Page 24 of The Secrets We Left Behind
“They slaughtered them all, Pete, when we were holding a goddamn white flag!” Harry choked out.
“I can’t stay here, I have to try,” Peter cried. “We have to surrender, we have to. It’s the only way! They’ll find us here and kill everyone!” He clutched at Addy’s sleeve, frightening her when he wouldn’t let her go. “Please, you have to help me!”
Harry turned then, gesturing to both of them as he stared down at Peter, his eyes as cold as ice. “Maybe locking him in the attic isn’t such a bad idea after all.”
“Harry, I want you to go up to bed and get some rest,” Elise said softly. “You must be exhausted, and we can look after Peter.”
“I’m fine,” Harry muttered, running his fingers through his hair and looking almost as crazed as Peter now, his eyes bloodshot and his skin ghostly white.
“It wasn’t a question,” Elise said. “It was an order. You need to rest if you’re going to heal.”
Adelaide didn’t hear what he said in reply, focusing on Peter instead and bending to try to help him up. She couldn’t stand to see him lying on the floor like that. He yelped, the sort of a noise a dog made if it were kicked, and she knew that with every movement he must want to scream out in pain.
“Here, let me help.” Elise was beside her now, assisting Peter to his feet. Orfootin this case.
“I need to go,” he whimpered. “Please.”
Elise let out a loud sigh, clearly frustrated, but Adelaide could only cry. Her cheeks were flushed and her hands were starting to tremble, but she felt the most overwhelming desire to do something. She’d been helpless last night when it came to nursing wounds, but caring for Peter was something she could do—so long as Elise dealt with his wound, because she couldn’t so much as look at it.
“Let’s make up a bed for him on the sofa,” Elise said, as the stairs creaked and Harry followed her orders and went up to rest. “Then I’m going to see what food I can get, and you can stay and look after him.”
Addy moved slowly as Peter shuffled between them across the living room. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” she whispered. “If he wants to surrender, if he truly thinks it’s the right thing to do—”
“You stay with him, I’m going to get the food,” Elise said, as if she hadn’t even heard her. “Are we clear?”
But when Addy glanced at Peter, she knew that he’d heard her, and she also knew that she was the only one truly listening to him.
Adelaide gritted her teeth as she grasped the wheelbarrow handles. She hadn’t banked on how impossible it would be to actually push a grown man on her own. Sweat formed on her brow and every footstep made her want to collapse, but she hoped that with every movement, once they got a head of steam up, it would get easier. Twenty painful steps later, though, she decided there was no truth to her theory.
If she’d been able to talk instead of grunting from exertion, she would have kept making conversation with Peter, but he was crying out in pain himself with every bump. And as they passed the barn where he’d almost been shot dead, she knew there was little she could say to him.
Where were the bodies?
She stopped, staring at the space where they’d once been. There was still blood splattered all over the side of the timber barn, reddish-brown stains that were starting to fade already as they dried, but there were no fallen soldiers.
“That’s the place, isn’t it?” Peter rasped.
“Yes.” There was nothing she could say to soften the blow, so she didn’t try.
And then she saw the mound of dirt out in the field. They’d buried the bodies. A mass grave that contained ... She tried to recall how many soldiers had been killed. Ninety-seven. There had been ninety-seven of them killed, that’s what Harry had said. How on earth they’d buried that many men so fast, she had no idea.
Adelaide’s lower back spasmed in protest as she fought to push Peter again, knees deeply bent to help with the load. She’d discreetly asked one of the few neighbors still in residence where the German compound was, and she doubted she’d be able to take another step by the time she got there.
Thankfully it wasn’t too far to go. With sweat making her top cling to her body and her hair damp to her forehead, Adelaide saw movement up ahead. She thought that Peter might have passed out from the pain he was so quiet, but when she set the barrow down and bent forward to catch her breath, he finally spoke.
“Are we there?” he ground out.
She surveyed the chateau up ahead. It looked to her as though the Nazi regiment had set up camp in the old abandoned property, and all of a sudden she felt truly scared for the first time since offering to take Peter.
What if they shoot at me? What if he tells them straight away where Harry is hidden, that we wanted to keep him hidden too?She forced the thoughts away, not wanting to think too far ahead, but it was impossible not to.
Adelaide barely had time to jump off the road before she was retching into the trees beside them, vomiting over and over until there was nothing left in her stomach. She stayed bent over for a moment longer, taking a few breaths before finally standing upright and taking out a handkerchief, dabbing at her mouth, horrified that she’d been so violently ill where anyone could have seen her.
“You’re worried, about me, aren’t you?” Peter’s voice took her by surprise.
“About both of us, actually,” she admitted. “But yes, mostly about you.”And what my sister will do to me when she finds out, she thought.
“I just want to go home.” Tears filled his eyes and he started to cry. “If they let me surrender, maybe I’ll make it back. Maybe they’ll let me go home.”
