It was late afternoon, and rehearsal was over when a timid middle-aged woman stepped into the mostly empty club. She looked overwhelmed by the fancy surroundings, but Bobby greeted her warmly, and she seemed more comfortable by the time he directed her to the end of the bar, where Jenny and Kathryn were having a drink with Smitty before making the most of their abbreviated date night.
“A Mrs. Grayson to see you, Kat.”
Not recognizing the name or the face, Kathryn motioned her over. The woman held her purse tightly to her chest with both hands as she approached, but as she got closer, she shifted her gloves and purse into one hand and offered the other.
“Miss Hammond?”
Kathryn automatically extended her own hand, and they exchanged a polite handshake. “Yes?”
“My name is Marian Grayson.”
The woman had a soft accent, decidedly Midwestern. She smiled pleasantly as she spoke, and her eyes twinkled with appreciation upon meeting, though for the life of her, Kathryn couldn’t imagine why.
“Joshua Grayson was my boy.”
That name Kathryn knew. She froze, with their hands still clasped. Her rib cage seized and she couldn’t inhale. She raised her chin, as if the motion would force much needed air into her lungs. Breathe. She needed to breathe.
Mrs. Grayson nervously eyed the strangers still sitting at the bar and tentatively began. “He was—”
“I know who he was,” Kathryn interrupted gently, placing a hand on the woman’s elbow and moving her a few comfortable steps away, with their hands still joined. “He was a handsome red-haired young man, with a scar right here—” she said, as she drew a line under her chin, “where he fell off his daddy’s tractor when he was thirteen.”
Mrs. Grayson’s face lit up with a proud grin as she released Kathryn’s hand and relaxed her death grip on her purse. “He wondered if you really recognized him every time you saw him. Thought maybe you were just bein’ polite, ’cause that’s the kinda lady you are.” She looked Kathryn up and down affectionately and grinned as she opened her purse and began digging. “Glory be, you sure are everything he said you’d be.”
Kathryn wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but she was upset she hadn’t placed the Grayson name sooner. Had her life moved that far out of context? She should have taken it as a sign of healing, a healthy side effect of moving on, but, instead, she reprimanded herself for her momentary lapse in guilt. Mrs. Grayson had gotten over her initial shyness, but Kathryn was too distracted to comprehend the woman going on in rapid oratory about a great aunt’s funeral and how she located her at The Grotto.
“And I just knew it had to be you,” she was explaining. “So I said to Edgar … that’s my husband … since we’re going through that big city, I’m going to make it a point to find that woman, and here you are.” By this time, she’d fished a piece of worn paper from her purse and held it out.
“It meant so much to him, what you done, how you treated him.”
Kathryn took it and carefully unfolded the paper to reveal a letter scratched in a hurried scrawl in blue ink.
“He said one day you pulled him up on that stage and made him feel like the only man in the world.” The woman pointed out the passage. “The other boys treated him right special after that. Do you remember?”
He was one of a hundred boys she’d given that treatment to, and she didn’t know whether she really remembered Joshua in her arms on stage or whether she’d just imagined it after the fact, his face now one she would never forget.
“Yes,” Kathryn said quietly.
“He thought the world of you, Miss Hammond. You don’t know how much that meant to me and Daddy, knowing he had someone lifting his spirits in that awful place over there.”
Guilt found its way home, and Kathryn could only muster a weak smile.
“I just wanted you to know that you made a difference, and I—” her voice cracked with emotion, “why, I’m right grateful, is all.”
Kathryn didn’t know what to say. She smiled again and nodded in understanding as she offered the letter back.
“No, no,” Mrs. Grayson insisted as she patted Kathryn’s arm. “You keep that.” She leaned in close and made sure Kathryn had her undivided attention. “Don’t you ever forget what you done for those boys.” She turned before the tears welling in her eyes could fall and left as quickly as she came.
Kathryn stared at the letter in her hand, her eyes drawn to the date. One week before Joshua Grayson’s death. “No,” she said grimly, her voice barely a whisper, “I won’t ever forget what I did to them.” She stared at the words and numbers until they became a blur. A gentle hand on her back brought the world back into focus.
“Are you all right?”
She looked into concerned green eyes and made a poor attempt at a smile. “Yeah.”
Jenny looked at the letter. “Who’s Joshua Grayson?”
Kathryn looked up at Smitty. “Someone I killed.”
Disapproval frowned behind his eyes but his face remained focused and neutral. Her hand began to shake as she carefully folded up the note. Everything around her dimmed, and she was vaguely aware of Smitty sliding off his stool.
“I … uh …” She thumbed toward her dressing room. “I’m going to get my coat. I’ll be right back.” She mindlessly patted Jenny on the shoulder and then turned and headed across the club.
Jenny looked to Smitty for an explanation. “What does she mean?” He ignored the question entirely as he rushed after Kathryn, who was taking the stairs to her dressing room two at a time.
The sounds were getting louder, and even with her hands over her ears, Kathryn couldn’t drown out the desperate screams. The begging, the pleading! Why wouldn’t they listen!
“I don’t know anything!” the hoarse voice croaked over and over.
Gunshots and crumpled bodies. One after another fell until it was silent, but it wasn’t silent. The screaming had become background noise, like a train whistle that melts into one’s consciousness from living too long within earshot of the tracks. The pleading went on until the “I don’t know anything” was a meaningless whimper merely repeated for the sake of one’s own sanity. More gunshots followed by angry shouting instead of pleading, strong arms pulling instead of pushing, words of assurance instead of threats.
“I don’t know anything,” became a wordless sob into a stranger’s scratchy wool uniform. Only then did it truly become silent and she realized the screaming and pleading had been hers.
Her ears were ringing. She couldn’t get enough air. She felt lightheaded, sick. She couldn’t see, or, more accurately, what she could see she didn’t want to see: dead eyes, dead bodies, lives ended in slow-motion clouds of exploding red mist. Her eyes were tightly closed, but still the vision played on mercilessly.
“Look at me,” she thought she heard.
“I can’t,” she cried, just in case it was real.
“I’m right here.”
Her eyes were open now but she still couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. The sounds were coming again. Demons were dancing. She had to get out of her own skin. Something was holding her down, holding her in. Someone was pleading, but this time it wasn’t her. Her body felt like a live wire, her heart beating impossibly hard until she thought it might burst. Pins and needles were bombarding her skin until she could no longer sense her limbs. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to get out!
“Here,” the voice said.
“Let me go!” she pleaded, her useless extremities refusing to help themselves.
“Look at me, Kat!”
She was trying, but she was lost. The voice was familiar, and she knew it would lead her home, but she couldn’t find the way. “I can’t!” she cried.
“Breathe, and look at me.”
She knew that voice. Trust came with it, and safety too. She blindly reached out. “Don’t let go.”
“Right here.”
She recognized warm hands on each side of her face, and she lifted her numb fingers to encircle the wrists.
“That’s it. Right here, honey.”
Her focus found Smitty’s eyes, mere inches from her own, before they blurred into an opaque pane of tears and she broke down into his arms.
Smitty could only hope that Kathryn just needed to gather herself—she’d been fine for so long—but as his bum knee complained with every hurdled step up the stairs, he knew Mrs. Grayson’s visit, combined with the previous night’s dramatics, could spell trouble.
He burst into her dressing room and found her curled in the corner, holding her head, with Joshua Grayson’s note abandoned at her feet. She was gone, but how far gone?
Broken sobs and pain-wracked pleading filled the small room, as his questions went unanswered and demands ignored. He took her rigid shoulders in both hands and tried to shake her back to reality. He would have slapped her face had he not known it futile. It was an all too familiar scene, and he knew she would either fight to find her way out or two pills to oblivion would have to do it for her. He couldn’t bear to see her suffer, so he dumped the contents of her purse, looking for the pills, and rifled through drawers as he rhetorically asked for her help, knowing he’d get none in return.
Jenny knew something was terribly wrong. Smitty wasn’t fond of her, but he’d never been downright rude. His concern bordered on frantic, and as she watched him bound up the stairs, she decided one good turn deserved another, and she was going to be there for Kathryn, whatever the problem, just like she said she would.
When she reached the top of the stairs, determination turned to confusion, then to unease, as the muted sounds of someone in terrible pain assailed her ears. She listened, not able to comprehend what she was hearing. It almost didn’t sound human, and it certainly couldn’t be Kathryn. Jenny’s heartbeat quickened, and dread seized her when she realized it could be no one else. She rushed to the partially open door of her dressing room and stopped abruptly, unprepared for the scene that greeted her.
“Where are your pills, Kat—dammit!” she heard Smitty bark as he came into view, his hands waving in utter frustration. He continued to ransack the room, and just past him, Jenny saw a sight that froze her to her spot. Her strong, confident lover was crumpled in the corner like a frightened child, and the agonizing cries were indeed coming from her.
For a few abstract moments, as Smitty frantically searched the room, it appeared as if he had attacked her, but Jenny knew that certainly wasn’t the case. Whoever Kathryn was fending off with her sporadic, half-hearted flailing was in her mind. Jenny barely had time to register the poor soul as Kathryn when, suddenly, Smitty was standing before her, about to close the door in her face.
“Not now,” he said.
She put out her foot, blocking the door. He was not shutting her out, not when Kathryn was in such pain. “Smitty—” She didn’t know what to say. Obviously, is she all right? would sound ludicrous. “What can I do?”
“Leave us alone.” He pushed hard on the door, overpowering her foot.
“Smitty!” she said, pushing back.
“Please,” he said, “you can’t help her right now!”
She could tell by the desperation in his voice and the worry in his eyes that it had nothing to do with her or any dislike between them, and truth be told, she had no clue what to do for Kathryn, so she let the door close, entrusting her to the only other person she knew cared as much as she did.
She stepped back, still trying to process what was happening, and found herself torn between an overwhelming urge to barge in and an undeniable instinct to turn away, as if turning her back would render it all just a bad dream. But it wasn’t a bad dream, it was a nightmare, Kathryn’s nightmare, and she wasn’t about to go anywhere until it was over. She decided if she couldn’t be there physically, she could at least be there in spirit, so she hovered just outside the room with her hand and ear to the door and offered her strength in a silent prayer.
She could hear Smitty’s voice, at times both hard and gentle, begging Kathryn to come back to him.
“Look at me!” she heard him command.
Kathryn made nothing but incomprehensible sounds of desperation, and every one of them cut Jenny to the core. The broken person in the next room was so far removed from the vital woman she’d come to know and admire that she’d almost forgotten her history at the hands of the enemy. She could only imagine, yet loathed to do it, the horrors she’d endured and the waking nightmares that obviously plagued her still.
Eventually, the desperate cries ceased and Smitty’s voice became calmer, his urgings more productive, until finally she heard Kathryn’s voice. It was barely recognizable, weak and upset, but she was responding, and that was something. For a moment, Jenny was relieved, but it was short-lived, as a low, despondent sobbing began. The sounds weren’t the abstract torture of a mind adrift like before. This time they came from a conscious place, the mournful expressions of grief reverberating from an oft sampled well residing deep within. This unfathomable sorrow she recognized as Kathryn’s constant anguish, present and bleeding still.
Jenny didn’t know who Joshua Grayson was or, from Smitty’s reaction, how responsible Kathryn actually was for his death, but she knew the heavy burden of feeling responsible, and her heart went out to a kindred spirit.
Smitty cradled Kathryn in his arms, rocking her gently while she cried, until exhaustion took her mercifully away from the cruelty of her conscious mind. He picked her up and gently placed her on the bed and brought the throw to her chin. He kissed her forehead as a tear escaped the corner of her eye and followed the moistened path down her cheek like so many others before it.
He fought back tears of his own and carefully guided a wayward lock of hair from her face, wishing her torment as easily tamed. There was no more he could do for her now, so with a soft exhale, he turned off the light and quietly slipped from the room.
The door responded with a dull click as he slowly pulled it closed, and he turned to see Jenny struggling to her feet from her place against the wall.
“Is she all right?” she whispered. “Can I see her?”
Smitty took her by the elbow and led her silently away from the room and toward the stairs. He knew she’d have a million questions, questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Once at the stairs, he motioned her to go first, which she did. He didn’t follow her. “She’s fine. Go home.”
He didn’t expect her to leave without objection, but he didn’t expect the intensity of her protest.
“Bullshit, go home,” she said, as she marched back up the stairs to face him.
“Listen, kid,” he said, holding up his hands to defend himself, “she’s got a migraine, that’s all. She’ll be fine.” He could see the fire in her eyes as she closed the gap between them, and he stepped back to avoid a very outraged finger thrust in his face.
“Don’t fuck with me, John,” she said, the anger in her voice quickly consumed by emotional concern. “Not about this … please. Not about her.”
He saw tears welling in her eyes, but she blinked them away before they fell. She couldn’t know the truth, but he had to tell her something or she’d never leave. He nodded and led her to just outside Dominic’s office.
“Wait here.”
Jenny watched Smitty through the blinds as he explained the situation to Kathryn’s boss, who was obviously concerned and immediately on his feet, but Jenny could also tell from his body language that this wasn’t the first time it had happened. He picked up the phone to make alternative arrangements for the evening’s performance, she assumed, and Smitty nodded and left the office.
“Walk with me.”
Jenny looked toward the dressing room. “But …”
“She’ll sleep now.”
Smitty led her outside to his car, where he opened the passenger side door and closed it after she got in. He circled the car and slid into the driver’s side, putting both hands on the wheel. He made no effort to put the key in the ignition, so Jenny knew they weren’t going anywhere. He obviously chose the car for its privacy, and she hoped he was going to tell her what was going on, but the heavy silence told her she would have to start.
“What happened in there, Smitty?”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and he worked his jaw before answering. “It’s really not my place to say.”
Jenny exhaled her frustration, though she really didn’t think answers would come that easily. Delicate matters required a delicate approach, and she would have to convince him it would be in Kathryn’s best interest for him to confide in her. “Do you think she’d tell me if I asked her?”
Smitty looked at her as if she’d read his mind, and he was struggling with the answer. “She might,” he said.
That was a start, Jenny reasoned. “But if I asked her, it would probably be very painful, right?”
“Right.”
“So,” she drew out, “if she might tell me anyway …” She sought out his guarded eyes. “Why don’t you tell me instead, and we can both save her from that particular pain?”
Smitty cut wary eyes in her direction. “I said she might tell you. That’s not a ringing endorsement to betray a personal trust.”
“Smitty,” Jenny said, as she turned to face him in all seriousness, “no matter what you think of me, I care about Kathryn very much.”
He looked down and nodded. “I know you do.”
She was both surprised and encouraged by his response. “I’d never do anything to hurt her. I need you to know that.”
“I do.”
She raised her brow. He was being awfully agreeable, considering their history, so she pressed on while the pressing was good. “I want to help her. I want to be there for her if I can. I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s wrong.” He didn’t respond, and she could only assume he agreed. “Who was Joshua Grayson, and how did he die?”
Smitty exhaled with an undecided shake of his head. She could tell he was torn between Kathryn’s penchant for privacy and her need to heal.
Before he could verbally refuse to answer, Jenny made sure he knew she wasn’t totally ignorant of Kathryn’s past. “If it makes a difference, I know she was overseas, and I know she was captured.”
He turned to her in surprise, then faced forward again with a crease in his brow. His contemplative expression told her it did make a difference. She gave him all the time he needed and waited patiently for the answer she hoped would come.
He set his jaw and began. He skipped right to Kathryn’s confinement after capture. He said the hows and whys of the mission gone bad were merely a tragic backdrop painted by unexpected betrayal.
An ill-conceived rescue was attempted—unauthorized, of course, and strictly against protocol—by a group of undertrained, oversexed boys bent on being heroes, Joshua Grayson among them. Things went from bad to worse, as the men were either killed or captured themselves.
Kathryn, for her part, withstood the physical abuse typical of interrogation and kept her secrets to herself. The Nazis, with growing frustration, turned to the newly acquired prisoners as a way of extracting much-needed information from their reticent star.
The men were lined up and Kathryn told to choose one. This was the man they would kill if she didn’t give them the information they sought. If she refused to talk and refused to choose, they would choose for her, but they would choose three instead of one, and so it would go every time she didn’t give them an answer.
Jenny hung her head and uttered a curse under her breath. She felt sick.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
“There was no way she could choose,” he said. “She knew those guys. She couldn’t tell the bastards what they wanted to know, and she couldn’t choose.” He looked away and pressed the back of his balled-up fist to his lips. “Tore her up inside.” He paused a beat and put his hand back on the steering wheel. “That’s where Josh comes in. He spoke up, said he wasn’t afraid to die, and it would be all right if she picked him first.”
Jenny exhaled and looked to the sky, giving the young man respect for his futile gallantry. “Did she?”
“No.” Smitty stared blankly out the windshield, his words measured, devoid of emotion. “She couldn’t. They shot the kid in the head, and did two more, as promised.”
Jenny swallowed the bile rising in her throat. “My God.”
“They left her with the bodies to think about it and assured her they’d come back every hour and try again, which they did.”
Jenny could hardly conceive of such a scene. The wholesale execution of anyone, let alone friends, was an impossible choice. Just the abstract notion of having to make such a choice between Bernie or Kathryn, or even Smitty, had her trembling. She had to stop imagining. She was on the verge of breaking down herself, and that wouldn’t do. She had to be strong now. Kathryn needed her. She pushed the overwhelming thoughts out of her head and focused on Smitty’s deliberate recollection.
“When they came back, she did as they asked. She chose one.”
Jenny turned in disbelief, and it set Smitty on the defensive.
“She did it to save what lives she could!” he said. “Three at a time!”
Jenny held her hands up immediately. “No, Smitty,” she said, hoping he understood there was no judgment in her reaction. “It’s … it’s just so horrible.”
He stared at her and then finally nodded, letting his defensive anger dissipate. “Yes, it was.” He gathered himself. “Sorry.”
His knowledge of the event seemed more than just hearsay. “Were you one of those boys, Smitty?”
He took a moment to respond. “Yes, I was.” He worked his jaw in disgust. “And I couldn’t do a damn thing to help her. Just stood there, mute, while a nineteen-year-old kid did what we all wished we had the nerve to do.”
“You couldn’t have done anything.”
Smitty snapped his head in her direction. “You don’t know what it’s like to be so helpless!”
Jenny flinched at his bark.
He softened his glare and tilted his head in silent apology before turning to stare vacantly out the windshield. “I pray you never do.”
Jenny bowed her head and softly exhaled as she said a silent amen to his prayer and warned herself to step lightly around the emotional minefield.
“I could have spoken up,” Smitty went on, “told her it wasn’t her fault and it was okay. We all could have. It would have saved her the agony of choosing man after pleading man until she was so distraught she was out of her mind.” He quickly pinched tears from his eyes with an impatient hand. “Goddamn it.”
“I’m sorry,” Jenny whispered. Had she known he was so personally involved with the tragedy, she wouldn’t have pushed him for details, but now that she had, she hoped she could at least say something useful. “Joshua Grayson’s sacrifice was short-lived, Smitty. He didn’t save anyone, and neither could you. In fact, had they known you and Kat were close, it would have been worse for the both of you.” She sought his eyes and gently chastised him. “I think you know that.”
He worked his jaw and closed his eyes in begrudging agreement.
“You can’t blame yourself for her pain any more than she can blame herself for their deaths.”
Smitty snorted and shook his head.
Jenny knit her brow in confusion. “She really doesn’t blame herself for their deaths, does she? It wasn’t her fault.”
“No.” He looked to the sky. “It was mine.”
She waited in silence for his explanation.
“It was my idea to go after her,” he said hesitantly. “I convinced them to follow me in there.”
Things were finally getting a little clearer, and Jenny was not going to let Smitty take responsibility for everyone else’s actions. Hell, she would have gone in herself without a second thought. “Was it a hard sell?”
Smitty looked at her as if her question was a sacrilege to his finely-honed guilt, but then he looked away.
Jenny sensed the truth tempered his indignation and that it wasn’t a hard sell at all.
“You did what you had to do.”
“It cost those men their lives. And Kat …”
Jenny recognized a man swallowing his guilt.
“It destroyed her. She’ll never be the same.”
“Smitty—” Jenny leaned forward to make sure he could see her face. “You wouldn’t have been able to live with yourself had you done nothing.” She knew she couldn’t have. “So you did the only thing you could do. You had to try. You knew the risks and so did those men. You said it yourself. They followed you in there. You had no choice, really.” She raised her brow and leaned in, waiting for his response. “Did you?”
He turned to face her, and she watched the tension in his face ease into a gentle shake of his head.
“I think everyone needs to stop blaming themselves for something they had no control over,” Jenny said.
Smitty’s humorless exhale said Good advice, spoken with the innocence of a true neophyte. But evidently, he forgave her naiveté by virtue of her noble intent. “I can see why Kat likes you so much.”
Jenny couldn’t contain her full-faced grin. “Does she now?”
Smitty returned the smile. “God help her, she does.”
“Good,” Jenny said, because she realized Kathryn meant more to her than she previously imagined.
Sitting in the hallway of The Grotto listening to Smitty comforting Kathryn in her moment of anguish physically hurt. She wanted to be the one holding her and promising that it would be okay. She wanted to be the one Kathryn trusted, the one with whom she sought refuge, her constant relief from a tumultuous past that Jenny was only now beginning to grasp. In time, that would come, she decided. Whatever it took, she was going to make sure of it. For now, Kathryn had Smitty, and Jenny was glad. She was sorry for his experience but glad he was there and Kathryn wasn’t alone, then or now. She looked at the man in the driver’s seat, his square jaw set in contemplation. John Smith was a good man, the best, she’d decided, and his candor and his faith in her told her all she needed to know about how he felt about her and her relationship with Kathryn. She slowly reached out and touched his hand. “Thank you, Smitty. I know that was hard for you.”
He paused for a moment before responding. “You make her happy, Jenny. Happier than I’ve seen her in ages.”
It was the first time he’d used her proper name, and that, along with the sentiment, almost made her cry. She caught Smitty enjoying her reaction, and the two exchanged smirks as they considered the new bond they’d just forged.
“What now?” Jenny asked.
Smitty relaxed into his seat. “I’ll take her home in a bit. She’ll feel a little hung over in the morning, but she’ll be fine.”
Jenny nodded, satisfied Kathryn was in good hands. Smitty and Kathryn were forever linked by tragedy, and she, in turn, was woven into their tapestry by way of Smitty’s trust in her. She couldn’t conceive of the horrors they’d experienced, and she really couldn’t afford to if she was going to be strong. Kathryn had no choice, and how she managed to pull herself together and fashion any sort of life at all was nothing short of a miracle. “She’s an incredible woman.”
She knew she’d get no argument from the man next to her, and his soft snort of agreement proved her right.
He smiled wistfully. “I wish you could have known her before.”
Jenny just barely managed a grin. His comment was a futile regret that hurt too much to contemplate. She patted his hand. “Don’t worry, Smitty, we’ll take good care of her.”
An easy smile split his lips. “You’re all right, kid.”
Jenny returned the smile and squeezed his hand. “You’re all right yourself, Johnny.”