May 1942
Ipswich, England
Clack. Clack. Clack. The sound of typing filled the kitchen as Scarlett broke the heart of the diplomat’s daughter.
Her heart clenched, as if she could feel the very pain she was putting her character through. She reminded herself that she would put them back together once they had both grown enough to deserve the other. This wasn’t a permanent heartbreak. This was a lesson.
The knocks at the door nearly blended into the monotonous clicks of the typewriter.
Nearly.
She glanced up at the clock. It was after eleven, but it was also the first night Constance was scheduled to be back from her honeymoon.
Scarlett pushed away from the table and walked to the door barefoot, steeling her heart for whatever she might find on the other side. Who knew what that monster could have done to her little sister in the last week?
She plastered a smile on her face, then opened the front door. She blinked in confusion.
Howard stood on her doorstep, dressed in uniform, his face drawn and pale.
He wasn’t the only one. Behind him stood other faces she recognized, all in uniform with eagles on their shoulders.
Her stomach pitched, and she gripped the doorframe with white knuckles. How many? How many of them were here?
“Scarlett,” Howie said, clearing his throat when his voice broke. How many?
Her eyes jumped from one hat to the next as she counted. Eleven. There were eleven pilots outside her door.
“Scarlett,” Howie tried again, but she could barely make out the words. Jameson usually flew in a formation of twelve. Three flights of four.
Eleven of them were here.
No. No. No. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t possible.
“Don’t say it,” she whispered as gravity shifted beneath her feet. There would only be one reason they were here.
Howie removed his hat, and the others followed suit. Oh God. This was really happening.
She had the instant, overwhelming urge to slam the door in their faces, to un-open the letter, but the words were already written, weren’t they? There was nothing she could do to stop this from becoming what it already was.
Her eyes squeezed shut, and she leaned in to the sturdy wood of the doorframe as her heart caught up to what her brain already knew. Jameson hadn’t come home.
“Scarlett, I’m so sorry,” Howie said softly.
She took a fortifying breath, then straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and opened her eyes. “Is he dead?”
There were words she’d asked herself hundreds of times over the past two years. Words that haunted her brain, amplifying her worst fear every time he’d be late. Words that taunted her sanity while she’d been a plotter. Words she’d never before spoken aloud.
“We don’t know.” Howard shook his head.
“You don’t know?” Scarlett’s knees trembled, but she stayed standing.
Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe there was hope.
“He went down somewhere around the coast of the Netherlands. From what he said on the radio, and what some of us saw, he took a hit to the fuel tank.”
Heads nodded, but there weren’t many eyes willing to meet hers.
“So there’s a chance he’s alive.” She stated it as fact, and the fraying edges of her composure latched on to the possibility with a ferocity she hadn’t known she was capable of.
“The cloud cover was thick,” Howard said.
There was a mumble of agreement among the pilots.
“None of you saw him crash?” she asked, a dull roar filling her ears. They all shook their heads.
“He said he was going down.” Howie’s face crumpled for a heartbeat, but he sucked in a deep breath and pulled himself together. “He said to tell you that he loves you. That was the last thing he said before he disappeared.” He ended in a whisper.
Her breaths came faster and faster, and it was all she could do to keep the panic at bay. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be.
It simply wasn’t possible to live in a world where he didn’t exist, and therefore he couldn’t be dead.
“So what you’re saying is that my husband is missing.” Her voice seemed to come from outside her body, as though she wasn’t the one really speaking. In that moment, she felt cleaved in two. There was one Scarlett speaking, standing in her doorway, seeking any logical reason to believe Jameson might still be alive. The other Scarlett, the one who was gaining ground, screamed silently from the depths of her soul.
“Scarlett?” a higher, familiar voice asked. The gathering of pilots parted as Constance walked up the pavement. “What’s going on?” She asked Scarlett first, but when no answer could pass her lips, Constance filled the doorway beside her and faced Howie. “What. Is. Going. On?”
“Jameson’s missing.” His voice didn’t break this time, as though it had become easier to say.
As though he was accepting it.
“Where?” Constance asked, her arm encircling her sister’s waist to steady her.
This wasn’t right. It was Scarlett’s job to comfort Constance, not the other way around.
“We’re not a hundred percent sure,” Howie admitted. “It was right along the coast of the Netherlands. So we’re not sure if he managed to land, or…”
Or if he went down in the sea, Scarlett finished in her own head.
The odds of surviving the crash, and even being taken prisoner, were better than those of outlasting the cold of the sea.
“You’re going to look, right?” Scarlett asked, her breath catching. “Tell me you’re going to search for him.” It wasn’t a request.
Howard nodded once, but there was no hope in his eyes. “At first light,” he confirmed. “We have the general coordinates from when we were attacked.”
Another thread to hold on to. Another sliver of hope. He wasn’t dead.
He couldn’t be.
“And you will tell me what you find.” Another demand. “No matter what it is, Howie. Wreckage… Or nothing. You will tell me.”
“You have my word.” Howie turned his hat in his hands. “Scarlett, I’m so sorry. I never wanted —”
“He’s not dead yet,” Scarlett blurted. “He’s missing. Find him.”
The pilots nodded to her and made their farewells, all filing back to the small line of cars they’d driven from the airfield. Howie was the last to go, and he seemed to work with himself, struggling for words, but when they didn’t come, he left, too.
Scarlett stood in her doorway, Constance’s arm around her waist, as the cars drove out of sight. She needed to go inside. Needed to close the door. They were still under blackout. But she couldn’t make her feet move. She was a statue, frozen in that moment, held together only by denial and a cracking, plaster facade of will.
“Come on, love,” Constance said soothingly as she ushered Scarlett inside.
“He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead.” Scarlett whispered the mantra, her heart doing its damnedest to convince her mind not to crumble.
She would know, right? If her heart was still beating, then Jameson’s had to be as well. And William… No. Don’t open that door.
Constance supported most of Scarlett’s weight as she brought her to the sofa. “It will be all right,” she promised, just as Scarlett had promised her on the supply room floor.
She went blessedly numb as she looked up into her sister’s eyes. “I would’ve left the letter unread.”
Constance sank into the sofa beside her, then gripped Scarlett’s hand. There was nothing they could do now but wait.
