Page 43 of The Secrets We Left Behind
Cate.“Come in,” Elise called back.
The door slowly opened and Cate walked into the room, dark circles under her eyes like the blackest of shadows on the gloomiest winter night. The girl needed sleep, and she needed it yesterday.
“I couldn’t help but overhear you,” Cate said, her slender arms wrapped around herself. She’d been so confident and capable earlier, doing what needed to be done despite whatever horrors she’d been witness to, not to mention the fact that she’d walked through war and fought to survive in the bravest of ways. But now she looked childlike as she peeked out from beneath her fringe, holding herself, perhaps broken in a way that hadn’t been obvious before.
Elise patted the bed, inviting her to sit with them. “Please don’t think you’re not welcome, because that’s not the case.”
Cate slowly untangled her arms as she sat on the very edge of the bed.
“I just ...” She let out a loud breath, eyes shut for a beat, as if she were trying to find her words. “I know the burden I’ve put on you, that we’ve all put on you.”
Elise glanced at her sister, watching as Addy leant forward and grasped Cate’s hand. She’d almost done it herself, been so close to catching Cate as she trembled, but something had stopped her. The same something that had made her hesitate before opening the door to Harry and his friend; and the same something again that had made her pause before agreeing to help them or Cate.
“We’ll keep you safe here for as long as we can, Cate,” Elise said. “I want you to know that we’ll do everything we can to hide you.”
“But for how long?” Cate asked, her voice hollow. “We could be stuck here indefinitely, and that’s not fair on you. If they find out what you’ve done, if they—”
“Shhh,” Elise said, shuffling forward and placing a hand on Cate’s shoulder. “We’re all going to be fine, there’s no point fretting about something we don’t even know the answer to.”
“If there’s anything I can do, if there’s some way of making this easier on you or somewhere else we can go ...”
Cate’s eyes were filled with tears, but not one fell, and Elise found herself wondering how this British woman had managed to survive her ordeal, let alone be standing to tell the story. She wished she knew more about what was happening around them; she’d earlier relied on an old friend of her father’s for news, but she hadn’t been brave enough to make the trip to visit him for some time now. All she knew was what Harry had told her; that soon their entire region would be surrounded by Germans, that the ground would be crawling with them, and that France would surely fall. He seemed certain they were only days away from the French surrendering completely, which meant things would only get harder, not easier, for them all.
“There’s nowhere else,” Elise told her gently. “We’ll find a way through this that keeps us all safe.”
“But that’s the problem, I just can’t see a way through it,” Cate said. “I can’t believe we’ve been left behind, that so many troops might not have made it home.”
“Worrying isn’t going to make you feel better,” Elise said. “What you need is a nice long sleep. Everything will seem better in the morning.”
It was an outright lie, a fib mothers told their children to get them to bed, although she supposed that if the problem were small, it usually did feel better when the sun rose the next day. But the truth was, she had no idea how to keep them safe. Cate was one thing; they could get away with one lie, for a woman, for someone who wouldn’t be so hated by the enemy. But two British soldiers? She wasn’t even going to think about what would happen to them, to all of them, if that secret were uncovered when they were in the midst of enemy territory.
“Come on, let’s get you settled,” Addy said, her arm around Cate as she helped her up. “My mother’s bed is the comfiest in the house.”
Cate stopped moving then, turning back to Elise. “What happened to her? To your mother?”
“She died of a broken heart, I suspect,” Elise said.
Cate didn’t ask any more questions, and for that Elise was grateful. She waited for them to leave the room and then sank down into the pillows, knowing that she was about as far from sleep as possible. Her mind was racing, trying to figure it all out, trying to think what Louis would have done, or what her father would have said.
Just take it one day at a time.She listened to her brother’s words in her mind, knowing that he would have been so calm, refusing to listen to her worries. She’d always been the worrier and he’d been the free spirit, the one who’d say yes to anything just because he loved living so much.
Elise refused to cry, pushing up to her feet and going downstairs. Sleep was for the dead; Louis would have said that, too.
A sliver of moonlight fell through the smallest of gaps in the curtain as Elise walked into the kitchen. She looked around, rememberingthe way her father had often sat alone in the dark, hot drink in hand, lost in his own thoughts. She’d sometimes sat with him; other times she’d slipped back up the stairs, not wanting to disturb him. At the time, she’d wondered why he hadn’t just gone up to bed to sleep, but she knew now that he’d felt as if the weight of the world had been on his shoulders, because that’s exactly how she felt now. And she’d also seen the heavy load of guilt resting upon him too, at so vocally encouraging his son to fight for their country, only to have him slaughtered within weeks of departure.
In truth, her father hadn’t been the one to make the choice; Louis had been a young man, expected to fight. But his guilt had been at how quickly he’d pushed him, how robustly he’d announced him as a hero to their homeland.
Elise filled the kettle with water to boil, and then placed her palms on the cool kitchen bench, eyes shut as she folded forward.
“Anything I can do?”
She leapt up, hand to her heart as she spun around. “Harry! You almost gave me a heart attack!”
He moved out of the darkness and closer toward her, facing her from the other side of the kitchen.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, his voice soft and low. “I just didn’t want you to think you were alone. In here, I mean.”
She smiled as he turned on the light, running her eyes over his face, at the stubble brushing his cheeks, at the easy way he looked back at her even though they barely knew one another. She’d seen a different side to him earlier in the way he’d spoken to Cate, the way he’d almost shunned her nursing skills out of guilt for being alive. But now he looked at ease, with her at least, although maybe he was just too tired to be any other way with her in the middle of the night, standing in her kitchen. They’d clashed the night that he’d arrived, and the following day, but she was starting to thinkthat perhaps she’d been a little too hard on him after everything he’d been through.
