As Bright as Heaven(68)

“Thank you all for coming,” he said to us. “You didn’t have to.”

“It’s our pleasure,” Papa said. “We’re all very grateful for your service.”

Jamie seemed frozen by Papa’s words for a second, as though he needed a moment to figure out what he’d done that we Brights should be thankful for.

“Thank you, sir,” Jamie finally said. But I could tell it was good manners speaking. He was still pondering my father’s expression of gratitude.

Dora linked her arm through Jamie’s, and Roland Sutcliff picked up Jamie’s duffel. We made our way through the pockets of reunions happening all around and walked to our vehicles.

Dora had earlier invited us to come back to their house for a welcome-home lunch. Maggie had made a banana cream pie for the occasion, and so after parking the Overland at home and getting the pie, we walked across the street and up the stairs to the Sutcliffs’ living quarters.

“Let’s not stay long,” Papa said quietly on the way, Alex still in his arms. “Jamie looks tired.”

“Yes, I agree,” I said.

Maggie said nothing.

It is so obvious to me how lovestruck she is. Perhaps no one else can tell. At least no one else let on today that they could. And I can’t help feeling some concern for Maggie. I don’t want her to get hurt. It is one thing to have written letter after letter to Jamie during the war; it is another to have him home again, living right across the street, and yet with such a spread of years between them. Even newly at fourteen, Maggie is still a child. She has seen more horrors than any young person should—we all have—but her being infatuated with a twenty-one-year-old man is proof to me she is still just a girl.

Maggie sat next to Jamie at the meal, hanging on every word that he said—not that there were many. She barely ate anything herself. She behaved as one who had something important to tell Jamie and was just waiting for the right moment. Having us all in the room with her was messing with her plans.

Jamie saw none of this. He didn’t seem to be seeing anything. If possible, his eyes were more empty now than when he had stepped off the ship that morning.

After the meal, Dora asked Maggie to come help her get the desserts ready. Willa and Alex started playing on the floor with some of Charlie’s old toys, and Papa and Roland went into the living room to smoke cigars Papa had brought to mark the day. They had invited Jamie to join them, but he’d declined.

In a matter of seconds, I was alone at the table with Jamie. He was staring at the children playing on the rug in the other room.

“We’ll leave right after dessert,” I said, wanting him to know I could tell how much he wanted to be alone.

He looked up. “Thank you for coming.” There wasn’t an ounce of genuineness in his words, and yet he was not being insincere, either. He hadn’t heard what I’d said. Not really.

“Maggie made a pie,” I added, those words popping out from nowhere other than that I wanted him to be mindful of Maggie’s tender feelings.

“She didn’t have to go to that trouble.”

“Maggie’s very fond of you, Jamie.” I locked my gaze onto his. Or tried to. His eyes seemed made of paper. What in God’s name had he seen over there? I knew the trenches had been awful. I had read what the Allies had been up against. I knew that Jamie’s regiment, like so many others, had been exposed to mustard gas—a quiet poison that could blister the inside of your throat and lungs so that you’d suffocate on your own tissue if you breathed enough of it. I also knew the Germans’ mortar shells could rip a man in two. I knew Jamie had marched with a rifle, and that he’d likely had to fire it again and again and again.

“Maggie doesn’t know me,” Jamie replied quietly. “She doesn’t know who I am.”

“You’re a man who has miraculously come home from the war in one piece and to people who love you.”

“In one piece,” he said vacantly, as though he were still a world away from us. “Is that what you see?”

Words of response froze in my throat. I could think of nothing to say.

Maggie came in then and placed the pie she’d made in front of Jamie.

“Would you like to cut it?” Maggie held the knife toward him. Jamie looked at the handle of the knife for a long moment and then shook his head.

“You do it,” he said. “I’d just make a mess of it.”

I saw then, as clear as crystal, that Jamie still had his arms and legs, still had his sight and hearing, but he’d been gravely wounded somehow, and the wound must have been so deep inside him, none of us could see where to press a hand and stop the bleeding.

And then with equal clarity, I realized that all of us in that room were like that, in one way or another. All of us. Me. My sisters. Papa. Little Alex. Roland and Dora. And Jamie. We were all wounded inside where no one could see. None of us had survived the last year unscathed.

We had all been dealt crippling, devastating blows that had crushed us to the core. Jamie was the only one of us brave enough to admit that we’d all been transformed.

The world was different after the flu and the war. And so were we.





CHAPTER 46



? June 1919 ?





Willa


I am dreaming of Mama, and it’s like she is alive again. I’m so happy to see her I call out her name, and my own voice wakes me up.