Letters From Home. Kristina McMorris

waking his brother from nightmares. All those months after their mother’s death, he would climb up the bunk-bed ladder to interrupt the kid’s tossing and turning.

      When had things become so backward?

      Morgan blew out a quiet, shaky exhale, his muscles as taut as tucked Army bedding. He swept a glance over the mounds bivouacked around him: his slumbering squad, spread throughout the pasture like grazing cattle.

      He rested the back of his hand on his forehead and inhaled the familiar smell of dewy meadow. He’d find it soothing if not for the distant barrage of artillery fire, or the vengeful explosions of Hitler’s “Buzz Bombs.” Not quite the sounds of summer nights on the farm.

      From star to star he drew imaginary lines, struggling to erase the haunting pictures flipping through his mind. Considering how many images there were, it was hard to believe only two months had passed since their troop transport ship left New York. For twelve days they’d sailed in the dank, creaking chamber, zigzagging to avoid wolf packs of German subs. Poor Charlie had rarely been sick a day in his life, but the Atlantic’s unforgiving pitch and roll made up for lost time; his waistline shrank two belt loops before the ship had anchored.

      “Good thing we didn’t join the Navy,” Morgan had joked. Charlie hadn’t laughed.

      Looking back, Morgan almost laughed himself, remembering how eager they’d all been to reach the living nightmare that waited across the English Channel. His squad had arrived on the Norman shore well after the D-Day invasion, but the gruesome crime scene still invaded his dreams. Even now, the memory of bodies washing ashore sent a chill zipping up his spine.

      Then again, the thought of death sometimes offered a strange sense of peace. A morbid notion, perhaps, until you’re at the tail end of another twenty-mile march beneath the hot French sun, with sixty pounds of gear bound to your chafed, raw back, your feet swollen and bleeding, your stomach knotted from K-rations. All elements of an Army conspiracy, Morgan decided, to make battle an appealing prospect.

      An effective strategy, as it turned out. At one point, he’d been suckered along with the rest of them. Like a kid awaiting a parade, he too had lined the road to welcome the tarpaulin-covered convoy. No one seemed to mind that the front line was the next scheduled stop.

      Over winding roads, their truck had bumped and groaned. They’d snuck through the black of night with taped-over head-lights, getaway cars preparing for a heist. By the time they unloaded in Brezolles, Morgan was certain the torturous hours of marching or waiting for action would surely rival those spent in combat.

      The theory didn’t last.

      In three-foot-deep foxholes, he and Charlie had dueled trapped members of the German Panzer army, closing the Falaise Pocket like a tube of toothpaste. Though tens of thousands of Kraut soldiers had been captured, a hefty number escaped through the gap. Both a success and a failure. The essence of war.

      The battles were far from over, but the amount of bloodshed Morgan had already witnessed could soak the earth to its core. He’d learned there was no limit to how violently men and their machines could deconstruct the human anatomy. How desensitized people could become. How barbaric it all was.

      Now, studying the dirt road cutting through the meadow, the road they’d be tackling at daylight, he feared what other lessons war had in store for them.

      “Charlie,” Morgan said in a loud whisper. Unable to sleep, he wanted someone to talk to. He tapped his brother’s shoulder. The kid didn’t move. Not even a break in the rhythm of his heavy breaths.

      How was it that he rested so peacefully?

      Maybe in Charlie’s dreams they were somewhere far away. A safer time, safer place, where the air brimmed with warmth and the lullabies of crickets. They were kids back in their dad’s Iowa fields, dozing out in the open, naming shapes made of stars in the sky. A sky that offered them promises, futures as limitless as the universe.

      A sky that lied.

      Chapter 7

       Late August 1944 Chicago, Illinois

      The gilding of the room amplified the stiff formality at Liz’s table. In the corner, a string quartet played Rachmaninoff over silverware clinking on fine china. A tuxedoed host at the entrance relieved a woman of her fur stole while waiters slipped in and out of the kitchen that smelled of grilled steak and spices. Diners nodded and murmured and lobbed laughter back and forth like a tennis ball in a never-ending match.

      “All done here, miss?” The waiter gestured with his upturned hand, the movement as groomed as his mustache.

      Liz opened her mouth to decline, but Dalton replied for her. “We both are, thank you.”

      Why on earth did he choose a place as fancy as this if he wanted to eat at drive-in restaurant speed? Had she known he was in a hurry, she would have bypassed the vegetables and savored the marmalade chicken first.

      Liz pressed up a smile as the waiter retrieved their plates. The distraction of eating gone, she bounced her leg under the tablecloth, keeping time with the drumming awkwardness.

      Dalton took a long drink of red wine. Tabletop candlelight traveled through his crystal glass and cast severe shadows across his face. With the chiseling of his features, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine him draped in a toga, orating before the Roman Senate in another lifetime.

      “Was your steak all right?” she asked, attempting conversation.

      “Come again?”

      “You only ate half your dinner. Was something wrong with it?”

      “It was fine. I just had a late lunch.” He offered a lean smile, then popped his second Rolaids of the evening into his mouth. If it weren’t for knowing heartburn ran in his family, she might suspect she was the cause of his indigestion.

      Sipping her lemon-wedged ice water, she glanced to her side. A middle-aged couple, necks adorned in a bow tie and pearls, sat silently at the next table. Engrossed in their meals, they sliced, chewed, and dabbed their mouths with white linen napkins. They had to have been married fifteen, twenty years. No children, Liz guessed. Just a small, yippy lapdog waiting at home. The woman would knit next to the radio while her husband read the paper before they retired to opposite sides of the bed.

      Liz tried not to stare, but she had exchanged so few words with Dalton over dinner she began to feel as though they had more in common with the neighboring couple than each other.

      Dalton drained his glass and contributed to their small talk, finally. “Did you end up with all the classes you wanted?”

      “For the most part. I was hoping to take the one on Yeats, but it was still full.”

      “That’s great.” He glanced over his shoulder.

      Had he heard a word she’d said?

      “Dalton, I said I didn’t get into the class.”

      “Oh, right. Sorry. I’m just looking for our waiter.”

      She hoped he was planning to ask for the bill rather than the dessert menu.

      “Dalton Harris, how the heck ahh you?” A deep male voice encroached on their table.

      Dalton shot to his feet, accepted a handshake. “Mr. Bernstein, it’s a pleasure to see you.”

      A swath of the man’s slicked gray hair fell over his temple as he slapped a palm on Dalton’s shoulder. He reeked of cigar smoke and old Boston money, and the button closing his pin-striped suit jacket appeared ready to launch should he laugh too hard.

      “Did you just arrive?” Dalton asked.

      “Just finished up. Dinner meeting, you know. All hobnobbing and politics. Not a romantic evening like yours.” He motioned his double chin in Liz’s direction.

      “Please,” Dalton said, “allow me to introduce my girlfriend, Elizabeth Stephens.”

      Mr.