Fragments of Light

by Michele Phoenix

  “You pick the oddest moments to turn into a pessimist.”

  I tried to tell her how to find the voicemails on my phone, but the device seemed incapable of recognizing her touch. “Maybe I’m already a ghost and I just don’t know it,” she mumbled.

  I pulled over, tapped the phone a couple times, and put it to my ear, not realizing that the Bluetooth connection was activated. Nate’s voice came over the car’s speakers. “It’s me.” I reached for the controls on the stereo, but Darlene swatted my hand away. “Been trying to get a hold of you . . . guess you know that. I didn’t want to text, but I can if that’s what you’d prefer. Ceelie—” I froze. My name on his lips felt like an intimate thing. “I’d like for us to talk. To explain what happened—and what didn’t happen.” He sighed. “I know you don’t owe me anything, but will you give me a few minutes? Please.” There was a long pause, long enough for me to think that was the end of his message. Then he added, “I know I’m in no position to ask for you to talk to me again. But if you’ve got it in you, hit me back?”

  The car’s engine idled as we sat by the side of the road. I tried to will my heart to stop racing and my hands to stop shaking. After a couple minutes passed, Darlene said, “Well, he’s got a lovely voice. I’ll give him that.”

  I knew she was just trying to fill the silence, but the statement rankled me. “But a pretty dismal marital record.”

  Darlene reached over to pat my arm. “No one’s denying that, dear.”

  I put the car in drive and pulled back onto the road. The tone of Nate’s voice had gotten to me. I’d grown used to Defensive Nate, Standoffish Nate, and plain old Cold Nate in the months since he’d walked out, but he’d sounded sincere on the phone and I hadn’t braced myself for Vulnerable Nate. I recognized the hint of a softening in my spirit and rebelled against it, squaring my shoulders and squinting at the empty road ahead.

  “What do you think he wanted?” Darlene asked. She’d taken the phone back from me and was furiously swiping and tapping on the screen. “And how do you get back to that Wiki page on this darn thing?”

  Nate’s voice came through the car’s speakers again. “Hello?”

  I panicked. A quick glance at Darlene confirmed that she was panicking too. “What did you do?” I mouthed at her, ignoring another “Hello?” from Nate.

  “I must have pushed the wrong button trying to get back to Wikipedia,” she answered in a frantic whisper, loud enough, no doubt, for Nate to hear.

  “Ceelie, are you there?”

  I took a calming breath. “Tell him I’m driving.”

  Darlene did as instructed.

  “You realize I can hear you, right?” Nate’s voice filled the car.

  “Tell him I can’t talk right now.”

  Darlene conveyed the message.

  “I’ve done something you need to know about, Cee,” Nate said quickly, as if he wanted to get it in before he was disconnected.

  From my peripheral vision, I could see Darlene staring from the phone to me as if she’d been complicit in a crime. “Do I hang up?” she whispered.

  “Please don’t hang up.” Nate’s voice was rough.

  I pulled over again and took the phone from my friend, switching off its Bluetooth. Darlene motioned toward her door, eyebrows raised. I shook my head. This would be brief. No need for her to step out of the car.

  “Can this wait?” I asked Nate. The hardness in my voice felt satisfying.

  “I actually have you on the phone, so no, I’d rather say this now, before you go silent again. I don’t blame you for avoiding my calls—I don’t—but can you just give me a few seconds?”

  I closed my eyes and fought the impulse to hang up. But I knew Nate. He would only call again. And again.

  “Make it quick. We’re somewhere in Missouri and running out of daylight.”

  “What are you—?” He brought himself up short. “Doesn’t matter. Here’s why I’m calling.”

  Darlene adjusted her position. She feigned discomfort, but I knew it was a pretext for leaning close enough to hear Nate better. I pressed the phone to my ear and let my head fall back against the headrest.

  “I fired Bruce,” Nate said.

  “My condolences.”

  “And before I did that, I put the divorce proceedings on hold.”

  “You did what?”

  “I hit pause. I hit it pretty firmly.”

  “Why in blue blazes would he—?” Darlene began in full voice from the passenger seat. I put out a hand to let her know to stay out of this conversation.

  There was the trace of a smile in Nate’s voice. “Darlene, could I ask a favor of you?”

  The tone. The humor. Persuasive Nate. Charming Nate. The man I used to know.

  Darlene suddenly blanched. “Hang up, Ceelie,” she said with authority, waving a finger for me to do as instructed.

  I felt myself frown. “What do—?”

  “Hang up,” she said again.

  I was so taken aback by the order that I froze, torn between obedience and utter confusion. Seeing my inability to respond, Darlene took the phone from my hand and poked at its screen until, in exasperation, she dropped it into the glove compartment. She snapped it shut with more force than necessary as my surprise gave way to consternation. “Darlene! What the—what on earth?” I stammered.

  “I recognized that tone of his,” she said. “All buttery and syrupy and come-hithery. Dangerous—that’s what it was. And if you’d seen your face getting soft and mushy. Honey, mark my words. I saved you from yourself.”

  “I was not getting ‘soft and mushy.’” I tried to inject confidence into the words, but they came out sounding defensive.

  We sat by the side of the road a moment longer, engine idling. The sun had arced toward the horizon, tinting the greenery around us with a warm, amber glow. Darlene stared at me, not a hint of remorse on her face, and all I could hear were Nate’s last words. I put the divorce proceedings on hold. They filled my mind with a tangle of anger, frustration, and morbid curiosity.

  “He’s pausing the divorce,” I said softly, more to myself than to anyone else.

  “Yes. But you can’t go falling all over yourself running back into his arms based on that statement alone.”

  I couldn’t help but picture Julie smiling up at us as we’d left Nate’s office for lunch that day. “I’m not running back into his arms, Darlene. Nate Donovan is dead to me.”

  I was surprised by the sharpness of my words, but I’d felt the flutter of something hopeful as Nate spoke. Something disloyal to my pain. Prone to weakness. I would not be softened by a traitor’s change of heart.

  I wasn’t sure in that moment who I loathed more—Nate or the version of me that had trusted him so blindly.

  “Here’s a new motto for you,” Darlene said. “Repairing something well requires more time than it ever took to break it. Repeat.”

  I shook my head, my thoughts too muddled to parrot what she’d said.

  “However long it took for your marriage to break, you’ve got to give it at least that much time to Humpty Dumpty itself back together again,” Darlene said. “Anything less would be foolish.”

  “I’m not going to be repairing anything.” I liked the clarity of the statement, but it left me feeling oddly bereft.

  “Then it was the right thing to hang up when you did.”

  I shook my head at the memory. “Correction,” I said. “You hung up when you did.”

  “You think it surprised him?” she asked with a giggle.

  I blew out a breath. “Oh, I’m confident it did.”

  “I did like his voice,” Darlene mused after a few moments of silence.

  “Now who’s going soft and mushy?”

  “I’m not. Voices can be deceptive. I’m just saying that he sounded sweet.”

  “He had a—” I stopped myself. Saying anything remotely positive about him felt like betraying myself. “He had a sweet side,” I finally admitted. “The Nate I used to k
now—he was sweet and kind.”

  “Well, honey, at least now you know what he’s been wanting to talk about. And now you have some time to get your thoughts together before you chat again. That sappy look on your face scared the heck out of me.”

  “It wasn’t sappy.”

  “It was sappy-adjacent.”

  “I’m not going back to him, Darlene,” I said softly, putting the car in gear and pulling onto the road again.

  “Are you mad at me?” Darlene asked after we’d driven in silence for a few minutes.

  “Everything’s fine.” I glanced at her. She was staring at me squinty-eyed. “Could you get my phone back out of the glove compartment? We’re getting closer and I need the GPS.”

  She did as instructed. I took the phone from her and brought up the navigation app.

  “Truly good men are as rare as rocking horse poo,” Darlene declared a little while later, reaching over to pat my leg.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “You have a way with words, my friend. It’s a bit on the dramatic side, but you sure get your point across.”

  Darlene shrugged. “Angus liked to call it my Zsa Zsa Gabor. I could make a hangnail into a national catastrophe.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Every day.” She leaned her head on the headrest and added, “But at nights I’m quite content to sleep in a snore-free zone.”

  As Darlene drifted into silence, I took inventory of the emotions still clanging around in my head. There had been something different in Nate’s voice. Not the hardness of the day he told me he was leaving. Not the sullenness of our two encounters since then. Something honest and unnerving.

  The pain of his rejection still echoed in the crater of his abrupt departure. I felt it swell in intensity as I replayed his statement in my mind. I hit pause. I hit it pretty firmly. The echo grew sharp edges as my mind bent toward hope.

  I would not. I could not. The risk was too great, the hurt too crippling, the devastation still too raw.

  Chapter 14

  Sabine led Cal to the formal dining room on the other side of the foyer.

  “I thought this could help,” she said, motioning toward the far wall.

  Cal’s eyes widened with interest as he stepped toward the communications hub the Germans had set up in the wood-paneled space. There were two radio transceivers, a small switchboard, and a handful of other instruments Cal vaguely recognized.

  “If you can fix them, maybe you can use them to contact your colleagues.”

  Cal would have smiled at her terminology if his mind had been on Sabine, but it was on the devices in front of him. Every piece had been rendered useless. Cables severed. Registers and keys shattered.

  “They must have sabotaged their own equipment before they left,” he muttered, his hopes of communicating with American forces dashed.

  “No.” She paused, something guilty in her expression. “We came in here after the Germans left and it was all intacte, but Albert said . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “What did Albert say?”

  “He said he would need to destroy it all so they can’t use it against the Allies if they come back. But maybe you can fix it?”

  Cal leaned in to see if there was any chance of repairing the gear. With insufficient time, no spare parts, and few adequate tools, there was no way he could rebuild the damaged comms before his planned departure. He sighed, shaking his head. “Well, he did a good job, I’ll give him that. A little premature, but effective.”

  As they went back to the living room, Cal noticed that he was walking a bit more easily, a testament to Sabine’s nursing skills.

  Buck was still asleep on the couch when they reentered the living room, a crumpled, unkempt version of the ruthless soldier he thought himself to be.

  “It is nearly dark now,” Sabine said to Cal, motioning toward the transom above the window facing the backyard, where daylight had taken on sunset hues. She accompanied him to the alcove and they stood there, holding back a curtain to watch for any movement in the fields beyond the castle. Under other circumstances, the lush green pastures extending north toward the Channel would have captivated Cal with their peaceful beauty, but to his fighter’s mind, they were a minefield of potential traps and dangers.

  “Tu pars?” Lise asked from right beside him, something that looked like worry on her face. “Are you leaving?” she tried in English.

  Cal nodded and lightly flicked her nose. “In a little while. Got to go get the Germans, right?”

  She shook her head. “You need to stay with us.”

  Sabine bent down and, Cal assumed for his sake, spoke in English to her sister. “We will be fine,” she said, a smile softening her features. “Cal will fight the Germans and liberate our country and you, me, and Albert, we will be fine.”

  “But if Papa doesn’t come back . . .”

  Sabine frowned. She glanced at Cal, then traced down Lise’s cheek with her fingertip. “If Papa doesn’t come back, we will find a way. Cal has to be a soldier now. It is who he is.”

  He lowered himself onto an upholstered bench next to the window. “Tell me what you’re going to do when the Germans are gone,” he said to the little girl.

  She looked up at her sister, as if asking for permission. Sabine shrugged and smiled. “I’m going to ride a carousel,” Lise said with great enthusiasm, pronouncing the last word the French way. “Papa said he will take me.”

  Sabine squeezed Lise’s shoulder. “We will make sure you see your carousel, with or without Papa.”

  As sadness descended over the girl’s face, Cal said, “Maybe you can come to America and I’ll take you to the State Fair. There’s a merry-go-round there that’ll knock your socks off.”

  The girl frowned and tilted her head sideways, then looked from Cal to Sabine. “Mes chaussettes?”

  Her confusion made Sabine laugh. It was a light and warm sound. “She is wondering why you mentioned her socks in relation to a carousel,” she said to Cal. Then she switched to French to explain the expression to her sister. Turning back to Cal, she added, “Some things in English do not translate well.”

  “Mais j’veux aller voir celui de Bayeux,” Lise said.

  “She wants to see the carousel in Bayeux. That’s the one our father told us about.”

  “You can do both,” Cal said. “Bayeux first and then the Missouri State Fair. How’s that?”

  Lise asked him a question in French, eyes wide and expectant, and Cal looked to Sabine for a translation.

  “She wants to know if she can see the Liberty Statue too.”

  “The Statue of Liberty?”

  She blushed a little at her mistake. “Yes—the Statue of Liberty.”

  Cal turned his attention to Lise. “If you come visit me when all of this is over, I’ll take you to New York so you can see her for yourself.”

  “New York?” Lise asked, the freckles on her nose crinkling into an excited smile.

  “You, me, and the Statue of Liberty. It’s a date.”

  Sabine looked at Cal disapprovingly. “She will never forget, you know. She will dream about this every night and tell me about it every morning until it happens.”

  He held his hand out to Lise. “Shake on it?”

  Lise placed her small, cool hand in his and shook hard. Her fragility and vivacious strength moved Cal in a way that surprised him. Something tender and vigilant welled up in him. It felt visceral and primal. And somehow more frightening than the battles ahead. Cal looked at Sabine. “There’s something in my field jacket—the zippered pocket in the front, right by the throat. Could you find it?” When she hesitated, he added, “It’s for Lise.”

  Sabine left the room without a word, and Lise plopped down on the couch next to Cal, earnestness on her face. “When you see a German, ask if his name is Otto. If he says yes, you do not shoot. Okay?” She leaned in a bit closer, looking Cal directly in the eyes. “Okay?”

  “Lise . . .”

  “Otto is my friend.
”

  Cal wanted to reason with her. He wanted to convince her that the German was part of the machine that had destroyed her country and her life. But he realized that at her age, she’d have few memories of France before the Occupation. This child with the luminous brown eyes had only known oppression, and from its depths had summoned up compassion for one of its enforcers.

  Cal blinked away unexpected tears. The confidence in Lise’s gaze made him feel more like a man than he had when he’d jumped out of a careening plane into enemy territory.

  “You’re a brave girl,” he said to her.

  Her head bobbed in agreement. “Ouaip!” she agreed, beaming from the compliment.

  “Ready to go get us some Nazis?” Buck said from right behind him. He was standing so close that Cal could smell the liquor on his breath.

  “You’d best sober up before we head out.”

  Buck smiled sloppily, his eyes unfocused and his helmet askew. “Lesson number one for shooting while drunk,” Buck said in the tone of a lecturing professor, “aim for the middle one.” He let out a guffaw and stumbled back into Sabine as she reentered the room.

  “Is this what you wanted?” she asked Cal. A silver coin lay in the palm of her hand.

  “Who’d you steal that from?” Buck slurred.

  “It belongs to Cal,” she answered as she passed him, barely glancing in his direction.

  Buck frowned and pointed at his friend. “Keep an eye on that one, pal. Wouldn’t put it past any of these frogeaters to try and rob their rescuers.”

  He moved unsteadily to the couch and collapsed onto it, falling nearly instantly into a deep, liquor-fueled sleep.

  “Your friend is a crétin,” Sabine said lightly, eliciting a giggle from Lise.

  Cal smirked and said, “Listen, I don’t speak French, but I’m inclined to agree.”

  He took the coin from Sabine and held it up for Lise to see. “This is a silver half-dollar.” When she looked confused, he added, “Money from America.”

  Sabine translated for her sister and she nodded in understanding.

  “It was made in 1916, about a year before my pops came to France with the Corps of Engineers.”