Page 36 of The Secrets We Left Behind
“Who’s Jack?”
Cate looked like she was about to faint, and Elise stepped forward to take her elbow, walking her across the room and forcibly pushing her down into a chair by the fire. She crouched beside her, wondering if the nurse was about to go into complete shock. Elise kept hold of her hand, warming it between her two palms.
“You need to tell me everything so I can help you,” she said quietly. “Who’s Jack?”
Cate looked back at her as if she suddenly didn’t want to tell, as if she were suddenly unsure who she could trust. But when Adelaide returned with the water, holding the cup for her as she greedily gulped it down, she seemed to calm. As they waited, Adelaide standing worriedly by the fire and Elise still crouching, the color slowly returned to Cate’s cheeks.
“All the British soldiers are being evacuated from Dunkirk,” Cate said, her voice so low that Elise had to concentrate hard to hear her. “We were the last remaining hospital, and we had so many patients being brought in. We were the only ones left to help them, but they were doomed anyway, whether we saved them or not.”
“All the British soldiers are leaving?” Elise asked, not sure she’d heard her right. “You’re certain? We’ve lost the war?” Harry hadmentioned the evacuation, but she’d found it hard to believe, and she certainly hadn’t comprehended the scale of it.
Cate nodded, rocking as she wound her arms around herself. “Yes, they’re all leaving, if they can make it out of here,” she said. “And the Germans came for us all, they were relentless, but I managed to escape as they took everyone else. All the doctors, the orderlies, and some of the patients.” She let out a shallow sob. “I don’t know if we’ve lost the war completely, but it definitely feels that way.”
“They didn’t kill them?” Adelaide asked, her voice softer than her sister’s, pushing between them. “The doctors and the patients, they didn’t just kill them?”
Elise frowned at her sister, but Addy didn’t seem to notice the reprimand.
“No, they didn’t kill them. They loaded them all in a big lorry and they just disappeared.”
“And who is this Jack to you? A doctor?” Elise asked. “Why is it so imperative that we return for him? Are you sure he’s even alive still?”
Cate was staring into the fire now, arms unwrapped, flexing her fingers as if the feeling were slowly coming back into them.
“Jack, well,” she started, shivering now, “he was a patient of mine. I couldn’t escape without him, and he’s the one who wanted to come here. When I left him, he was still very much alive.”
Elise rocked back on her haunches, studying Cate, deciding to trust her words and believe her story. She had no reason not to, and there was no way she could be faking the pain in her eyes. It was reflected in every part of her, that she’d been through trauma, and protective or not, Elise had a heart. She couldn’t turn her back.
“Where is he? Where did you leave him?” Elise asked.
Cate slowly turned back to her, as if she were coming out of a trance, lost in her memories perhaps. “We traveled on foot fromthe hospital because he told me we’d find help here, that it was a friendly village,” she said. “We got so close, but then daylight came and we had to hide. I left him in a ditch and then I started to walk, for maybe half an hour, maybe an hour, but—”
As Cate started to cry, Elise stood and gestured for Adelaide to comfort her. She needed to think, and as she paced the small room, all she could think about was how much the past twenty-four hours had changed everything for her. Up until then, all she’d had to focus on was keeping her and her sister fed and safe, keeping them out of harm’s way. And now she was faced with hiding two British soldiers in her home, along with a British nurse, with no hope of ever getting them home if Cate was right about the British army fleeing France. In the end, harm seemed to have found them anyway.
Which gave her two options: she could either open her heart and home and try to find this missing soldier with Cate, regardless of the risks, or she could refuse and prioritize her own little family. Which would mean turning Cate away and closing their door to her, or telling her to stay, but on their terms.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
Elise had never seen her brother so serious. His face, with the corner of his mouth usually upturned in a smile and eyes shining, held none of his usual humor, and as easy as it would have been to tease him for it, instead she took his hand into hers.
“I’m going to be fine,” she said. “We’reall going to be fine.”
He was silent, eyes searching her face. “It’s always been the two of us against the world,” he said. “I can’t imagine life going on here with me gone.”
She wanted to tell him not to go, that they’d find a way for him to stay, but she knew that wasn’t true. He had to go. Their father wouldn’t hear of him staying, and their country needed him.
“You’ll look after Mama and Addy, won’t you?” he said. “Keep her well out of harm’s way, you know what she’s like.”
They both laughed, but it was Louis who spoke again before she had the chance.
“Do you remember that day she came home with Oscar?” he asked.
“How could I forget?”
“Mama was furious when she brought him into the kitchen, all wet and bedraggled, and declaring those fleas falling off him were the plumpest she’d ever seen.”
Elise laughed. “I remember Mama running around the kitchen swatting at the floor, she was beside herself!”
Louis’s smile faded again then, and she squeezed his fingers as the memories faded, too.
