The Unsung Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Kelly took his hand, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, her father actually held on to her. A woman. This fight between Joe and Charles was over a woman. She never would have believed it possible, never in a million years.

  “I still can’t talk about her,” he said, closing his eyes again. “I can barely stand to think about her. What Joe wants to do will rip my heart out all over again—he wants to tell the whole story to the entire world.”

  Kelly pushed her father’s hair back from his face, aching for him, wishing he’d tell her more, knowing he’d already told her far more than she’d ever believed he would. A woman.

  “Do you want me to talk to Joe?” she asked gently. “Do you want me to see if I can make him change his mind?”

  “I want what I can’t have.” Charles didn’t open his eyes. And when he spoke again it was so quiet, Kelly wasn’t certain he’d actually said the words aloud. “Fifty-six years, and still, all I want is to have her back.”

  The baby oil was wicked disgusting.

  Mallory had come out of the bathroom after changing into one of the bathing suits from David’s costume box, to find Brandon smearing himself with baby oil.

  It was amazing. He was even better looking in person, with golden brown hair that shimmered and a Ben Affleck–perfect nose. He was tall—at least five inches taller than she was, with broad shoulders and anatomy-textbook-model muscles.

  His smile was a flash of quicksilver, his eyes a wondrous shade of blue.

  He was one of those people who was always in motion, filled with a kinetic energy that could knock you on your ass if you accidentally stepped into his path.

  She could picture him sitting in his lifeguard chair at the Baldwin’s Bridge Hotel pool. Even slouched, he would be in motion, constantly swinging his whistle on its chain, wrapping and unwrapping it around his hand.

  “The oil helps provide muscle definition for the camera.” Brandon handed her the bottle. “I hate to be forward, but if you slime some on my back, I’ll slime some on yours.”

  It was weird to touch him in a way that seemed so intimate. Especially considering they were both wearing next to nothing.

  The top of the bathing suit David chose for her was a little too small—two triangles of thin fabric that tied around her neck and around her back, barely containing her megaboobs. The bottoms were cut high in the back, not quite a thong, but not the kind of suit her grandmother would’ve worn, either.

  “So, David tells me you live in Baldwin’s Bridge year-round.” Brandon took the bottle from her and spread oil across her shoulder blades. “That must be so great.”

  It was the first time she’d ever heard her status as a Townie described as great, but she stayed silent. His hands felt too good against her skin for her even to open her mouth to speak.

  But he was done far too soon and Mallory took the bottle back from him. She covered her legs and then the tops of her breasts and her stomach with the oil, aware that Brandon was watching her. David was glancing at her, too, but he was less obvious about it than his friend.

  “I’m going to need to take a shower after this,” she said, suddenly terribly self-conscious. It was cold in here. She was freezing—a fact that neither of them could possibly have missed. God, she wanted a cigarette.

  “That’s no problem,” David said quickly. “I have a shower you can use in the bathroom.”

  He blushed as if he realized how stupid he sounded.

  “I hope you’ve got a shower in the bathroom,” Mallory said. “I mean, like, instead of in the bedroom closet.”

  Brandon laughed as if she were Jerry Seinfeld. It wasn’t that funny, still, his laughter was so infectious she couldn’t help smiling back at him.

  He took her hand—his was still slimy, but otherwise very nice—and pulled her onto a sheet that was spread out on the floor. They stood on it, in front of a bare white wall, looking like a thoroughly slimed-up version of Frankie and Annette from one of those campy beach movies. Except Frankie and Annette never wore bathing suits like these.

  Brandon kept up a constant chatter as David looked through his camera and did things with his light meter.

  “This is the boring part,” he told her. “Once Sul actually gets behind the camera and starts shooting, it’s a lot more fun. And tonight it’s going to be even more fun than usual.” He winked at her. He was the first guy she’d ever met who could actually pull that off. Winking made most guys just look stupid. “He’s making sure he’s got the right amount of light for every little last detail. . . .”

  David held the meter up to her face, then lowered it so his hand was nearly touching the tops of her breasts. He was completely focused on whatever that little box was showing him. He looked from the light meter to her breasts—completely dispassionately, though—then to the meter and to her breasts again.

  “Every detail,” Mallory echoed. “As in, every nipple? Excuse me, David, are you having fun down there?”

  Brandon shouted with laughter, and David looked up at her in surprise, directly into her eyes. As she gazed back at him, she saw her words finally penetrate his intense concentration, saw as he realized what she’d said. His gaze dropped back to her breasts as for a fraction of a second he really looked at her before he forced his eyes up, guiltily, to her face. And he blushed. Again.

  “I’m sorry. Honestly, I don’t mean to be disrespectful.”

  She believed him. He was painfully sincere. No one was that good an actor. “Any chance we can turn down the instafreeze setting on the air conditioner?” she asked him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, blinking at her from behind his windshield. “Are you cold? I didn’t realize.”

  “Are you kidding?” she asked. “Am I cold? Hello? You want to look at me again, Einstein, this time with your eyes open?”

  Brandon laughed again as David did a quick about-face, lunging for the industrial-size air conditioner laboring in the window across the room.

  “Bran usually complains about being too hot under the lights.” David adjusted the temperature control, his face pink again. It wouldn’t take much to keep him blushing all night long. “Maybe I should offer a complete apology in advance. I get pretty intense when I’m working. But please, I want you to know, I absolutely do not intend any disrespect.”

  He was completely embarrassed; in fact, it was more like mortified. He didn’t intend any disrespect. It was funny, but besides her uncle Tom, and her great-uncle Joe, Mallory couldn’t think of a single person who actually intended to be respectful when they interacted with her.

  “I think you’re quite possibly the most uniquely beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life,” David continued, “but I’m also well aware that there’s substantially more to you than your body and face, and if at any point tonight I start to treat you like some kind of object, please let me know. And please keep in mind that it’s not intentional. At all. Whatsoever.”

  “Go, Sul,” Brandon said. “Way to sling the woo.”

  This time, it was Mallory whose face was heating up. She’d heard a lot of bullshit compliments in her life, all intended to get her into the backseat of some loser’s car, but this was different. David actually meant what he’d said. He was serious. It was incredibly sweet. He was incredibly sweet.

  For a dork, anyway.

  “Well, thanks,” Mallory said. “I think you’re completely full of shit, but thanks.”

  David laughed. “Now, how did I know you were going to say that?”

  She laughed, too. It was funny, his smile was nearly as nice as Brandon’s. And when he looked at her like that, gazing into her eyes . . .

  “Ditto all that from me, too, babe.” Brandon grabbed her hand and spun her in a circle, away from David. “I’m definitely the copresident of your fan club.”

  David cleared his throat. “Maybe we should get started.”

  “Absolutely. Once we start, it’ll really warm up,” Brandon told her, waggling his eyebrows, his smil
e promising heat of a completely different kind.

  She tried to pull her hand free, but Brandon held on to her tightly, despite the slippery oil.

  “Have you done any acting?” David asked her.

  “A little.” Mallory thought of all those times she’d walked through the halls of the high school, pretending that she didn’t give a damn what the other kids said behind her back. Sure, a little—provided ninety-nine percent of her life could be defined as “a little.”

  “Nightshade—the character you’re helping me with—is seventeen years old,” David told her. “She’s still in high school, and when she’s her alter ego, Nicki, she’s . . . well, a loner, I guess. With the exception of another character, named Hubert, she doesn’t have any friends.”

  Well, hey, that shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for her.

  “How old are you, anyway?” Brandon asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  “So doesn’t that mean . . . You just graduated, right? Congratulations.” Brandon looked over at David and grinned. “She’s eighteen and she just graduated. Great news, huh?”

  “I thought you were in a hurry to get out of here tonight,” David said evenly.

  “Me? No way. I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than right here, wearing my lovely little Speedo, flexing my abs, playing superheroes with my new friend Mallory.” Brandon rubbed Mallory’s arm, as if trying to warm her up. His thumb accidentally brushed against her breast. “Let’s do this before the woman freezes to death.”

  Mallory stepped slightly away from him. “What’s Nightshade’s deal?”

  “She’s got super X-ray night vision,” Brandon told her. “And she can fly or something, right?”

  “She can completely dematerialize,” David corrected him. “What she does is kind of like what the transporter does on Star Trek, except she can change the state of her molecules at will. She doesn’t need a machine to do it. When she’s dematerialized, she can move more quickly from place to place, which, yeah, is kind of like flying. But when she gets to her destination, it takes about an hour for her to rematerialize. And while she’s rematerializing, she can’t fight. She’s got none of her powers—except her ability to see in the dark. She’s completely vulnerable.”

  Mallory knew all about being vulnerable.

  “When she’s materialized, she’s a kick-ass fighter,” Brandon volunteered. “Martial arts, you name it—she’s down with it. She’s pretty much invincible. No fear, you know.”

  No fear. Now, that would require some acting.

  “Okay,” David said, retreating back behind his camera, “let’s do it.”

  “Doing it with pleasure,” Brandon murmured, waggling his perfect eyebrows at her again.

  The pain pills Charles was taking didn’t blot out things the way a good, stiff drink used to.

  With gin, a man could just keep pouring himself drink after drink until the memories faded into nothingness. But his pain medication was rationed, and he couldn’t keep taking pill upon pill.

  Well, he supposed he could, but Kelly, for one, would frown upon it.

  Kelly.

  She’d always tried to please him. Until tonight. Tonight she’d let him have it—everything he deserved. Well, not quite everything. She’d gone easy with the scorn and derision.

  With his eyes closed, he could see her at three, at seven, at thirteen, with her bright eyes and her brilliant mind and that impossibly sweet face. But even Kelly, as much as he’d loved her, hadn’t been able to take away the emptiness that rotted him from the inside out. Only gin could numb that, and far too often even the gin wasn’t enough.

  Charles kept his eyes shut, breathing as deeply as he could without coughing, pretending he was asleep. After three failed marriages, if there was one thing he was good at, it was pretending he was asleep.

  Kelly kissed him on the cheek. “Good night, Daddy. I love you.”

  She loved him. After over thirty years of behaving like a son of a bitch, his daughter still somehow managed to love him.

  But it still wasn’t enough.

  God, what was wrong with him?

  He heard the bedroom door close gently, and he opened his eyes, stared up at the ceiling. His room was dimly lit from the night-light Kelly’d left on in the bathroom.

  The pill he’d taken an hour ago made him feel as if he were floating—just a little—above the bed. It took the edge off the constant pain, but it didn’t stop the memories.

  France.

  1944.

  The summer after Normandy.

  He blinked and suddenly it was bright as midday in his room. He blinked again, and it wasn’t his room any longer. It was Cybele’s kitchen.

  He wasn’t eighty and dying, he was twenty-four and healing.

  He was doing well. He could shuffle around with a cane. Cybele had taken out the stitches in his side and his shoulder, and he’d taken off his sling just the day before.

  Cybele—who thought he was some kind of hero because he went back into that church for some child who’d been left behind. He didn’t know why he’d done it. He couldn’t even remember it clearly. The entire battle was a blur. When he’d felt the bullets hit him, he’d been sure he was dead.

  Yet here he was. Still taking up space, although thankfully not space in a Kraut POW camp. Instead, he was the great American hero in this small-town French Resistance headquarters.

  Joe Paoletti—Charles was supposed to call him Giuseppe—was one hundred times the man Charles was. He was OSS, for crying out loud, yet no one gave him an extra egg for dinner. And even if they did, he wouldn’t have eaten it. He was too much of a hero not to give it to someone else who needed the nourishment more.

  Despite the fact that Joe was an overachiever in the hero department, despite his intensity and too-serious nature, Charles liked the man. How could he not? It would’ve been like disliking Jesus.

  It was only a matter of days before Cybele and Joe and the others were to smuggle Charles back to the Allied side of the line.

  He couldn’t wait to leave.

  Compared to the alternatives—death and its second cousin, life in a Nazi concentration camp—Charles’s life here in Ste.-Hélène was pleasant enough. He didn’t dare set foot outdoors in daylight since Cybele’s house was five doors down from one of the highest-ranking Nazis in town, but that was just as well. For him, as for most of the men, days were mostly lazy. Henri, the two men he’d dubbed Luc Un and Luc Deux, and the others rarely went out in the daytime. They did most of their movement at night, venturing forth only in the shadows, like ghouls or vampires. They’d return to Cybele’s house before dawn and sleep on the kitchen floor until noon or later, hiding out from the Germans.

  Cybele and the other women, however, lived two lives. They lived in the nighttime world of the men, often participating in their missions despite the dangers. But they lived in the regular world as well. Cooking for the small army of resistance fighters who dozed on the kitchen floor. Cleaning, doing the laundry. Fishing in the river.

  Cybele took in mending to earn money to buy flour for bread. She and the other women didn’t sit still without a sock and a darning needle in their hands.

  It seemed ironic—her best customers were the Nazi soldiers who patrolled the streets of the town. Their worn socks appeared in Cybele’s basket again and again.

  And Saint Joe was as tireless as Cybele. He spent much of his days—even those when he was up until dawn—out in the small plot of land behind Cybele’s house. He’d turned every workable inch of dirt into a vegetable garden, and he tended it more carefully than a miser would tend to a chestful of gold, coaxing precious food from the soil. For a kid from New York City, he had one hell of a green thumb.

  Charles’s French was improving. Or rather, his understanding of what the others were saying was improving. He still couldn’t speak the language, despite Cybele’s gentle tutoring.

  She would laugh at his attempts, though. Frankly, it was worth it to fail,
just to hear her laughter.

  He told her all about Baldwin’s Bridge in English, about lazy summers by the ocean, about his years at Harvard, and she would tell him, in French, about life in Ste.-Hélène before the Nazi invasion.

  Her husband and son had been killed by the Germans, and Cybele’s heart was still broken. She’d never said as much, but Charles knew it was so. She’d asked him in turn about Jenny.

  It had been one of those hot afternoons a week or so after his arrival when Charles had reached into Cybele’s basket and pulled out a sock and a needle.

  Cybele had laughed at him. “Don’t tell me they taught mending at your Harvard University,” she’d teased.

  “No such luck. I’m going to have to ask you to teach me to do this,” he’d said, and she’d laughed some more, as if he’d made the biggest joke of the whole war.

  “I’m sitting here doing nothing,” he’d insisted, woman’s work be damned. “I’m going out of my mind. Show me how to do this. God knows I eat the bread you make from the money you earn darning these socks.”

  Her eyes had grown wide as she realized he wasn’t joking. “Henri and the Lucs refused to learn. It was all I could do to get them to help with the cooking.”

  “Henri and the Lucs are asses.” Charles put his finger through the hole in the toe of the sock and waggled it at her. “Get over here and teach me. I want to help.”

  Laughing again, she had. She’d had to sit close to show him what to do. Her work-roughened fingers were cool against his, her thigh soft against his uninjured leg. She’d pulled her long hair up into a haphazard pile on her head, and several dark wisps lay against the long, graceful paleness of her neck. Her dress was old and loose and made of patched and faded cotton, and she smelled of cheap soap. She was too skinny from years of giving most of her dinner away to the people using her attic as a temporary stop on their dangerous road to freedom, and her collarbones stood out starkly on her chest.

  And when she turned and looked into his eyes from just those few inches away, it had been the closest Charles had ever come, at that point in his life, to a religious experience.