The Light Over London(79)

“I don’t know,” said Charlie, resting a hand on her knee.

“I can’t speak to Group Captain Reynolds, but perhaps I can help find out what happened with the RAF,” said Vera.

“How?” Louise asked.

“My uncle. He’s army, but I would bet that with a few phone calls he could track down the right people to answer your questions. If that’s what you want,” said Vera.

“Of course that’s what I want. Why wouldn’t I want to know?”

“I just thought . . .” Vera’s gaze fell to her hands twisting the blanket on Louise’s bed. Flattening them, she smoothed down the fabric.

“I’m sure this is the matter of a clerical error and a careless commanding officer. Wasn’t the man always denying Paul leave that was rightly due him?” asked Charlie.

Louise nodded, but a touch of doubt took hold. She was in the service. She knew the rules of leave well enough. What Paul’s commanding officer had done was surely in direct violation of all sorts of practices. But what if he hadn’t denied Paul leave at all?

A memory tugged at her. Reggie at her wedding breakfast, champagne sloshing in its flute as he gestured wildly, telling the story of Paul using his leave in Scotland. Paul insisting that it had happened last year, not this year.

Distrust broke through grief, and it made her wretched. She’d only just learned her husband was dead, yet she was already beginning to question his truthfulness, his honor.

She looked up at her friends and registered the quiet worry on Vera’s face and the obstinacy on Charlie’s. They’d row about Vera’s implications when Louise wasn’t there, thinking that she wouldn’t know, but she would. She knew these women better than anyone in the world.

“I think that I would like some time by myself,” she said, her voice hardly a whisper.

Charlie hesitated, but Vera nodded, tugging their friend by the back of her tunic.

“We’ll leave you for a little bit,” said Vera.

The door shut softly behind her friends. Louise slid down in bed until she was flat on her back, staring at the cracked plaster of the ceiling. She waited for the tears that should’ve come, but all she felt was empty. Hollow. Uncertain. Alone.





21


CARA


Liam knocked at Cara’s door just before dinner, as he’d promised. She took a moment to smooth her hair, which she’d washed and blown out, before adjusting the neckline of her dress and opening the door.

He had a ready smile, but when he saw her, he froze and blinked three times. “You look fantastic.”

“Thank you,” she said, fussing her hair behind her ear out of habit.

“I realized after my phone call that it wasn’t fair to spring dinner on you without telling you. I worried you wouldn’t have anything to wear. We didn’t exactly talk about fine dining.”

“Gran would disown me if she found out I didn’t travel with something to throw on for an unexpected dinner invitation,” she said.

“Well, we can’t have that.”

He held out his arm to her, and she took it gladly. He wore a thin-knit, deep-blue jumper over a white collared shirt and a pair of charcoal-gray slacks. As they walked, she could smell the faint, clean hint of the hotel’s shampoo, and she let herself angle just a little closer to him, breaking off only when they reached the lift.

Downstairs in the restaurant, a ma?tre d’ led them through the half-full restaurant to a quiet table in one of the many bay windows. She watched Liam under her lashes, trying to read any awkwardness or hesitation in his movements as the waiter doled out menus and wine lists.

“Do you think it’s changed much since Louise and Paul came here?” she asked, when they were at last alone.

Liam looked up from his menu and smiled. “I’d hope not. It must’ve been quite something, even in the middle of the war, when it was requisitioned for officers.”

“It really does feel like stepping back in time,” she said, gazing along the rich light blue velvet banquettes that lined the back wall. Gold-leaf embellishment climbed up the walls in soaring swags, coming to meet in five points along the ceiling like the church vaults she’d studied in her art-and-architecture class at Barlow.

“You meet Kate tomorrow,” said Liam.

“We meet her,” she corrected him.

He sat back, amusement in his eyes. “Yes, but you’re the one who found the tin and set yourself on this journey.”

“It feels strange to think that was just in September. It feels as though Louise has been a part of my life for a long time.”

“You’ve lived with her story.”

“And worried about her and wondered what happened to make her write that last entry. ‘Everything is over.’ It’s so final,” she said.

“We could be reading into it,” he warned.

She shook her head. “We’ve both read the entire diary. Louise is a lot of things, but dramatic isn’t one of them. If something went wrong, it went very wrong.”

“Hopefully we’ll find out tomorrow,” he said.

The waiter came and cracked open a slender bottle of sparkling water. “And would you care for wine tonight?” the waiter asked.

Liam tilted his head. “I’d be happy to order, unless you’d prefer to take a look yourself?”