In Perfect Time (41 page)

The sole purpose of today’s show was to show gratitude for the people building planes for the war effort.

Far ahead of her, Roger stopped and chatted with a workman, Mike at his side.

For half a minute, she allowed herself to watch Roger, the way he moved and talked and held himself, allowed herself to taste the bittersweet flavor of loving a man who would never love her.

Mike waved.

She hitched up a smile for him. Mike was sweet and attentive, and in his shy way he hadn’t even tried to hold her hand. Fine by her, since her heart stubbornly resisted switching allegiance from the pilot to the copilot.

Besides, she disdained juvenile games. She refused to incite Roger to jealousy, or punish him with anger, or manipulate him with tears. She’d maintain the charade that she’d lost all interest in Roger Cooper.

He’d made his decision, and she’d be mature about it.

On the outside, anyway.

Her gaze betrayed her and slid from Mike to Roger. He looked straight at her, and the zing of connection shot through her like an arrow.

Kay jerked her head toward Mellie. “Say, what do you think—our soldiers and Marines landing on Okinawa on Easter Sunday?”

Mellie blinked thick lashes over dark eyes. “Oh. Yes. A strange day for an invasion, I suppose. Maybe that was the point.”

“Surprise. Yes, of course.” Her cheeks warmed. How often did she blurt random war news to her girlfriends? But it served its purpose. Ahead of her, Roger and Mike ambled along.

“Nervous?” Mellie said.

About the tour? Absolutely. Today’s shows officially started the tour, and a long month stretched before her.

“I hoped Georgie’s idea would help.”

“It did.” Kay whisked up a smile. Georgie’s idea had reduced terror to queasiness.

Major Barkley motioned the ladies onward and outside, where a makeshift stage awaited. They would put on two shows to cover both lunch breaks, and the first group of several hundred had already gathered on the tarmac.

In a tent beside the stage, the ladies removed hardhats, fluffed their hair, pinned on garrison caps, and fixed lipstick and powder.

Mellie adjusted her khaki necktie while studying herself in a handheld mirror. “Don’t you think it’s funny that we fought so hard to wear trousers on the job, we’re performing for women in coveralls, and they want us to wear skirts?”

“Just be glad they don’t make us wear those short sparkly skirts the showgirls wore in Washington DC.” Georgie imitated one of their prancing little dance moves.

“That could be arranged.” Don Sellers directed a cool gaze straight to Kay and puffed cigarette smoke down over his lower lip.

Why had Kay let those lips touch hers even for a second? A dozen nasty retorts pinged through her brain, but her tongue rejected each one.

Roger stepped forward. “If they get to wear sparkly skirts, Mike and I want to wear them too.”

“Sounds fair,” Mike said with a firm nod.

“Why shouldn’t we show off some leg?” Roger lifted his trouser leg a couple of inches. “I’ve got killer gams.”

Georgie and Mellie burst into laughter, and Kay couldn’t restrain a smile, although she leveled it at Sellers.

The PR man let out a quick derisive snort and tilted his head to the tent entrance. “You’re up, boys.”

Applause penetrated the canvas walls, and Roger and Mike headed out with Sellers on their heels.

“That was sweet of Roger.” Georgie managed to sound innocent and probing at the same time. “Protecting us like that.”

“Wasn’t it?” Kay made her voice sound grateful yet detached. No matter how kind he was or how much her friends nudged her, she would not let that man into her heart again.

In a few minutes, Charlie the stagehand leaned into the tent and motioned to the ladies. “Knock ’em dead.”

Georgie wagged her finger at him. “That would violate our oaths as nurses.”

The boy laughed and held open the tent flap.

Kay followed her friends and climbed rickety stairs to the stage. With each step, trepidation quivered in her fingers, and she stubbed her toe on the top step.

They passed behind the band, behind the drums.

“Kay!” Roger said in a loud whisper.

She faced him, stunned that he’d addressed her.

He held his drumsticks as one in his fists, at a diagonal, like a soldier with his sword at the ready, with the fierceness of a warrior. “You don’t have to do this.”

Kay stood trapped in his gaze. He’d heard the ladies practice. He knew she didn’t have to actually sing. Why this concern for her?

Because he knew her too well.

Her pretense of distance couldn’t disguise the intimacy of their friendship. He knew how traumatic this would be, knew the memories this would unearth.

“Mellie and Georgie can sing by themselves.” He cocked his head to the front of the stage. “You don’t have to do this.”

She eased back to sever the connection. “Yes, I do.”

With her chin high, she strode away. Hundreds of people sat on the tarmac, waiting for a song Kay couldn’t sing, and she stepped between Mellie and Georgie at the microphone.

Two decades before, she’d stood on stage between her sisters, all dressed in white. Jemima sang clear as the Nebraska
sky and just as crystal blue. Kezia and Keren had always sung in charmingly childish atonality. Although Father insisted Kay should be singing well by the age of six—hadn’t Jemima?—Mother defended her. Kezia was young, so young. Give her time. She was a Jobson. She’d sing beautifully as all Jobsons did. Please give her time.

But that night at the tent meeting, four-year-old Keren joined Jemima, their voices navigating the musical scale with ease, gliding and diving and soaring. And they’d seared Kezia with brutal smug glints in their eyes.

That night Father prayed over Kezia, calling on demons to flee her and heaven to save her. For months and years he prayed and berated and ranted. But that night, the night Keren sang, was the night Mother surrendered, the night Mother stopped loving Kezia.

“Kay?” Mellie hugged Kay’s arm.

She blinked away the past and blinked in the present.

Mellie’s deep brown eyes shone with compassion, and Georgie’s blue eyes with encouragement.

These women welcomed her into their triangle, each as different as could be, yet strong together. They knew each other, loved each other, pushed each other, and supported each other.

This was true sisterhood.

Kay winked at one nightingale, then the other. “Let’s knock ’em dead—in a healing sort of way.”

Her friends chuckled, Major Barkley introduced them, and then the music started, driven by Roger’s drums, but she shoved him out of her mind.

Georgie and Mellie sang, their gorgeous voices in perfect harmony, and Kay joined the song in perfect rhythm. She echoed their lines, added some sass, and the energy of the trio built as one.

Something warm and light stirred in her soul. Her blood
sisters snubbed her, but her nightingale sisters loved her. Her earthly father scorned her, but her heavenly Father—oh, what he had done for her.

He loved her, forgave her sins, and gave her gifts too numerous to count. She had a career and friends and life and health and so much more. Someday he might give her love and a home and a family. Whether or not he did, he was still good and he’d always love her.

The song ended with a boom of the bass drum and a crash of the cymbals.

The audience erupted in applause, and the ladies dropped curtsies, stymied by straight skirts.

Major Barkley approached the microphone with his cheesy grin, ready for the interview part of their show.

But Kay stole a moment, veered from the script, and wrapped her arms around her friends’ waists, closing the triangle. She had so much to say, but her words jumbled up inside.

“I know,” Georgie said.

And Mellie squeezed Kay’s shoulder. “Me too.”

Only one word croaked out: “Thanks.”

51

En route to El Paso, Texas
April 21, 1945

Roger hadn’t pulled a prank for at least six months, but he couldn’t resist this one. A hobby syringe from a store in San Antonio, some Texas chili powder, and Donald Pompous Sellers’s cigarettes, nabbed from his breast pocket during a nap on the train.

Out of the corner of his eye, Roger watched the PR officer across the aisle of the Sunset Limited. A puff, a frown, another puff, a contorted face, a long stare at the cig, another puff, and a fit of hacking like a twelve-year-old taking his first smoke behind the barn.

Decades of experience faking innocence allowed Roger to keep a straight face. Sure, the prank was childish, but Sellers needed a little comeuppance for the high-handed way he treated them—especially Kay.

This would probably be his last prank ever. But boy, was it a good one.

Sellers smashed the cigarette in the ashtray and lit another. He sniffed it, took a puff, and broke down coughing.

Charlie Poole gave Roger a sidelong glance, his gray eyes dancing.

Roger merely glanced over Charlie’s shoulder. “How’re those problems coming?”

“Done.” The boy handed Roger a sheet of paper.

He shook his head. “Start again. You’ve gotta write down the equation, show all your work.”

Charlie groaned and slouched in his seat. “Waste of time.”

Like looking back in time at himself. “Believe me, I understand. I can do this stuff in my head, but that’s not the point. There are three reasons to show your work.”

“Yeah?” Skepticism lowered his voice.

“Yeah. One—it shows the teacher that you understand the process. Two—if you make an error, it’s easier to find where you went wrong. And three—in the real world, you don’t work alone. As a pilot, I did load calculations, and other people relied on me. When I turned in sloppy paperwork, didn’t fill everything out ’cause I did it in my head, they had to work twice as hard to figure it out. That’s not fair.”

“Still don’t like it.”

“Neither do I. But I understand why it’s important, and I do it. You will too.”

Charlie grumbled. “All right, but it’s a waste of paper, and there’s a paper shortage, don’t you know?”

“Then write small.” A wink, and Roger handed the paper back to the kid. “Work on those. I need a nap.”

“Sure thing, Lieutenant.”

Roger stretched his legs out as far as he could, crossed his ankles, and leaned against the window. The tour schedule wore him out. Tulsa to Oklahoma City to Dallas to Houston, a side trip to Austin, and several days in San Antonio. Trains and hotels and restaurants and canteens and shows and shows and more shows.

Thank goodness he’d turned down Hank Veerman’s contract. This was a crazy way to live.

His eyelids felt like lead. If only he could shut his ears from the sound of Kay’s lilting laughter two rows ahead.

The sound scraped his raw heart, and loneliness carved into him. Mike spent most of his time with the ladies now, a place Roger didn’t belong. The boys in the band had shunned him when Major Barkley fired their beloved drummer and the three cute little singers. They played together fine, but without camaraderie.

That left Charlie. If it weren’t for the stagehand, he’d be alone.

Kay’s red head and Mike’s brown one poked above the seatback, too close together for Roger’s taste, but they were chatting with Mellie and Georgie across the aisle. Despite all their time together, Mike didn’t seem to be making progress.

If Roger were a better man, he’d offer pointers.

He pulled his service cap over his eyes and settled lower in his seat, but Kay’s voice penetrated his ears and heart and marrow. Her laughter sang even if her voice didn’t. Yet her stage performance grabbed him more than that of any silky-voiced songstress, and not only because he knew what it cost her. She spoke her lines with spirit, her hips swaying gently, her words right in time to the beat of his drums. As if they still worked together as one.

A sigh seeped out. He longed for the partnership and friendship they’d shared.

In Italy, after the girls had escaped and Roger was hiding with the partisans, he’d felt imbalanced and incomplete without Kay.

How much worse now, when he was in her presence every waking moment and never savored her company.

Kay shifted in the train seat, her legs restless. Mike leaned too close, not to flirt but to converse with Georgie and Mellie across the aisle.

They had plenty to discuss—the heartbreaking death of President Roosevelt, the rapid Allied drive across Germany, and the offensive in Italy pushing toward Bologna and the territory they’d covered on foot.

Kay laughed at Georgie’s joke. They’d spent the last few days at the various air bases in the San Antonio area, including Randolph Field, the new home of the School of Air Evacuation. The sounds of C-47s in flight and the sights of nurses in their olive drab trouser uniforms only reminded her of lost dreams.

A letter caught up to her yesterday from the Army Air Forces’ chief nurse school, which remained at Bowman Field in Kentucky. The next class would start May 1. It would be the last class. Kay would not be there.

“Isn’t that swell, Kay?” Mike’s voice strained in cheer, as if he knew Kay wasn’t present in the conversation.