In Perfect Time (27 page)

Roger trudged through the woods, two of the nurses’ barracks bags over his shoulders and his kit bag in hand. Since he’d transferred back to Italy on November 11, most of his belongings were at Ciampino Airfield, including the
dhol
. He only had his shaving kit, his Bible, a pair of drumsticks, and a change of shirt, socks, and undershorts.

The older Italian man led the way, Pettas and Whitaker assisted Vera, and Roger brought up the rear with the teenage boy, Enrico.

He never should have flown today. And he thought he’d become a top-notch pilot. Baloney. If they made it out of this alive, Veerman wouldn’t give a recommendation to a man who lost yet another plane.

Nope, he’d blown his one good chance and thrown away a gift once again. And nine other people had to pay the price.

About fifty feet ahead of him, Kay struggled with a barracks bag far too heavy for her. She wouldn’t be going to the chief nurse school. Not only had he broken her heart, but he’d dashed her dreams. Why did she have to suffer because he was a no-account?

The older man stopped and held up one hand. Roger stood still, held his breath, and strained his hearing.

Then the man flipped his hand forward.
“Presto.”

“Fast,” Enrico said. “Go fast.”

The woods opened up. A village lay cupped in a valley, open and exposed.

“Is that a good place to hide?”

“Si.”
Enrico jogged alongside him, out into the open. “Only today. Too close to the airplane. My friends will find better place. We move tonight in the dark.”

Roger puffed from the exertion.

At the edge of the village, a middle-aged woman met them, ushered them through the back door of a house, and motioned them up a narrow staircase, speaking quietly in Italian.

They filed into a good-sized room, fitted with nothing but a table and chairs, and darkened by closed shutters.

“Quiet,” Enrico said. “Do not open the window. Sleep. We go tonight.”

Roger sloughed off the bags. “Let’s lighten these, folks. Only essentials.”

Enrico beckoned Roger to follow him downstairs. The other partisan waited down in the big kitchen, where the woman stirred something on the stove.

Enrico shifted his rifle strap on his shoulder. “You are the leader, no?”

Roger felt like saying no, but like it or not, he was in charge. “I am.”

“We must tell the Americans.”

“We brought our emergency radio from the plane.” He pointed with his thumb up the stairs. “I could send a signal, but it wouldn’t be coded.”

“No, no, no.” Alarm flashed in Enrico’s large dark eyes. “The enemy will hear. We send messenger, a woman partisan they will not suspect. She will go to the OSS man in Genoa.”

Genoa. At the top of the boot, on Italy’s west coast. “Is it far?”

Enrico smiled and shook a finger. “No. We not tell you where you are. It is better you do not know.”

That made sense. If the Americans were caught, they could endanger the partisans, who were risking their lives to help them.

Roger studied Enrico’s face, the angles of manhood just starting to poke through the roundness of boyhood. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.” He pulled himself tall. “I fight for a year now. I will not work for Tedeschi.”

Roger’s throat tightened. These were the people the Twelfth Air Force helped with supply drops. Now he saw firsthand why they fought. Because the Germans took away every able-bodied man for forced labor and left women and children and the elderly to fend for themselves.

“Excuse me.” Kay stood at the base of the stairs, one hand braced on the wall. She addressed Enrico, not Roger. “Could
we please have some water? We’re thirsty and we need to wash the wounds.”

“Si.”
Enrico explained to their hostess in Italian, and the woman bustled around to meet the request.

Roger sank his hands into his trouser pockets, tapped out a rhythm on his thighs, and tried not to look at Kay, although she filled his peripheral vision. She’d been amazing today—calm, compassionate, authoritative, quick-thinking.

“You should have that looked at.”

He faced her. “What?”

She pointed to her temple. “You’re bleeding. Mellie or Georgie can take care of it.”

He fingered the dried blood on his cheek. “Oh. Yeah.” Mellie or Georgie, huh? She certainly knew how to put him in his well-deserved place.

The hostess handed Kay a bowl of water and some towels, and she chattered in Italian.

“For washing.” Enrico handed Roger a ceramic pitcher of water. “For drinking. Do you have—how you say it?—for drinking?”

“Canteens. Yes, we have some.” He had no choice but to follow Kay upstairs to deliver the water. At the top of the stairs, she paused, hands full.

Roger eased around her to open the door. He gripped the knob. They shouldn’t be here. Women in enemy territory, hiding in plain daylight, wounded and scared. Brokenhearted.

In the dim cramped space, he faced Kay. “I’m sorry.” The words came out throaty and grainy and insufficient.

She peered at him through dark eyes, the longest she’d looked at him all day. Her mouth softened a bit. “It’s not your fault.”

What wasn’t his fault? The crash landing? The shattered friendship?

Kay nodded at the door.

Roger opened it. She was wrong. They were both his fault.

31

November 20, 1944

Not the most pleasant evening for a stroll.

Kay squinted ahead into the moonless night, careful to keep Georgie’s black silhouette in sight before her. Roger and Enrico led the column, and Mike and Whitaker and Pettas brought up the rear, the routine they’d followed six nights in a row. Enrico served as their translator and guide as the partisans shuffled the Americans from shed to cellar to barn to bombed-out house. Traveling at night, Kay had no idea which direction they went, except that it always seemed to be up.

To her right, Mellie sucked in a loud breath.

“You okay?” Kay whispered and grabbed for her friend’s arm.

“Yes, just lost my footing.”

“Careful.” Traipsing through a puddle had drenched Kay’s feet, but her overcoat and hood kept the rest of her surprisingly dry and warm.

Mellie sighed. “Maybe they’ll have food for us.”

Kay’s stomach rumbled. “Maybe.” Since the Italians had so little food, the crew used their tinned Army rations, and sparingly.

“I hope I don’t sound ungrateful. The partisans are wonderful to us, and I know Enrico and Roger do their best.”

“I know.” Kay adjusted her barracks bag over her shoulder. The group had sorted through the bags and discarded everything useless—high heels and cosmetics and hair curlers and skirts and swimsuits and even Mellie’s wedding dress, at Mellie’s insistence. Kay had kept only two sentimental items, her Bible and her doll Sissy, who now rode in her musette bag rather than in the less private domain of the barracks bag.

“Enrico’s really taken to Roger, hasn’t he?” From the tone of Mellie’s voice, she had to be smiling. “I like how he calls him Ruggero.”

“Yes.” Kay’s voice came out clipped.

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about him. This must be uncomfortable for you.”

Kay made a face, invisible in the blackness. Any other woman Kay would have suspected of fishing for gossip, but not Mellie.

“Why?” Kay faked a sparkly spirit, although she kept her voice down. “What could be more fun than a vacation with a man who thinks you’re a floozy?”

Mellie gasped. “He didn’t say that, did he?”

Kay’s foot skidded to the side, and she barely caught herself. “Not in so many words, but the message was clear.”

“I can’t believe that. You’ve been such good friends, and he’s always respectful to you.”

“Until I flirted with him.”

“Oh.” The word drifted away into the rain. “At the wedding. But I thought . . . well, it looked like you two were quite . . . close that evening. I thought something was happening.”

So did Kay. Her throat swelled, but she shook her head to loosen her words. “He told me point-blank to stop flirting with him, that he wasn’t the right man for me.” Fresh pain lashed her heart.

“Oh dear.”

A chilly raindrop hit her forehead, and Kay tugged her hood forward. The only sounds were the slap of shoe leather on wet pavement and the sniffles and grunts and shuffles of people on the move. Where were Mellie’s sweet words of wisdom and insight?

The group halted. Enrico spoke softly in Italian to someone, a woman from the sound of it, and then Enrico led the group to the left, up a new road. Always up.

The group strung out again, close enough to see each other but far enough apart to avoid collisions in the dark. Enrico had partisan friends everywhere. They seemed to be spaced out every few miles to guide and to scout for enemy patrols.

“I wonder,” Mellie said softly.

“Wonder what?”

“Roger. Well, I’ve known him for two years, and he never used to talk to women. Oh, he’d deal with us nurses, but only to get the job done. That was all. Until you and he became friends this spring. There must be a reason why he avoided women, something in his past.”

Kay let out a noncommittal mumble. Even if he’d hurt her, she had no right to tell his secrets.

“Perhaps he didn’t reject you because of you but because of him.”

Because of him? A gust of wind blew drizzle into her face, and she angled her head away. Yes, Roger had been hurt by a woman, by a romance gone wrong. Was that why he’d rejected Kay? Did he have problems trusting women? Or did he have problems trusting himself with women?

“I’m
not
the
right
man
for
you.”
What exactly did he mean by that? She’d interpreted it as a brush-off, a way to avoid saying what he really meant—that she wasn’t good enough for him. But what if he meant it another way—that he wasn’t good enough for her?

That was plain silly.

Something bright shone up ahead, disappeared, reappeared.

Kay’s heart slammed into her throat.

A murmur worked its way down the line.

Georgie turned to Kay. “Take cover.”

Somehow Kay passed the message to Louise behind her.

The road curved around a hill, and everyone scrambled for the downward slope to the right. Kay eased her way off the road, down through the brush, the mud.

“Get down. Lie flat. Stay together.” That was Roger’s voice, firm, low, calm, and coming nearer, working his way down the line. “Everyone here?”

Several feet below the level of the road, Kay flattened herself to the slope, damp grasses clammy on the side of her face.

“Vera, Alice, Georgie, Mellie, Kay.” Roger crouched at her feet until she looked his way and nodded. “Louise, Mike, Pettas, Whit.”

In the stillness of the night, a car engine rumbled. The light must have been a headlight. Who had cars in this area? Who would be out past midnight? Only the Germans or the Italian traitors, as Enrico called his countrymen who still chose to fight for fascism.

Kay hunched lower and pulled her hood over her face, longing to blend into the dirt, into the night.

Behind her, at the end of the line, Roger would be hunkered down too.

The new thought leached into her mind. Was it possible? Was he afraid of repeating history? Of getting Kay pregnant? Of hurting Kay? Of getting hurt himself?

She couldn’t exactly ask him why he rejected her. What would be her motive? So she could counter his arguments. So she could convince him to take a chance on her. So she could manipulate him to do her will.

Kay shuddered.

“Lord, please,” Georgie whispered. “Keep us safe. Hide us.”

The engine rumbled closer. Light spilled down the slope, skimming over the nurses and airmen.

She should be praying for safety too. Why did her thoughts and prayers stray?
Lord,
help
me
release
Roger.
You
know
I
love
him.
You
also
know
why
he
doesn’t,
can’t,
or
won’t
love
me.

The sound of rubber on wet pavement, of water shooting behind tires.

Kay couldn’t get any flatter, her cheek pressed into the mud. She’d tried to manipulate Roger to love her by flirting, but it didn’t work. Just as she couldn’t manipulate God to love her by being good. The Lord loved her simply because he chose to love her.

Roger had chosen not to.

Light flashed overhead, the engine and tire sounds peaked and then passed by.

Kay’s back and arms and legs relaxed, and a strange, airy, sad peace filled her. She couldn’t force Roger to love her. She couldn’t control him, nor did she want to. Because she loved him. And that meant letting go.

Lord,
I
release
him.

32

November 23, 1944

In the dim predawn light, Roger crouched behind a hedge and peered over the top. A vineyard lay before him, rows leading toward a two-storied home with a square tower and hills just beyond.

“This is the place,” Enrico whispered.

“Good.” After over a week of hiding by day and sneaking by night, they’d finally reached a more permanent refuge. If all went well.

“See?” Enrico pointed to the right of the house. “The cellar’s in a cave in that hill. The Germans stole the
vino
, smashed everything to bits. They won’t be back. Let’s go.”

Roger glanced behind him. The rest of the party huddled just behind the tree line, waiting. He motioned for them to stay put while he and Enrico checked things out.

“Let’s go, Ruggero.” Enrico vaulted over the hedge.

Roger patted his shoulder holster for security and followed, if less gracefully. Mike also had his pistol to protect the ladies if necessary.

The men scurried down a row between the grapevines, hunched over. At the end of the vineyard, they crossed an
open yard, ducked between some outbuildings, through a gate in a stone wall, and approached the back door.