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If only they would listen.
With a sigh, Louise picked upEvil under the Sun, in case sleep proved difficult and she needed something else to occupy her time.
One thing was sure: she had been wrong. It wasn’t unrealistic, the collection of mysterious resort guests populating Christie’s novel.
After all, everyone had a past—and most hid at least a few secrets.
———
MAY 1917
Louise folded the crisp pinafore into a neat square on her dormitory bed, careful to line up the seams. Not a single stain from the graduation ceremony the day before, she noted with pride.
“Oh!” Her roommate, a dreamy girl of twenty who dashed about with a Gibson Girl updo in a constant state of near collapse, swirled her own uniform about. “Isn’t it the most exciting, Lou?”
Louise looked up from her packing. “Of course. We’ve all worked very hard.”
Nellie flopped next to the open suitcase in a creak of bedsprings. “Notthat. I mean all of us parting ways, finding adventure, working with handsome doctors—or sailors.” She was determined to volunteer with the nursing branch of the navy, and she regularly remarked that their white dress uniforms looked “masculine and heroic.”
“There are strict regulations for nurses’ conduct when interacting with men,” Louise reminded her, in case she hadn’t bothered to read the lengthy guidelines.
“Oh, I know,” Nellie said, waving her away. She’d stopped being deterred by such cold-water comments during her first semester rooming with Louise. “But they can’t regulate our imaginations, can they?”
“I think you’ll find very little fuel for your imagination when it comes to actual battles.” Really, Nellie seemed determined to give all nurses a bad name. “Amputations and morphine injections are hardly the stuff of romance.”
And yet, even though it meant long hours for little pay, steeped in the sounds of violence and the scent of stinging antiseptic mingling with foul open wounds, Louise would face it with determination, because she would finally be doing something worthwhile.
Her plan was to live with Aunt Eleanor again for a time untilthe Red Cross accepted her and sent her overseas, hopefully within a few months. They needed more trained nurses. She knew that much from the news bulletins. Even if the Great War was over quickly, as some said it might be now that America had joined, the Red Cross was committed to stitching back together the gaping wounds the battles left behind. Their mission included innocent civilians, especially “the suffering children of Europe.”
That was the phrase that had caught Louise’s attention and guided her away from applying to a general hospital somewhere safe and familiar.
“You can’t ruin my mood, Lou, so don’t even try.” Nellie peered into the mirror, trying in vain to fix her flattened hair. “Come on, or we’ll miss the farewell tea downstairs.”
After receiving a promise that she’d be down soon, Nellie flitted off, and Louise turned from where she’d been arranging her stockings by color in her steamer trunk. There was one last personal item to pack.
With another glance at the door, Louise drew her locket out from under her high-buttoned blouse. The latch, unaccustomed to being sprung, clicked open with effort. There, opposite the timepiece, was her miniature sketch of Oliver, staring out in smooth, flowing lines of ink, drawn by a beholder’s eye that had found him very handsome indeed.
She took a hairpin from the china dish on her bureau and pried the picture out. The glob of paste she’d applied to the paper resisted, but it was no match for her determination. A dozen carefully aimed stabs later, and Oliver’s image was out of her heart and into the rubbish bin—torn into small bits so Nellie wouldn’t ask questions.
From her pocket, she took the bit of writing paper that she’d cut carefully down to size and written on in the sharpest quillInter Arma Caritas. “In War, Charity.” The motto of the Red Cross, and her motto now too. Didn’t Scripture say charity was the greatest virtue? No matter what mistakes she had made inthe past, surely volunteering to risk her life in service of others would be enough to atone for them.
Without a pot of scrapbooking paste, she had to settle with folding the paper in two and placing it in the hollow. When she snapped the locket shut and tucked it under her collar again, she felt ... lighter, somehow. As if the picture of Oliver had turned the necklace into a chain worthy of the Dickens novel Father insisted on reading every holiday season, tying her to her past and its follies.
No longer.
During the first year after their parting, her heart had caught every time she saw the glint of rust-brown hair or the suggestion of a strong Roman nose in profile, at first because she hoped Oliver had somehow come searching for her. Even after she knew that was a foolish fancy, those glimpses were a reminder of all she’d risked—and lost.
No, Oliver had not attempted to contact her in over three years. Whatever he’d felt for her was as fleeting as the waves crashing against Maine’s rugged coast. Now that she had a clear, new purpose, it was time to move on at last.
A paper with the bold Western Union logo skittered under the door, the usual way of delivering telegrams when in a hurry, as everyone was today.
Louise stooped to pick it up, noting the sender. From Father. So hehadremembered her graduation. A day late, as always.
According to his last letter, Father had been feeling ill lately and therefore wasn’t able to attend the ceremony. Left unasked was whether she would have wanted him there if he had been able.
At least Father thought enough to send a telegram. Maybe, after all these years, things were starting to get better between them.
Instead of congratulations, however, the first line took a much more dire tone.
