The Pieces We Keep(69)

She had become the missing little girl, the one from the paper, leaving loved ones to grieve with few clues and no answers. She saw her own mother weeping, her father distraught. This would be the tragedy to revive the couple’s bond, or sever it forever. She pictured Luanne and Gene, dazed by a swarm: officers and detectives, rookie reporters. In the midst of world war, the abduction of a diplomat’s daughter would barely make a headline.

Could it be for a ransom? How long had the man followed her?

How did he know of Isaak? The thought of exploiting that memory, the malice of such bait, altered Vivian’s fear. It boiled and mounted into an eruption of anger, doubling her will to escape.

She shoved her shoulder downward and wrestled an arm loose. With every ounce of her strength, she jabbed her elbow into his gut, causing him to moan. She pushed through his grip and started to run.

“Stop,” he said.

She swerved around a tree before the roots sent her tumbling. She scrambled to rise, wanting to bellow at full volume, yet her throat, constricted by terror, blocked any rise of sound.

“Darling, please!” His tone resembled a plea. But it was the familiar rasp and endearment that forced her to glance backward.

Moonlight illuminated the man in his overcoat. He was reaching out, but not chasing. The sway of branches caused a flicker over his face. Like the flashing of a time machine, it transported Vivian across the Atlantic. Once more, in the velvety seats of the London cinema, she watched the black-and-white images of a newsreel reflect and dance across . . .

Isaak.

This man was Isaak.

“Are you hurt?” he said.

She could only stand there. The whisper of his name swirled in her head. Isaak. His golden curls had been snipped away, but she recognized the deep-set eyes, the dimple of his chin. The handsome lips that so often-more in her dreams, regrettably, than in life-had laid trails over her skin.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He approached with tentative steps. “I’d have met you on the bridge, but the policeman was circling around.”

His accent was stronger than she remembered. She could be dreaming, hallucinating, encountering a ghost.

Guided by hope, she hazarded to touch his sleeve. She rubbed it between her fingers and confirmed the reality of fabric. The reality of his existence.

“It’s you-” She covered her mouth, withholding a sob that sprang from a buried well.

His lips slanted into a smile. It was the very one she had feared she was doomed to forget. He wiped a tear from her face and clasped her fingers tight. His hands were warm and smooth, like mittens lined with silk.

“My God, how I’ve missed you,” he said. Emotion burned in his gaze.

Whether by his effort or hers she could not say, but suddenly she was in his arms. The thumping of her heart formed a drumbeat against his chest.

“Vivian, Vivian,” he said over and over, as if to hypnotize her with the word. His mouth brushed her cheek. Her neck tingled from the heat of his breath. Could this really be happening?

She closed her eyes, savoring the feel, the scent of him. She inhaled the sweetness of tobacco and sage, or was it the forest? No. There was no forest, no passage of time. They were back in a dank cellar, the air electric from the gliding and joining of their bodies, and a song played out....

But the song was not there; it was here. Here in the cursed present.

Isaak, too, must have heard, for he ceased any movement.

Beyond the labyrinth of trees, an unseen person whistled “Shepherd’s Serenade.” The second officer must have been making his rounds.

Vivian considered the traits of such a duty, the honor and righteousness. The heroism embodied by the uniform. And from the thought came the memory of another man. A fellow whose kind and caring nature had not only fractured the shell over her heart but seeped through the hardy cracks.

Although Gene had agreed to a casual courtship, a budding of guilt opened within her.

The whistling drifted away.

She edged backward from Isaak, her loyalty torn. Her gaze slipped from his face and fixed on a discovery. In the gap of his coat was a neckerchief. She followed the sailor’s tie to an insignia she recognized from newsreels and propaganda ads, an eagle perched on a wreath.

Inside the wreath was a swastika.

“What is this?”

He traced her attention. In a frantic sweep, he cinched his coat closed. Their bout of struggling had exposed his uniform. “I can explain,” he said, reaching out.

Vivian instinctively stepped away. The heat of her skin had dissolved, the fluidity of her limbs gone rigid. “All this time ... I thought . . . I thought something horrible had happened to you.”

“Please. Hear me out.”

“Instead, you were serving for the Germans?”