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I was thinking too much and nearly missed her next words, I sat forward. She was tackling the cemetery head on? Charity had balls.
* * *
CHARITY
“I saw the cemetery that’s behind here.” I gestured toward the beach house. “Some of those graves must be from the bombing of the tower. Was Patricia Romanus your grandmother? Aunt?”
He stared up at the treetops as he replied. “She was my great grandmother. I wondered when you’d find the graveyard.” The monotone of his answer was odd.
“But you couldn’t have known her?”
“No.”
I wrestled with myself for a second, noted how alert Cassius had become, and said what maybe I shouldn’t have. “I found a bone there, sticking from the earth. I left it there, buried it again. Isn’t that unusual to have no coffin? And creepy.”
He shrugged. “Times were different. The war casualties had coffins. There were five deaths from the tower. Patricia and the servants. It’s one of the few times war touched the island.”
“Plague, maybe? Were the others buried in a hurry?” Maybe I was getting too curious.
“I can’t recall. You can show me which grave later, so I can make sure the remains are interred properly. Cassius…” He continued smoothly, and spoke across me, leaning up on his elbow then placing his glass on the ground. “What do you think of war? You must have seen casualties?”
“I did. Quite a few of them, after some of the IEDs and attacks in the cities. It’s never nice, if I can even use nice in the same breath. War is ugly.”
“But is it ever justified?”
An interesting point. I drank my wine and nibbled treats as I listened. I’d never seen war except on TV.
“I guess? I mean Hitler, justified. The Taliban, justified. Ukraine, justified. The aggressor should not be allowed to win because he attacks first. Do that and you give them carte blanche to do it again.”
Carte blanche. Cassius did read big books. I needed to stop underestimating him. I gulped the last of my water and eyed the few inches left in the wine bottle. Why not. I slid off my lounge, fetched myself some wine, and slipped back, only to realize the men had stopped talking.
“What? Did you want this?” I raised the glass.
“No.” Cassius cleared his throat. “But your dress caught above your ass for a sec. Do it again.”
“Fuck off.” I grinned. “Keep talking.”
“Fuck.” Cassius pretended to write on his palm. “Off.Noted for later reference.”
I raised my hand to the collar, touching it, remembering the morning wake-up call.And shut up, ovaries, stop getting excited.
“Getting back to war,” the doctor hinted. “You consider that war is justified if you’re on the good side.”
“Yep. I do. Though which one is good?” Cassius turned on his side and raised his eyebrows.
“Yes, but my other point is that you see the killing of the soldiers on the other side as fine and not as murder.”
“Because it isn’t that—murder.” Cassius frowned. “There are rules to war.”
This was getting deep, but I was only the listener and in the middle like a tennis match, watching balls lobbed overhead.
“Who makes the rules, Cassius? What century? Was war murder in Roman times? Was Rome good or bad?”
“Are you saying some killing…” Cassius said quietly, clearly thinking this through, “can be good, if it’s war, but if you’re on the wrong side, it’s murder? That’s mind blowing but I don’t agree. Soldiers obey.”
“That was the excuse of the SS. There aren’t always good definitions for killing. I’ll get that last bottle from the cooler in the hut.” The doctor climbed off his lounge. “What would you call it if someone threatened to kill you, or your family, and you killed them? Murder?”
“Self-defense.”
