“I hope that went better than it looked.” Luanne’s natural lilt always projected the warm, patient tone the rest of the operators had been trained to learn. “What happened to you? I thought you were only going for coffee.”
“I just lost track of time.”
There was no reason to elaborate. Luanne would undoubtedly call her batty for turning down a perfectly enticing date, given that her own beaus came and went. Besides, all Luanne knew was that an old steady in London had left Vivian reluctant to court. Nothing else. Preserving the details seemed a way to keep Isaak alive, if not in reality, at least in Vivian’s mind. She snagged another call to avoid saying more.
“Number, please ... Thank you.” She plugged in the front cord as a scream belted from the hall.
“I told you, there’s been a mistake!”
All four operators snapped their attention toward the door. On the other side of the glass, their supervisor raged. The colonel’s mouth moved around his words. He reached forward, but Mrs. Langtree pulled away.
“It’s not him, it’s not!” She covered her ears and frantically shook her head. Her meticulous hairdo sprouted loose.
Luanne touched Vivian’s arm. “Her son,” she said.
The lights of the switchboards receded into the background. Mrs. Langtree yelled again, not in words but a howl. The sound was so mournful it echoed off the walls of Vivian’s heart. Then, without warning, the woman collapsed into the colonel’s arms. His forlorn expression implied he had been a friend-of her son or late husband or both-and, as such, would not have allowed a piece of paper to present the news.
The personalized delivery, however, did not improve the result. For Mrs. Langtree now sobbed as though the last fibers of her world had unraveled, leaving barely a memory to grasp.
Vivian covered her mouth in an effort to withhold her tears. She managed to succeed, save a few strays, until later that night.
In the still of darkness, as Luanne slept deeply in the next bed, there was no escaping reality. Not every loss was confirmed by an officer at the door. Nor a telegram with the power to sink a fleet.
Loss, often the worst kind, also arrived through the deafening quiet of an absence.
Vivian sat down on the cold tiled floor with her back against a wall. From the lower compartment of her jewelry box she retrieved Isaak’s letter. Along with the wrinkled page came a season-old clipping from the Brooklyn Eagle. It drifted, light as a feather, onto her lap. The article reported that a year had passed since a little girl had vanished; an FBI agent sought out clues long after police ruled it a dead-end case and now every lead had been exhausted.
Vivian wasn’t entirely sure why she had saved the piece. Maybe she was drawn to the father’s quote, testament to his unrelenting faith: “We’ll never stop searching. No matter what, we’ll never stop.” A grainy photo captured weary determination in the faces of both parents.
Vivian touched the picture that typically embodied hope. Tonight, she saw only fervent denial. Denial of a truth that to everyone else was glaringly evident.
She pulled the golden chain out from the top edge of her nightgown. Moonlight through the window glimmered off the charm. She thought of the strolls, the kisses, the day in the cellar. Images she once recalled with the vividness of a feature film had become gray-toned snapshots of a previous life. How long before they faded to nothing?
Though difficult to imagine, at one time her parents, too, could have shared such a passion, gradually leeched by time and duty. Perhaps only in picture shows did that type of love survive. Everything else, she was learning, came to an end.
Slowly Vivian unclasped the necklace, accepting what she had been dreading since the day she left London. She bowed her head to meet her knees and soundlessly wept until her tears ran dry.
21
For a full day since the soldier’s visit, the engraving on his necklace never left Audra’s mind. If she had conveyed even an ounce of coherence in her interview, it was only from rehearsing beforehand. How else could she have asserted her abilities to treat and nurture and solve when she was failing to do those for her son?
Desperate for a remedy, she was grateful Dr. Shaw had a last-minute cancellation. She left Jack in Tess’s care, so she could see the therapist alone. Their last appointment had done nothing to improve Jack’s nightmares. But the fact remained: At Dr. Shaw’s prompting, her son had spoken more in ten minutes than he had in ten months.
Perhaps the escalation of his dreams indicated they were closing in on the core of the issue. The same applied, Audra realized, when diagnosing the cause of physical pain; the most discomfort arose when pressing down on the ailing spot.