business to run. I have clients who depend on me.”

“Well, then, maybe one of your other clients will offer you a place to live,” she said.

“Katie,” he said. “Come on. You’re not like this.”

True; Kate wasn’t like this. Exalta was the tough, uncompromising one. Kate had always been distinguished by her loveliness, her graciousness, her empathy, her charity—qualities her mother counted as weaknesses. It was only with Tiger’s deployment that Kate had developed a carapace around her heart. “Have you ever thought what it feels like for me?” she asked. “Having him here?”

“He’s almost never around…”

“Even so,” Kate said. She moved toward the hallway. “Good night, Bill.”

“You don’t want to do this, Kate,” he said. His voice from the dark void of the kitchen was menacing. “I know I promised never to tell anyone about what happened…but you’ve put me in a spot where it might be impossible to keep quiet.”

He was threatening her, then—and under other circumstances, this might be effective. Bill Crimmins was the only person on the planet who knew Kate’s secret. But oddly, it didn’t scare her. If he told anyone what she’d admitted to him so many years ago, it would be his word against hers. No one would believe Bill Crimmins.

Except for Exalta. If Exalta heard what Bill Crimmins had to say, she would know it was true.

But Kate didn’t care anymore. Nothing mattered to Kate but getting Tiger home.





Sunshine of Your Love



During her truly miserable week in captivity, Jessie finishes Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. The diary ends abruptly, and sure enough, the afterword states that Anne and her sister, Margot, were discovered in their hiding place and taken first to Auschwitz, then to Bergen-Belsen, where they died of typhus. Jessie blinks back hot tears, thinking she must have misread something. She assumed that Anne survived, because why would anyone assign this book to a seventh-grader if Anne had died? But reading it again does nothing to change the outcome. Anne died; only Otto Frank, her father, survived. Miep Gies found Anne’s diary; she gave it to Otto Frank, who allowed it to be published.

The line that finally makes Jessie burst into sobs is Despite everything, I believe all people are good at heart.

Jessie cries and cries. What about Helen Dunscombe? she wonders. Is she good at heart? What about Garrison Howe? What about Exalta? Jessie is so angry at Exalta that she suspects the answer is no, Exalta is not good at heart. She’s judgmental and prejudiced. But how did she get that way? She has everything a person could want.

Jessie tries to get a grip, but the tears keep coming. Tiger is on a secret mission. Jessie has no details but it sounds dangerous, even more dangerous than the regular Vietnam War.

Are the Vietcong good at heart?

Some of them, probably. The Vietcong support Communism, which is a system in which everyone shares. This is bad because in exchange for this sharing, individuals give up their freedom, and to Americans, freedom is the most important thing.

Jessie has had her freedom taken away this week, so she understands its value.

There’s a knock on her door and Jessie reaches for a tissue to mop her face. “Hello?” she says.