Page 21 of The Secrets We Left Behind
He yelped as she did one final pull, triumphantly holding up the bullet as Addy gave a little clap from behind her. Elise passed her both the bullet and the tweezers, before picking up the whisky and pouring some in the wound.
“Jesus Christ! Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Sorry.” She gave him the bottle by way of apology, and then tried to figure out how to bandage his shoulder.
“We defended until the bitter end, but we were out of ammunition. There was no way we were getting out of there alive if we didn’t surrender, and so that’s what we all decided to do.”
She slowly looked up at him. His eyes were swimming with tears. Up until now, he’d seemed so angry with the world, but now he just looked plain sad. And vulnerable.
“But they killed most of you, anyway,” she whispered. “We saw.”
Elise took in his thick brown hair, pushed off his forehead, the blueness of his eyes that shone so brightly despite his filthy face. As she finished bandaging his shoulder, she reached for a cloth and dipped it in the small amount of clean water she had, still warm, then wiped it across his cheeks. She suddenly needed to wipe all the grime away, as if by doing so she could erase some of the horrors they’d both witnessed, but she had barely started when he pushed her hand away.
She didn’t let him deter her, straight away starting to clean his skin gently again, and this time he didn’t stop her.
“I survived beneath the bodies of my friends,” he murmured, and she could feel his eyes searching her face as she carefully wiped, moving over his forehead now. “I lay there, feeling the weight of them and smelling the stench of death, until it was dark. Until I couldn’t hear anything any longer and lay buried beneath them all.”
“And that’s when you crawled to our front door?” she asked.
“I could hear something, but I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not. Turned out to be Peter, writhing in pain beneath a pile of men too,” Harry said, as she moved back and smiled at his now-clean face. “I managed to haul him out, and I knew we had one chance to pick a friendly house.”
“Why did you pick ours?” Addy asked, taking them both by surprise when she spoke after being silent for so long.
Elise sat back so Addy wasn’t blocked by her body, surprised at how brave her sister had been through it all. Her face was still ashenwhite, and her blue-green eyes were wide, but there was an open curiosity there that told Elise she wasn’t completely traumatized by what had happened. That she was genuinely interested in the men in their house, or maybe at having anyone in their house at all.
“Because I saw you when we ran past, just a glimpse, but I saw you both scurrying into your home as we holed up in that barn.”
Elise froze. “You didn’t see us watching, did you?” What if the Nazis had seen them too? What if they knew there were witnesses to what they’d done? Her pulse started to race.
“I saw two young women as we passed, that’s all. And I figured you might take pity on us.” His eyes met hers, the unspoken words reminding her that she almosthadn’ttaken pity on them, and they both knew it. “I didn’t see you watching, and to be honest, I doubt anyone could have.”
Elise breathed a sigh of relief as he sank down to the floor, his eyes shut and his breathing heavy. She rose to her feet and reached down a hand for her sister, hauling her up beside her. She was so tired that she felt like her eyelids were drooping; her feet like lead as she moved.
“We did the right thing tonight, Elise,” Addy whispered, staring down at the two men.
Elise embraced her, dropping a kiss to her hair, and wondered if she’d been too soft in opening their door to them, despite what her sister thought. But if she’d turned them away just because she was scared, she would never have forgiven herself. And she doubted Adelaide would have ever forgiven her, either.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ADELAIDE
The past year had brought so much pain with it; such soul-deep, gut-wrenching pain that Adelaide had often wondered how she’d ever survive beyond it, but today she’d seen pain on another level. Today she’d seen men massacred when they should have been taken prisoner, and she’d also witnessed the aftermath of injuries that would have challenged even the strongest of constitutions.
“What are we going to do with him?” Addy asked her sister, tucked up beside her in bed. It was cold, and they were both feeling so uncertain about what had happened, not to mention the fact that there were two strange men sleeping in their home, that they’d decided to curl up in bed together. They were propped up with pillows behind them against the metal headrest, blankets pulled up almost to their chins, and despite the warmth, Adelaide still had a regular shiver run through her.
“I don’t know,” Elise said, angled to face her now, so close that their knees were bumping under the covers. “If he keeps blabbering on about surrendering and trying to leave, we can’t exactly stop him, can we?”
Adelaide blinked away tears at the thought of giving him to the Germans. “What if he does surrender, and they just shoot him like they did all the others?”
“I know. I keep thinking that they expected all of them to be dead. I mean, they massacred those soldiers, so they certainly didn’t mean to leave any witnesses behind, did they?”
Addy gripped the blanket and pulled it up even higher, snuggling deep into it.Witnesses. That word terrified her, because that was exactly what they were; they’d witnessed the entire thing from start to finish.
“I tend to think that he’s not right in the head, or perhaps that he’s just in a state of temporary shock,” Elise said. “But I don’t know how to stop a grown man from doing something, other than by forcibly restraining him.”
Adelaide had never seen anything like it before, was still in shock herself at seeing anyone behave that way. She’d felt the terror inside him as if it were a real, breathing thing.
“I don’t want you to get upset with me, because it’s the last thing I want to do, but if it comes to it, and he seems sound of mind, we might not be able to stop him from leaving.”
