Page 44 of The Secrets We Left Behind
“You couldn’t sleep either?” she asked.
His smile made his lips tilt upwards just a little. “If I’m honest, I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to sleep again.”
She turned her attention to the water starting to boil and took two mugs down from the shelf. It was nice to have someone to talk to, even if she was still a little unsure around him.
“Coffee?”
He grunted. “I’d prefer a strong, sweet tea, but coffee will do.”
She smiled to herself, surprised at how different her mood was all of a sudden at having a light conversation with someone who wasn’t her sister. “I’ve heard English people drink tea by the gallon.”
“You wouldn’t be wrong.”
She had no sugar to offer him, and the coffee was a strange yellow color and didn’t taste like it had pre-war, but she passed him the steaming mug anyway and was pleased when he followed her to the kitchen table. Jack was snoring lightly from the floor nearby, the last dying flames of the fire dancing light across his body, and she found comfort in the regular inhale and exhale of his breath.
Elise tucked her fingers around the mug, warming them even though she wasn’t cold.
“Do you keep thinking about it? What happened that day?” she asked, feeling tentative even though she’d just come out and asked him what she’d been wondering herself.
“Every time I close my eyes, I can see them, all around me,” he said. “You know, we did it for the greater good, all of us full of the belief that we could actually hold the bastards off, give other men a real chance at evacuating.”
She took a sip of her drink, wincing when it burnt the inside of her mouth. Harry had his hands wrapped around his mug too,only his overlapped, making the china appear small and insignificant in his palms.
She knew most of what had happened, from what she’d seen and what he’d already told her, but she sensed he wanted to talk, and she found herself wanting to know more.
“What happened in there, Harry?” she eventually asked.
“When we started to run out of ammunition, everything changed. Suddenly those men, brave men who I’d fought beside for so long, started to crumble. Some were crying, others were swearing, and some were deadly silent. It was a nightmare.”
Elise waited, seeing how far away he was, his eyes fixed straight past her, as if he could see something she couldn’t, and she almost turned to look for herself. But of course he was lost in his own memories; nothing was there.
“And then we thought that the worst had happened, when we had to surrender,” he said, clearing his throat and taking a slug of coffee. She should have glanced away, pretended she couldn’t see his tears and hear the catch of his emotion, but she couldn’t, because it was too raw and there was no way she could ignore it. “We thought the worst that could happen was being marched away as prisoners of war. Not one of us could have guessed what they were going to do, that they’d just gun us down, unarmed and with a damn white flag held high.”
She wanted to reach out to him, to hold his hand as she had earlier that day, but her fingers remained locked together around her mug. Harry’s shoulders shuddered, his breath heaving out of his lungs, before he righted himself and cleared his throat again.
“Sorry, I just, I can’t stop thinking what I could have done, what we could have done differently, if we could have all made it, if we hadn’t tried to be heroes.”
“You are all heroes in my eyes,” she whispered, finally finding the courage to reach for him, just a touch, her fingers brushingover his and settling there, his knuckles beneath the pads of her fingertips. “And you deserved to survive, Harry. Don’t for a second think that you didn’t deserve to live.”
“And Peter?” he asked. “I should have fought harder, I should have—”
“You did everything you could for him, Harry. There’s nothing more you could have done,” she said, thinking of her sister meeting the Nazi commander and what that one decision might have done to change all their fates, Addy’s included. “You know, in a way, though, I do understand the guilt you feel at surviving.” The words were hard to say, but she forced herself to continue. “Losing my brother, knowing there was nothing I could do to help him, it’s all-consuming sometimes. I still ask myself why, why he was the one taken, and then I start to push everyone away from me, even my sister sometimes.”
Harry’s brown eyes pulled her in so hard that her breath caught in her throat, but she stayed put, resisting the urge to flee.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know me saying that won’t help and it sure as hell won’t bring him back, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
She forced a small smile. “It actually means a lot to hear you say that. And I’m sorry too, for what you’ve been through. I’m sorry my sister let you down, that she did something like that without talking to us first.”
A warm silence hung between them for a moment as they sipped and sat, eyes settling more easily on one another across the table this time.
He never moved his fingers, but he did look back up at her, and she saw the softness within him, a kindness there that pulled her all the way in.
“I can’t stop thinking about him, that’s all. I don’t blame her, Peter knew what he wanted and I’ve seen how kindhearted she is, I know she did what she thought was right,” Harry whispered. “Butwhat if I’m the only survivor? What if no one ever believes what happened to us?”
Elise didn’t know what to say. “Then at least there will be one of you to tell the story,” she said. “It doesn’t make you somehow less of a man, less of a soldier, just because you fought to save yourself, or because you’re the only one left standing.”
He stared back at her with such truth in his gaze, such an openness, that she knew she had to keep talking, keep telling him what she was thinking.
