Miller's Secret

by Tess Thompson

  A petty officer came by, carrying a mail bag. “Doctor Nelson, sir, I have a letter for you.”

  “Thank you.” They saluted, and he ambled off to track down the next lucky recipient of word from home.

  The doctor studied the envelope with what appeared to be great intensity. Then, he traced the tip of his index finger over the return address.

  “Letter from home?” asked Henry, curious to know what had made the good doctor’s eyes mist.

  “Yes, it’s from Caroline. She writes the most wonderful letters.” The doctor’s voice had become husky. “Full of details. I’ll save it for later.”

  “Is Caroline your wife?” Odd he hadn’t mentioned her. Most of the men couldn’t stop talking about their girls or wives waiting at home.

  “No, she’s not my wife.”

  Henry wanted to know more, but he didn’t know how to ask, so he remained silent.

  “I was in love with her when we were young. While I was away at medical school she married someone else. I never had the courage to tell her my feelings, so I’ll never know if there was a chance for us.” He paused, swatting at a fly near his head. “But she’s my best friend.”

  “No one’s taken her place?” asked Henry.

  “I was engaged before the war. She broke it off after I’d been over here for about six months.”

  “I had someone, too. She met a sailor while I was out to sea. Married him after three days.” Henry shook his head. “Women.” He said it lightly, hoping to cajole the doctor to smile, but his expression remained dark.

  “Ann said she couldn’t marry a man in love with someone else.”

  “I’m sorry, Doc.”

  “In hindsight, given who Caroline chose instead of me, I needn’t have worried about my humble beginnings.” His expression darkened. “I have no evidence, but I feel certain he married her for her money.”

  “What makes you think so?” Henry hadn’t been this interested in a conversation since his injury. It felt good, like he was his old self. He was the story gatherer, his mother used to say. People always tell you things.

  “The way he looks at her,” said Doctor Nelson.

  Henry raised an eyebrow, waiting for more. The doctor had a measured way of speaking. Henry suspected he couldn’t be rushed or he might change his mind about sharing his confidence.

  “The way my father looks at my stepmother—the way Caroline’s father looks at her mother. I know what love looks like when reflected from someone’s face. He seems indifferent to her at best. No one sees it but me. They’re all fooled by him. Especially Caroline. Lately, in her letters, though, I sense a sadness. There’s something she’s not telling me.” The doctor glanced at his wristwatch. “My God, man, what am I going on about? Look at the time. I have patients to attend to. I quite lost myself in all that wallowing.”

  “I appreciated the company. I’m rather sick of my own troubles, if you want to know the truth,” said Henry.

  “I don’t suppose you’d call on Caroline when you return home? I know it would give her comfort to hear how I’m doing.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  The doctor smiled, looking happier than the moment before. “Would you write to me afterward with a full report?”

  “Absolutely. It’ll give me a mission when I return.”

  “Someday, when this is over, we’ll have a beer by the sea.”

  “It’s a promise,” said Henry.

  “Don’t let this define your life, my friend. Go home and live. They’ve taken enough from you. Don’t let them take one more moment.”

  The doctor didn’t say it, but Henry understood something else. Go home and live, because so many others don’t get to.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Caroline

  AT THE END OF JULY Caroline received a phone call. “I’m Henry Sayer,” said the pleasant voice. “I was treated by Doctor Nelson in England before I was discharged. We became friends after discovering how close we lived to one another before the war. He asked if I might call on you.”

  “How wonderful. I would love nothing more. But you must promise to tell me everything. His letters are terrible. He never gives me any details.”

  “That’s the opposite of what he said about yours,” said Henry.

  She laughed. “I do write a good letter. It’s my mother’s fault for making me rewrite so many essays when I was young.”

  They agreed that he would come for lunch the next day. She placed the receiver back on the phone and straightened the framed photograph of her and Miller on their wedding day. How young they looked. She wore a white gown and long veil. Miller wore a tuxedo and a top hat. He’d insisted upon that. They’d had the ceremony at their church with light shining through the stained glass and the reception at the club afterward, all of it a blur. Clearest in her memory was the gown her mother had ordered from France. It weighed five pounds, with an intricate layer of lace over the entire dress and dozens of buttons down the back. Holding onto her father’s arm before they entered the church, she started shaking. An intense desire to step backward instead of forward rushed through her. Father nudged her. They walked toward Miller, who stood with the priest and his best friend from the orphanage, Timmy Blick, a small, sharp-eyed man who reminded Caroline of a small dog that either didn’t know he was tiny, or was doing everything in his power to hide it. Half way down the aisle, she locked eyes with Julius. He sat with his father and Essie in the second row, behind her mother. He smiled at her reassuringly.

  She went to the open window, the sounds of crashing waves and seagulls background to the shouts of her children playing croquet on the lawn. Her parents’ beach home, north of Santa Barbara, sat close to the shore, nestled in a cove on a ten-acre piece of property. North of the house, the terrain steepened and, unlike the spot they’d chosen for the house, was suspended above the sea with craggy rocks instead of sand below the grassy knoll. High tide now, the surf crashed close to where their grassy back garden began, with no hint of the sandy beach the children would enjoy later that day. Because of this, her children had resigned themselves to the garden before lunch.

  Audrey, seven, wore a yellow sundress, bright against the green of the grass and blues of sea and sky, trying hard to compete with her older brothers. She was naturally thin, thank goodness. She hadn’t taken after Caroline and could eat whatever she wanted without so much as a glimmer of fat anywhere. Pierce, ten, and Sebastian, thirteen, wore blue trousers and white shirts with their sleeves rolled up to their elbows, always complaining they were too hot. None of her children were fat like she had been as a child, all three lanky and long-limbed. Audrey was blond like Caroline, with the same blue eyes, whereas the boys were both dark like their father. Seb, tall and muscular and athletically gifted, took after her father, whereas Pierce favored Miller, lean and quick. The two of them moved like cats, she always teased. Light on their feet and silent, until they pounced upon you.

  “Be careful of the mallet, Sebastian. You almost hit your sister.” Nanny Brown, large straw hat covering her head of white curls, kept watch over them with an indulgent upturn of her mouth, despite their rambunctiousness. The woman had nerves of steel. She sat in a garden chair in her usual brown suit, plump, white ankles crossed, horrified that during wartime there were no stockings available. Her knitting needles flashed in the sunlight. How she knitted without looking at the needles was beyond Caroline. Knitting had not been one of Caroline’s gifts. Why knit when one could read a book, she had thought before the war, but she could no longer evade the click of the needles for the selfish pleasure of reading. The troops needed socks, vests, scarves.

  “She shouldn’t stand so close,” said Seb.

  “I wasn’t.” Audrey stomped her foot and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Do we want to go inside and study our spelling?” asked Nanny Brown.

  In unison, they all agreed that, no, studying spelling was not better than playing croquet in the sunshine.

  �
�Then we best control our tempers,” said Nanny Brown.

  Caroline stepped away from the window and turned on the radio. Since Julius had left, she listened to news of the war in a way that bordered obsession. With his sparse letters, she had some idea of where he was located and listened with rapt attention for news of those battlegrounds. He’d been on the front lines in France, aiding injured soldiers for most of the war. However, six months ago he’d been sent to England to head up the convalescent hospital in Worcestershire, England. After this, she’d slept better at night, knowing he was out of the direct line of fire.

  Dear Julius. How sweet of him to send Henry Sayer to see her. He knew she would be comforted to hear from someone who had seen him recently.

  She sat on the sofa, grabbing her own knitting. It must be done. No idle hands. Everyone must do their part. Edward Murrow’s clipped voice came over the radio airwaves, dulled from the crackling of the transmission. The fighting overseas had taken a turn after the invasion of Normandy, he said. The allies were slowly liberating occupied France.

  Please God, let it be over by Christmas. Please keep Julius safe.

  After he finished medical school, Julius had come back to Santa Barbara and joined his father’s practice. He made house calls, earning his money from the wealthy who owned houses along the coastline, giving him the opportunity to tend to the poor for free, or, as he explained to Caroline once, in the “pay what you can” model. After Pearl Harbor, when America entered the war, he’d joined the army as a doctor.

  Just before he left for the war, Julius became engaged to Ann, a young woman he’d met through his work. She’d come with Julius to dinner and they’d all liked her. She was pretty and smart and well-spoken. The perfect doctor’s wife, Caroline thought.

  The day before he left, Julius had come to the house to say good-bye. They sat on the back porch, watching the waves come and go.

  “I thought Ann would want to marry before you left,” she said.

  “She wants a big wedding and there simply isn’t time to plan it before I go,” he said.

  She studied his face. There was an evasiveness about him; he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Julius, are you certain about Ann? If you have doubts, it’s best to think it all through before making a mistake.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you regretted your decision in a husband?” His expression and voice were bland, unreadable.

  She shook her head. “No, no. I have a blessed life.”

  “Are you happy, Caroline?”

  “Life isn’t a storybook. I’m happy enough.” She hesitated, feeling suddenly like she might cry.

  “Is ‘happy enough’ good enough?” he asked.

  “It has to be.” Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. She was lonely, that was all. Miller was not a companion. They rarely touched these days. She was often asleep by the time he came home from work. If it weren’t for her parents, the children, and Julius, she might have experienced the desolation more keenly, but it was easy to blur it out of her consciousness because of the satisfaction of her other relationships. “It happens over time. We were so young when we married.” She traced her finger around a knothole in the porch banister.

  “Your parents were young when they married and look at them,” he said.

  She smiled. “True. Not everyone can be so lucky.”

  The muscle between his brows scrunched together in the shape of a camel’s hump when he took her hands in his. “Take care of yourself while I’m away. Write to me every week with every detail. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll write every Saturday.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and took in a deep breath. “If I don’t come back, I wanted to say something.”

  She tried to interrupt him, but he put up his hand.

  “No, please, just let me say it. These days on this beach with you and your family have been the best of my life. You’re quite simply my…favorite person in the whole world.”

  “Stop it. You’re going to make me cry and that can’t be the way we say good-bye because you’re coming back. We will have more good times. Do you hear me?” She wanted to throw her arms around him, cling to him to keep him from leaving. “Just come back to me. To us.” To us. Not her. He did not belong to her. When he returned, he would belong to Ann. She must let go of him, not rely on his friendship as much. If he were to marry, he would not have time for her.

  They said good-bye. She watched him walk down the beach to his father’s house, feeling like a brick had replaced her heart. During the years between now and then, she had kept her promise, writing to him once a week. She had received letters from him sporadically, depending on where he was and what was happening in the war. One day, about six months after he’d left, he wrote that Ann had broken off the engagement. He did not say why, and she decided it better not to ask.

  **

  The next day, Henry Sayer arrived at noon. The Bennett’s housekeeper, Margaret, brought him into the sitting room where Caroline waited. Her parents had taken everyone into town for a day at the shops and the promise of ice cream, so the house was empty of its usual chaos. Henry was tall and blond with chiseled features and a pair of striking blue eyes that smiled at her when she stood to greet him. “Mrs. Bennett, it’s such a pleasure to meet you. Doctor Nelson did not lie about your beauty.”

  She smiled at him, not bothering to correct him about her married name. Julius sometimes introduced her as Caroline Bennett. An old habit he hadn’t been able to let go of when she married Miller. Whether Julius had truly said she was beautiful didn’t matter. A compliment at her age was nice, regardless of its origins or truthfulness. “How kind, Mr. Sayer, but you’ve been away, stuck with men for a while now. Perhaps this clouds your vision.” Dressed in a light suit, white shirt and a cornflower blue tie, it took her a moment to realize that the sleeve of his right arm had been sewn to compensate for a lack of limb. His right arm had been amputated. The poor man. This awful war. She fought the ache of injustice that worked its way from her belly to her throat.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Please sit.” She took one of the chairs, knowing he wouldn’t sit until she did. “Would you like something to drink? Fresh lemonade or perhaps something stronger?”

  He sat on the couch, long legs crossed at the ankles. His shoes were new, shiny and black. “I’m fine for now, thank you.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to visit,” said Caroline.

  “Doctor Nelson was kind to me, not just as a doctor but as a friend. When he asked if I might visit you, I said yes right away.” He brushed his golden curls from his forehead. “I’ve been back several weeks, but the adjustment to being home hasn’t been entirely smooth.”

  “I went away once to a camp for three months, nothing like war, but so entirely different from home life that it was as if I were in a dream for several weeks after my return. People and places I’d known all my life seemed different.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly it,” said Henry.

  “But it was I who changed, not them.”

  “I have indeed changed. Not just my arm, but on the inside as well. Doctor Nelson and I spoke of this often during our time together.”

  “How is Julius?” Caroline smoothed the front of her dress. She’d chosen her blue flowered print with the wide collar and sleeves, tucked at the waist with an A-line skirt, made before the war. Even Mother hadn’t been able to secure new fabric or dresses during wartime.

  “He wanted me to reassure you he’s doing well. I don’t know the horrors of what he saw at the front, but for now, he’s safe.” Henry’s eyes had dulled.

  “As I said, he never gives many details in his letters. I suppose he doesn’t want me to know how bad it is.”

  “Yes, I suspect that’s true.”

  Caroline shivered despite the warm breeze drifting through the windows.
“I worry he’ll be changed.”

  “We all are, Mrs. Bennett.”

  “Please, call me Caroline.” She walked to the liquor cabinet. “I suddenly feel like a drink. Would you care for a sherry?”

  “Do you have whiskey?”

  Caroline smiled as she crossed the room, her heels clicking on the hardwood floors. “This is my father’s house. We have several different kinds.”

  “This house is beautiful,” he said. “And I’ll take whatever’s convenient.”

  “This is my favorite place in the world.” She splashed whiskey into a glass and handed it to him. “Tell me, Mr. Sayer, what will you do now?”

  He took a sip of his drink before answering. “I was a furniture builder before the war. Commissioned pieces of my own designs. High end—made of the finest materials. My clients were my father’s business associates mostly. Their wives have excellent taste. But now? I don’t know. I’m unsure if it’s possible. Fortunately, I’m left-handed, since that’s the one I have left.”

  “Have you considered getting an assistant?” She sat across from him, tasting her sherry before setting it on the table. “They could do the parts you couldn’t. Perhaps you could concentrate on design and finish work?”

  “It’s odd you should suggest that. Doctor Nelson said the same thing.”

  “Did he? How funny. I suppose you can tell we practically grew up together. My father’s a great one for figuring out a solution to every problem. He taught us that.”

  “Doctor Nelson also said my body would adjust in time. He claims we have an incredible capacity for adaptation.”

  “Julius was always the smartest person I ever knew. He still is. The way he thinks, the way his mind works, was always fascinating to me. I’ve missed him so much.” What was she doing? Going on about Julius in front of the sweet young man adjusting to a new life. She must help him somehow. Then, she had an idea. “How would you like to do a piece for me? Just as an experiment.” She pointed to her grandmother’s old hutch that occupied the corner of the room. “My mother’s been talking for years about replacing that with something more modern. This one belonged to my father’s mother who, from all accounts, was a quite unpleasant woman. Every time my mother looks at it, she makes some comment about how it reminds her of the old battle-axe. Her words, not mine.”