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With each addition, Martina clenched the radio more tightly. “You see? Didn’t I tell you? This is what I was afraid of.”
“You are afraid of all things,figlia mia.” Mamma paused to pat Martina’s shoulder, as if to soften the criticism. “It is only right they would make sure I am not a spy. I am not an American citizen like you.”
“And what’s next? Once you’ve registered, they might put you in prison.”
“You—what is the word?” She snapped her fingers, smiling proudly. “Exaggerate. This is not the Red Summer.”
Martina’s shudder was quick enough to cut off the memories from her girlhood that threatened to fill her mind. “Don’t tell me it can’t happen, Mamma. The newspapers are all shouting for the government to take the Japanese away—even some who are citizens. They might come for us next.”
Mamma made a scoffing noise deep in her throat. “There are too many Italians in America. Hundreds of thousands.”
“But, Mamma...” Martina switched to her mother tongue in case the children were listening. Rosa and Gio could speak some Italian, but school made English drop first from their lips, saints be praised. “I can’t leave you now. We’ll stay another month or two, to make sure things are all right.”
Mamma’s hand stilled on the counter, where it had been tapping out an impatient pattern. Then she looked up, eyes steady and sure. “My door will always be open to you, daughter. But you need your own life, away from here. There, you’ll have ajob with good pay and a home of your own. Somewhere safe, where...”
She shrugged, refusing to finish the sentence, but Martina knew what the downward look meant.
Wherehecan’t find you. That’s why she’d looked for work in Maine instead of one of the many war industries springing up in Boston. A fresh start.
“This is what I want for you, daughter. There will not be trouble.”
She had to ask. “But if there is?”
Mamma hesitated only a moment. “If there is, I want you and the children to be far from it.”
Martina surrendered to her mamma’s fierce embrace, letting it soothe the ache, the fear, the knowledge that, however many books she left behind to travel to Maine, the heroine she would miss most was her mother.
LOUISE CAVENDISH
FEBRUARY 1, 1942
DERBY, MAINE
Fierce barking woke Louise Cavendish in the thin hours of the morning, when the tide ebbed its lowest, leaving behind the smell of rot.
All sleep-induced haze flew from Louise as she sat to attention. Jeeves, her German shepherd, might warn off an errant squirrel during the day, but he hadn’t made a fuss at night since his puppy days.
On went her quilted housecoat and slippers, and she hurried down the stairs. Jeeves was a shadow by the front door, his muscled form tense, growling a warning at whoever was beyond the door.
Louise’s fingers hesitated before turning on the light switch at the base of the stairs, illuminating the candelabra in theentryway. Father’s old hunting rifle was still mounted over the fireplace in the dayroom, and Delphie always kept the kitchen knives razor sharp. Should she...?
No, if there was an intruder, Jeeves had likely scared them off already. And if he hadn’t, a woman in her fifties struggling to wield a meat cleaver certainly wouldn’t.
He whined and pawed at the door, looking back at her with pleading eyes. “Steady, boy,” she soothed, peering out the front window to the grounds of her family’s summer home—a flat lawn looming with heavy shadows from shrubbery and the three outbuildings.
And then she heard it: a distant concussive boom, soon drowned out by a renewed burst of barking.
German bombs? Had Hitler’s troops really dared attack America’s shores so soon after declaring war?
But no, the sound came distinctly from the east, and the only thing east of the cliffs of Windward Hall was the ocean.
“It’s only depth charges.” She bent down, trying to calm her disconsolate dog. “They’ve found a German submarine, and planes are shooting it down.”
Though there was always a chance they’d gotten there too late, and the U-boat had dived under the surface for another chance at destroying American tankers and freighters.
How Delphie, even with her hearing loss, could sleep through the ruckus of a German shepherd on full alert was beyond Louise, but the older woman didn’t venture out to join her. Slowly, with no new explosions to set him off, Jeeves relaxed onto his haunches.
“Good boy,” she whispered, running her hands over Jeeves’s neck. As usual, he concurred with this assessment, basking in the attention. In the sudden calm, he clearly decided he had single-handedly dealt with and removed the threat.
