Page 75 of The Girls of Pearl Harbor
Grace stared into his warm brown eyes. She saw pain shining there, but she also saw compassion.
‘You don’t have to say anything, Grace. We don’t ever have to speak of this again.’
She nodded, and his hand fell away. But when she didn’t move, he stepped past her.
‘Knock, knock,’ he called out, waiting before opening the tent and holding the canvas back for her.
‘April’s working tonight,’ she managed. ‘The others are working, too, or still out for the night.’
Teddy poked his head in, appearing to look around, and when he saw that the beds were all empty, he took her hand and walked in with her.
‘Which one is yours?’ he asked.
Grace pointed and shuffled forward, taking off his big, heavy, warm jacket and passing it to him. She held one hand over her chest to pull the fabric of her own uniform together.
‘Thank you.’ Her voice was still so husky she could barely get the words out. Her throat felt like sandpaper, as rough as if she’d swallowed a handful of sand.
‘Can I, ah, get anything for you?’
Grace shook her head. ‘No.’
They stood awkwardly, and she wondered what she’d do with her uniform. Could she even sew it properly, or was she going to need a new one? What would she tell anyone who asked what had happened? Her lower lip started to tremble again.
‘I’m going to go now,’ Teddy said. ‘Or I can wait if you’d rather—’
Teddy seemed to sense her fear and reached for her. He lowered her until she was sitting on the bed before sitting down beside her and opening his arm up. She hesitated, drawn to him like a moth to light, but knowing she shouldn’t go to him so willingly. In the end, he made the decision for her, his fingers closing around her shoulder as he gently pulled her into him.
‘I’m sorry I never wrote to you again,’ he whispered.
Grace tucked even closer to him, feeling the safest she’d ever felt in all her life against his firm chest.
‘I started writing, but I never knew what to say,’ he said. ‘And instead of coming to find you, I convinced myself that you were better off not seeing a broken, exhausted reminder of your past.’
She pushed back and looked up at him, his face only half-visible in the almost darkness.
‘Why would you think that?’
He let out a deep sigh. ‘I don’t think you want to hear me talk about war and the man I’ve become.’
Grace reluctantly moved away from Teddy and folded her legs underneath herself, facing him now. ‘Try me. You don’t have to protect me from what you’ve been through, Teddy. I want to hear.’
The words hung between them, but he was too kind to remind her that he’d already had to protect her tonight. A moan seemed to gurgle through his throat as he wrestled with the words.
‘I don’t even know where to start.’
Grace reached for his hand, holding his palm in hers. ‘I see men every day who’ve lost everything. They come in filthy and hungry, broken in their bodies and sometimes their minds too,’ she confessed. ‘I’m already seeing the reality of war, Teddy, so you don’t have to shield me. It’s already all around me.’
He bowed his head, but she never let go of his hand. ‘They never tell you what it’s like to take a life,’ he quietly said. ‘What it’s like to shoot at targets that are actual human beings or buildings and places with people inside.’
Tears slipped down her cheeks as she heard the pain in his words.
‘I keep thinking about those pilots who surprised us at Pearl Harbor, how they were so close they could see their targets, and yet they had no qualms about shooting us unawares when we weren’t even at war yet.’
‘I think about that day a lot still,’ she said. ‘I think we probably always will.’
Teddy was silent before finally speaking again. ‘I think about it every time I fly.’
They sat together, silent for a long time, before she eventually found the nerve to shuffle closer to him again, her head to his chest as his arms circled her. She could have stayed like that all night, listening to the gentle huff of air as he breathed, his steady heartbeat managing to calm her as if nothing terrible had even happened to her.
