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Julia cleared her throat. “This reunion is very touching, but may I suggest we remove ourselves to an area a little farther away from the battlefield?”

Kate wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, giving a laugh that wanted to be a sob. “I’m glad to see you too, Julia. I’ve left Zélie behind that cart. She’s sleeping. She’s got a broken leg. I had thought I could carry her to a road where we could get a lift with an army truck, but it was hurting her too much. So I thought we’d find someplace to wait until morning.”

Julia borrowed Emmie’s flashlight to twitch back the blanket and look at Zélie’s leg. “You’re an excellent administrator, but you make a lousy nurse. I’m going to need to reset that.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad.” Trust Julia not to sugarcoat it, thought Kate. “Let’s get her into the truck. The sooner we get you both out of here the better.”

They all froze as everything around them shook, lights dotting the sky from miles away. It was like all the Fourth of July fireworks all together, sparks setting off sparks setting off sparks, a crazy funnel of electricity lighting the sky.

Kate stared, half-blinded. “What was that?”

“They’ve been blowing up bridges. . . .” offered Emmie.

“That wasn’t a bridge,” said Julia.

There was a choked, whimpering sound from their feet. The noise had startled Zélie awake, jarring her injured leg. Any other five-year-old would have howled. Instead, she had crammed her hand into her mouth, trying so very hard not to be heard. It cut Kate clear through to the heart, listening to her try to choke back her pain so the Boche wouldn’t get them.

“We’re getting you out of here,” Kate said contritely, kneeling by the little girl. “Do you remember Dr. Pruyn? She’s going to fix your leg for you. And then we’re going to scold you like you’ve never been scolded before for scaring us like that.”

“I needed—Minerva—” Zélie rasped, her eyes wide with fear and pain.

“You’ll just have to make do with us,” said Kate, trying to smile. “I know we’re not as good as a goat, but we’ll try. Oh dear. Please don’t cry.”

“Of course she’s crying. She has a compound fracture,” said Julia impatiently.

Next to her, Julia had been having a whispered consultation with Emmie. They arranged themselves on either side of Zélie, the flashlight lying on its side on the ground so that it shone directly on the girl’s leg. Next to Julia were two broken boards from the cart.

“Hold her hand,” Julia said tersely to Kate.

Kate had never felt so helpless, clinging to Zélie’s hand, burying the little girl’s head in the folds of her skirt as Julia did something truly horrible to her leg. Zélie gave a muffled cry and then went limp, her forehead cold and clammy.

“Julia?” whispered Kate.

“Hush,” said Julia, fitting the two boards around the girl’s leg and wrapping the blanket around and around. “Not what she needs, but it will have to do. They didn’t teach us field dressing at Johns Hopkins. What? She’s fainted, that’s all. You can lift her now. Emmie, brace her legs. One . . . two . . .”

They got Zélie into the White truck, Julia putting Zélie’s head on her lap and improvising a makeshift cradle for her legs, as Emmie squeezed Kate’s hand and said, “Don’t worry, it’s all all right now,” before, improbably, going over to turn the crank and start the car as if starting a car were something she did all the time.

Kate climbed up onto the bench seat, shivering with cold and reaction. “Thank you,” she said belatedly. “Thank you for coming to get me.”

“Thank Emmie,” said Julia from the back. “Dr. Baldwin was all for leaving you.”

“Don’t be silly. We couldn’t leave you.” Emmie, with a look of great concentration, was backing up, making her way as carefully as she could around the broken jitney.

Kate’s hands felt like they belonged to someone else. She flexed them, just to see if she could. “I’ve been impossibly stupid. You can tell me what a fool I was, if you like.”

“It wasn’t just you. I should have realized she was missing,” said Emmie apologetically. “If I hadn’t been distracted . . .”

Somehow, Emmie apologizing just made it even worse. It was just like Emmie, taking the blame when it was Kate’s fault, when it was all Kate’s fault. And Kate had let her. For months and months, she had made herself feel important at Emmie’s expense. But not anymore.

“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.” Kate dug her nails into her palms, welcoming the pain. “I was the one who said we shouldn’t go off alone. I’m the one who said we should never get attached. I’m the one who should have known better.”

Emmie looked at her in surprise. “But of course you had to go. You couldn’t have left her there—any more than we could have left you.”

Kate couldn’t help herself; a little whimpering noise came out and then another. She clamped her hands over her face, trying to hold the sobs in, but they forced themselves through anyway, all the tears she hadn’t let herself cry before, ugly, gasping, panting tears, ripping through her, tearing her insides out.

Of course, Emmie said. Of course. As if it were obvious. It would never occur to Emmie that Zélie was just a French orphan or that Kate might have gotten them all killed or that, as their acting director, Kate had responsibilities to the Unit that ought to have kept her from haring off on a whim. And Kate didn’t know if that was wonderful or awful, but she did know that her heart was a shriveled, stunted thing compared to her friend’s because she would have thought those things, she had thought those things.