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“It’s all right now,” Emmie was saying, as though Kate were Zélie, as though she were five and could be comforted with a pat on the arm.

“Why are you being so kind?” Kate shook her head blindly, her face contorting. “I’ve been dreadful to you. I’ve been a rotten friend.”

The truck slowed as Emmie waited for a row of gun carriages to pass, trundling along to the front. “What are you talking about? You know I would never have gotten through—”

Kate gave a hiccupping laugh. “Smith without me?”

“Well, yes, that too. But what I meant was all this.” Emmie waved at the guns. “I know I was selfish to ask you to come but—you’ve been a rock for all of us.”

Kate didn’t feel like a rock. She felt more like sand, shifting and shiftless. “It’s the other way around. It’s always been the other way around. I would never have gotten through any of this without you. I would never have gotten through Smith without you. I probably would have been back in Brooklyn within six months.” She’d never admitted it to herself before, but it was true. She’d been so scared and lonely. “Do you have any idea how afraid I was of you all? You all spoke right and dressed right, and there I was, embarrassing myself with every vowel and terrified of anyone finding out I didn’t belong.”

“But of course you belonged! You passed the entrance exams. That’s more than I can say. They had to make an exception for me.”

Kate pressed her lips tightly together to try to stop them from wobbling. “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have done a thing at Smith other than study. I would never have joined a literary society or the dramatic society. I would never have thought I could. All those picnics and ice cream socials—I would never have been invited on my own. But because you took me up, other people did too. That was all your doing. All the best things were your doing. And you never once took any credit.”

The camions had gone. Emmie slowly eased the truck back on the road. “Because there wasn’t any credit to take. You were secretary of the literary society, Kate! You were voted in fair and square.”

“Because you told me to run for it. Do you think I would have, myself? Everything I had, everything I was, came from you.” All the walls Kate had built so carefully were toppling, one after the other, leaving her as much a ruin as Grécourt, jagged on the outside and empty within. “I didn’t stop writing because I thought you were a burden. I stopped writing because I was afraid people would think I was hanging on your coattails. I was afraid you would think I was hanging on your coattails.”

Emmie was squinting at the road, scanning it for potholes. “I always thought I was hanging on your coattails. And that you just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“I never minded helping you—I liked being useful. And you always made everything so fun.” It sounded so trivial put like that. But it wasn’t. There had been such joy in the world in their Smith days, and so much of that joy had come from Emmie, from her ability to laugh at herself, to make anything a joke. Afterward, in Boston, Kate had felt like half the light had gone out of the sky. Everything was grim and gray and serious. Even amusement had felt like work. “I missed you so much. It was so lonely without you.”

Emmie gave an audible sniff. “I missed you too. But I didn’t want to be a bother, so I thought when you didn’t write back—”

“You had your debutante year and all those parties and your work—”

“You had your work and I was sure you were making all sorts of friends who were so much better than I am—”

Kate twisted on the seat, feeling the tears making tracks down her dusty cheeks but not bothering to wipe them away. “There couldn’t be a better friend.”

“D-don’t b-be f-f-foolish.” Emmie was crying too, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, the truck wobbling unevenly across the road, causing a dispatch rider to shout something very uncomplimentary at them.

“If I might interrupt your effusions for a moment?” Julia’s voice rose from the back of the truck. “This is all very lovely, but please try not to crash the truck. I can set other people’s bones, but I don’t want to try it on my own.”

“I don’t want you to try it on me either,” said Kate, drawing in a long, shuddering breath and trying to wipe her face with a corner of her sleeve. She looked sheepishly at Emmie. “I guess thinking you’re about to die makes you realize what’s important.”

“Not crashing the truck,” said Julia firmly, holding on to Zélie to keep the movement of the truck from jarring her leg. “Not crashing the truck is important. You can indulge in all the sentimental rubbish you like once we’re safely to the hotel.”

“It’s not rubbish,” said Emmie indignantly. “Look, there’s the crossroads. We’re through the worst of it now.”

“Yes,” agreed Kate, looking at Emmie—Emmie!—confidently driving the truck and Julia cradling a five-year-old French girl. Everything was going mad around them and they had no idea where the Germans were or what the morning would bring, but they were all together, and that was enough. “I think we are.”

Kate was awakened the next morning by someone nudging her arm, hard.

Rubbing sleep out of her eyes, Kate blinked up to see Marie-Rose, one of their most faithful milk customers, standing over her, poking Kate’s prone form with her foot, her baby held in one arm while her toddler peeped out at Kate from behind Marie-Rose’s skirt.

“I have come for my milk,” Marie-Rose said.

“Your milk,” said Kate groggily, pulling herself up to a sitting position.

She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she must have. She remembered getting to the hotel just after midnight and finding it locked and Julia banging on the door until Nurse Goodale came and opened it. She remembered Dr. Baldwin and Julia rushing off with Zélie and holding Zélie’s hand while they did something deeply awful to her leg and wrapped it with proper splints and bandages and gave her something to make her sleep, while Kate knelt next to her on the floor, holding her hand. She must have fallen asleep that way, because here she was, still in her dust-coated uniform, on the floor of the parlor of the hotel. Zélie, her leg propped on cushions, was asleep next to her.

“Yes, my milk,” said Marie-Rose as if it were the most natural thing in the world that the Smith Unit would go on with the business of supplying her baby. It didn’t seem to matter to Marie-Rose that they weren’t at Grécourt anymore. They were the Smith Unit and they were here, and that was what they did.

There was something strangely reassuring about that.

Kate hauled herself to her feet, wincing at bruises she hadn’t remembered she had. “I’ll just go find that for you,” she said.