Safe Haven

Prologue

Part 1

“They Come to the Fence”

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part 2

“Hope Fading and for One—Hope Gone”

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Part 3

“VE–Day—Hooray! But What Next for Ft. Ontario?”

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Discussion Questions

About the Author

With appreciation to all who make sure that history lives on, this novel is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Willard Schum (October 24, 1931–September 29, 2013), founder of the Safe Haven Museum, Oswego, New York, and to the surviving “guests” of the Fort Ontario Emergency Relief Shelter, who will gather in the summer of 2014 for the seventieth reunion.

  P
ROLOGUE  

Washington, DC

Late July 1944

I
t was still dark when the jangle of the phone next to the sofa startled Suzanne Randolph awake. This was the fifth night in a row that she had fallen asleep without bothering to undress or get into her bed. The fact that on this night she had taken the time to go get the pillow and quilt from her bedroom and bring them to the sofa probably indicated this was a long-term move.

Instead of answering the phone balanced precariously on the edge of a makeshift table that was little more than an unsteady stack of coffee-table books with a tray set on top, she burrowed more deeply under the patchwork quilt. Three years earlier—the ink practically still wet on her college diploma—she had been hired by one of the nation’s top morning newspapers and moved to the nation’s capital, the nerve center for political news.

Her mother had bought the quilt for her as a housewarming present when she moved to Washington, DC, to start her first job. “To keep you warm in the cold, cruel world of politics,” she’d said. Her mother had a wicked sense of humor. She also looked at the world through a prism that everything happened for a purpose that would become clear with time.

For the first several months that she worked at the paper, Suzanne took whatever assignment she was given—local council meetings, obituaries, society news about political wives doing their bit for the war effort. Then like an understudy on Broadway, she got her chance to show what she could do. A major story broke in the middle of the night, and she was the first reporter on the scene. Of course the veteran reporters got the credit as well as the bylines. Still, she had filed a human interest piece related to the overall drama, and the paper’s managing editor—Edwin Bonner—had been impressed. So impressed that he had begun giving her assignments with a higher profile. In short order her dream of becoming a respected journalist seemed within reach.

Now, of course, she’d managed to ruin all that.

Finally the phone burped out half a ring that was abruptly cut off when apparently the caller gave up. Suzanne pulled the quilt more firmly around her shoulders as she turned over and faced the back of the sofa.

The phone rang again.

She covered her ears and counted the rings as she waited for silence. When it came, she eased back the quilt. Why was she all covered up like it was January instead of July with its steam bath of heat and humidity that was normal for summer in DC? Her apartment windows were wide open, and not a hint of a breeze stirred in spite of the asthmatic whirring of the ancient table fan she’d picked up at a tag sale. Why was she still lying here on a day when she should be up scanning the want ads as she looked for a job—any job?

“You’re pathetic,” she muttered as she threw back the quilt and lay on her back, staring up at the water-stained ceiling that the super had promised for the last year to repaint. It could be her mother calling, but she and Suzanne’s stepfather were on a fishing vacation in Canada so that was unlikely. It could be a friend. That was even less likely, because since the scandal, her so-called friends had avoided her as if she carried some life-threatening disease.

The phone rang again. One of these days Suzanne was sure someone would invent a phone that could be unplugged and silenced, but until then, her only options would be to answer it or rip the cord from the wall. And although the latter was more tempting than she cared to admit, she decided to answer since clearly the caller was not going to give up until she did. Still lying on the sofa, she reached up over her head and fumbled for the receiver. “What?” she barked irritably into the mouthpiece.

“And a good morning to you as well, sunshine.” The clipped, precise voice of Edwin Bonner, her former boss, was the last thing she had expected to hear. “You slept on the sofa, didn’t you?”

“What are you doing—having me followed? Look, I know I made a huge mistake—”

“
Mistakes
as in the plural form of that word, and they were indeed major.”

Suzanne groaned. “Don’t remind me.” Her first mistake had been trusting Congressman Gordon Langford III. They had been dating for several months when he’d given her the first hint of what he later called the biggest story in Washington. Over the next few weeks, he had played her. Oh, she saw it all after the fact—the notes he left lying around and then snatched away from her as if they were state secrets; the distracted sighs that practically begged her to ask what was going on with him; and the bits and pieces of the story that he surrendered with the plea that “I have to talk to someone or I’ll go crazy.”

When the first layer of the story broke, Gordon had begged her to write the truth. He had provided her with documentation and details that seemed to contradict the official version of the matter. Because she had thought she was in love with Gordon and trusted him not to do anything that would hurt her—or her career—she had made the cardinal mistake of any rookie reporter. She had failed to check out her sources, instead accepted his version of things, and then turned in a story that she assured Edwin exposed a major politician’s corruption.

When Edwin grilled her about whether or not she had “gone down every single back alley,” as he liked to put it, to be certain that her information was correct and irrefutable, she had lied and told him she had. Only once the story ran did it come to light that Gordon had manufactured the entire scandal. The story had run on page one of the national news section—above the fold with her name as a byline. That morning she had been so excited that she had bought out the corner newsstand’s entire supply of the paper; then she had called both her mother and Gordon.

Her mother had answered. Gordon had not.

By noon of that day, the accused politician’s lawyer had contacted Edwin’s boss—the paper’s publisher—threatening a lawsuit unless the paper printed a full retraction also on page one above the fold and fired Suzanne. Competing newspapers across Washington had had a field day with this ultimatum, and suddenly Suzanne became the news. The accused politician—who Suzanne had little doubt was in fact corrupt although she had no real proof beyond Gordon’s assurances that
he
had proof—had become the benevolent hero. He had called a press conference and asked others to forgive Gordon, whom he labeled young and ambitious, and he’d thrown in a plea for forgiveness for the “little lady” because “we all make mistakes, especially when we’re in love.”

Edwin’s voice continued to crackle over the receiver as he apparently laid out the story of her downfall before coming to the real reason for his call. “So now you’ve decided to hole up in that dump you call an apartment and lick your wounds.” It sounded like he was shuffling through papers on his desk. “When’s the last time you showered, had a decent meal, and got dressed in something other than your pj’s?”