WINTER 1941

He and Andrew didn’t talk much. Never had. They were thick as thieves, of course, in cahoots, mates for life and all that, always in opposition to the same foes—their father, school, drudgery. If there was ever a tree to climb or a relation to trick, it was Andrew who led the charge and Billy who calculated the risk. But once his brother finally decided to marry Debo, his allegiances changed. She calculated his risks now, and he—amazingly but gladly—submitted.

For a long time this turn of events made Billy feel lonely and angry. Coming back from France, licking the wounds inflicted by the Huns, it had almost destroyed him to see his little brother so rewarded with beautiful, thoughtful Debo. Kick’s friend. They’d been a tremendous foursome, and Billy hated the fact that Kick’s absence had not diminished them as it had him.

When their first son died almost as soon as he was born, Andrew endured a grief of which Billy wouldn’t have thought his devil-may-care brother capable. He watched as Andrew and Debo cared for each other in handkerchiefs and cups of tea and gentle teasing, totally united in their sorrow and commitment to not letting it undo them entirely.

A month after it happened, Billy was out with Sally in London. Pearl Harbor had been bombed the week before, and Christmas was also upon them. Billy could never escape the memory of the one youthful holiday season he’d spent with Kick and the snow-globe-like perfection of it.

They were at the Ritz, already on their second bottle. He drank much more with Sally than he ever had with Kick. She offered him a cigarette from her varnished fingertips, and he took it though he didn’t really enjoy smoking. It was more a way to keep his hands and mouth occupied.

“How’s Andrew holding up?” Sally asked as she blew a puff of smoke so that it just grazed his right temple, a maneuver that until recently had made him stiff with desire from head to toe. She was a beautiful girl, after all. And she meant well. They’d had some real fun together these last months.

But he looked at her next to him that night, in her black evening dress and blond locks and the velvety skin that had given him feverish dreams just a few months before, and he realized that he couldn’t see the two of them surviving what Andrew and Debo appeared to be surviving.

“He seems to be coming out of the fog,” Billy replied.

“Good.” Sally nodded. “That has to be the first step.”

Toward what, Billy still couldn’t see. But he intended to find out.