39. January 19, 1915 Great Yarmouth, England #2
She sprints for the cemetery, her loose hair streaming behind her, her bare feet pounding against the frozen ground.
The zeppelin flies high overhead, an ominous dark shape blocking out the stars.
Engines roar in her ears as she darts around the corner and the minster comes into view.
She can barely make out the shadowy outline of the hollow tree.
She runs toward it, her lungs burning. “Elsie!”
The girl’s head pops up from behind a gravestone. “Beatrix!”
A wave of relief threatens to bring Beatrix to her knees as Elsie runs to her. She gathers the girl into her arms and races with her toward the church. They have to get inside.
Beatrix tries to force the door open with her shoulder, throws all her weight into it, but it won’t budge. She pounds her fists against the smooth wood. “Hello? Let us in!”
A square of warm light opens in the silvery skin of the zeppelin. A moment later, dark shapes tumble from it. Bright flashes illuminate the night and the ground shudders. Elsie screams.
“It’s all right,” Beatrix whispers as the girl buries her face in her hair. “We’re all right.”
She repeats those words over and over, clutches the trembling girl to her as they cower together in the minster’s doorway, the night lighting up around them, the ground shaking beneath them.
She doesn’t move from the church until the zeppelin has disappeared into the night, the last drone of its engines fading into suffocating silence, as if all of Great Yarmouth is holding its breath.
Is it safe? Is it over? Beatrix has the sinking feeling that this is only the beginning.
Elsie refuses to let her go, so Beatrix carries her to the row house.
The streets she limps through are not the same ones she ran through less than an hour ago.
The scent of the sea has been erased, overwhelmed by smoke and dust and the stink of fear.
Broken glass and masonry litter the streets, and the people of Great Yarmouth wander through them in a daze, some injured, most in shock.
She passes a home with no front left, only a gaping hole where walls and windows used to be.
“A woman’s been killed,” someone murmurs to their neighbor.
If it weren’t for the child in her arms, Beatrix would stop moving altogether, the adrenaline gone, the exhaustion overwhelming, the sorrow threatening to sink her.
Because the war has come to her doorstep.
Because people have died, and it could have been Elsie.
The thought alone makes her knees tremble.
She keeps going, her feet numb, her arms aching, placing one foot in front of the other all the way to the row house. The door flies open, and Mary rushes out. Tears stream down her face as she takes Elsie from Beatrix’s arms.
“I think she’s fallen asleep,” Beatrix says, gently brushing the girl’s hair away from her dirty face.
“Thank you,” Mary chokes out as she hugs Beatrix tightly with her free arm. She carries Elsie inside.
Beatrix shivers. She wants nothing more than to wrap herself in a blanket by the fire, to sink into oblivious sleep and forget about zeppelins and bombs and war.
Robert stands in the doorway of the row house, glaring at her. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Beatrix hadn’t thought. She just ran. Ran, because she would never forgive herself if Elsie got hurt. Ran, because the terror and the truth had hit her like a dagger to the heart, tearing her open: She loves that girl.
Beatrix bursts into tears. It’s all wrong. The war isn’t supposed to be here. She isn’t supposed to be here. And she isn’t supposed to love that child. She isn’t supposed to love anyone. She can’t. Her vision swims and the ground tilts beneath her, her entire world tipping off its axis.
Robert catches her by the elbow. “I’ve got you.”
Her legs give out, as if his words have given her permission to sink into the darkness and forget.
Beatrix wakes in a single bed, tucked under an old patchwork quilt, bright winter sun streaming through the window.
“Sorry.” Robert puts a plate of cold supper on his desk in the corner. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She is in Robert’s room. In Robert’s bed.
“How are you feeling?”
The last thing Beatrix remembers is sobbing in the street. She sits up in the bed and looks over at Robert, her eyes wide. “Did you carry me all the way up here?”
Robert smirks at her. “Yes, all the way, up an entire twelve steps.”
“But your leg—”
“Is fine,” Robert insists.
But Beatrix swears his limp is worse. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Robert says. “Last night was hard for all of us.”
It was hard. Harder than anything Beatrix has faced in a long time.
The war and the zeppelin and the broken city were terrible enough, but that icy fear that cut through her when she realized where Elsie had gone—when she knew she might already be too late—was worse.
She thought she would never feel that pain again.
“Mum wanted you to have food in case you were hungry, and we thought Elsie would jump into bed with you. I thought I could manage it without waking you. I guess I’m not as nimble as I used to be.”
Beatrix raises an eyebrow at him.
Robert grimaces. “Bringing the food, I mean. I thought I could manage the food, not jumping into bed with you. You know, I’m just going to shut up now.”
Beatrix can’t help but smile at him. “Is Elsie all right?”
“Thanks to you.” Robert shakes his head. “I just… I don’t understand why you would do that.”
“You would have done the same thing,” she says.
“I couldn’t have done the same thing, could I?” he says darkly. He can’t run after his sister. He can barely walk.
“I’m sorry,” Beatrix says. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Robert sighs. “I shouldn’t take it out on you, of all people. But I’m her brother. I’m the one that’s supposed to protect her. All of them. Especially now Dad’s gone. You’re…”
Nothing. She is nothing to Elsie, nothing to this family. “Only a boarder?”
“You’re not only anything,” Robert says firmly. “I just meant you didn’t have to.”
“I did.” And there is only one thing to be done for it. “I should go back to London.”
“They’ll be targeting London, too,” Robert says. “I reckon it’s worse down there. You should stay.”
But Beatrix isn’t afraid of more zeppelins. “I’m sure your mother can find another boarder.”
Robert catches her eye. “I would like you to stay.”
Her heart skips. It would be easy to stay. Dangerously easy, to stay here with Robert, to become a part of this family, to pretend she has a normal life. She could have years with them. But it would be borrowed time. A borrowed beautiful life that does not belong to her.
Robert sits on the edge of the bed and takes her hand in his. “I’d like a chance to get to know you, Beatrix. I can’t do that if you run away to London.”
But even if she stays, he won’t know the real Beatrix. He will never know her like Oliver does.
Like Oliver did. Because he is gone, too.
She doesn’t move out of Robert’s grasp. He is here and now, sitting in front of her. Maybe that could be enough.
As soon as she thinks it, she knows it won’t be. It would be over in a blink of an eye, and she would be left alone again, left to start over again. To lose everything, again and again and again. Isn’t that why she let Oliver go?
“Stay, please,” Robert says.
Beatrix pulls her hand from his. “I can’t.”