The Bungalow (13 page)

I tucked the note in the space below the floorboard and locked the door behind me. The wind had picked up since I had arrived, and the clouds overhead, now even darker, threatened rain. I hurried along the beach, nibbling on sections of the orange as I went.

I startled when, not far from the bungalow in the brush above the beach, I heard a rustling sound, causing every muscle, every tendon in my body to freeze.
What was that? Is someone following me?

I took a few steps toward the jungle line, and waited.
There it is again, that sound. Rustling, and faint voices.
I crept closer, taking cover behind the base of a very large palm, and squinted. Two figures stood in the shadows of the lush jungle brush, one male, one female. Then I saw the telltale sleeve of an army dress shirt, and a bare female leg. I shrank back behind the palm before tiptoeing again onto to the beach and quickening my pace to a sprint, looking over my shoulder at every turn.

Once inside the room, I was disappointed to see that Kitty wasn’t there waiting.

“C
an you believe it’s been two months since we arrived?” Mary marveled, her cheeks tinged a rosy pink. It was good to see the color, the life back in her face. She had insisted that Nurse Hildebrand let her work morning shifts instead of making her continue on bed rest. Despite intermittent trembling in her hands, Mary continued to gain strength, and she eagerly volunteered to assist me in a round of immunizations that morning.

“I know what you mean,” I said. “It sometimes feels as if we arrived only yesterday.” I paused to count the vials of vaccine we’d be giving the men after breakfast. “Yet, so much has happened already. I hardly feel like the same girl who stepped foot on that tarmac the first day.”

Mary nodded. “Me too. It’s hard to imagine life back there.”

I sighed. “I’ve almost forgotten what Gerard’s voice sounds like. Isn’t that terrible?”

“Not really,” Mary said. “You still love him.”

“Yes, of course,” I said with extra emphasis, feeling guilty for not yet taking the time to write him.

“I’ve almost forgotten Edward’s voice,” Mary added. “But that’s definitely not terrible.” She grinned, and I nodded in agreement.

I remembered the letter I’d been keeping from her.
Is she ready yet?
I listened to her hum as she unwrapped the packages of vaccine and set them on the trays.
That letter could spoil everything.

“Where’s Kitty?” Mary asked. “I thought I saw her here earlier this morning.”

“Oh, she’s here,” I said. “We walked down together.”

“No,” Nurse Hildebrand grumbled. “She said she wasn’t feeling well, so I sent her back to the barracks.”

That’s odd. She looked fine this morning.
I tried not to let my mind wander, but Kitty had been behaving strangely, almost since the moment we’d arrived on the island—saying she was going somewhere and turning up in another place; promising to meet me at breakfast or lunch only to disappear. She rarely spoke of Colonel Donahue, and I hadn’t mentioned witnessing their boat trip. That ship seemed to have sunk, yet she spent far too much time with Lance. Yesterday they stayed out until nearly midnight. Jarred from slumber, I’d eyed the clock sleepily when she finally stumbled into bed.

“She must have caught the virus that’s going around,” Mary said. “A terrible stomach illness.”

I didn’t believe that Kitty had a stomach illness. No, something else was going on. Our shifts in the infirmary didn’t leave room for meaningful conversation, now that more wounded men were arriving from nearby islands, where the fighting was thick. They trickled in slowly, but the cases were grim. Knife wounds. Gunshots to the abdomen. And just yesterday, a nearly severed leg that needed an immediate amputation. The somber work of caring for fallen soldiers consumed our days, and when our shifts ended, we’d scatter like mice to our favorite hiding places. But where was Kitty’s?

I thought about the other nurses. Stella had begun spending a lot of time in the recreation hall, where she’d taken a new interest in shuffleboard, or rather, in Will, who played shuffleboard. Of course, Liz dutifully tagged along. Mary, with little energy after a shift in the infirmary, went back to the barracks to read or write letters to friends at home, while I snuck away to the bungalow. Sometimes Westry would be there, sometimes not, but I always hoped to find him.

“Mail’s here!” one of the nurses cried from the front door of the infirmary.

I left Mary with the vaccines and ventured over to the wooden crate filled with letters and parcels. Mail deliveries had been sparse. But this was a mountain of mail. It spilled out on the floor when I pushed the crate closer to the table—so many letters, like covert submarines, infiltrating our private world.

Stella received five; Liz, three; and Kitty, just two, both from her mother. And then I saw one addressed to me and I felt a familiar tugging at my heart when I recognized the handwriting.
Gerard.

I opened it discreetly, prepared to tuck it away the moment Stella or another nurse crept up.

I held the letter to my heart and blinked hard. As much as I reveled in his burst of patriotism, I hated to think of him in danger, and cringed when I thought about the lapse in time between his sending the letter and my receiving it.
Could he be on a battlefield right now? Could he could be . . . ?

I felt an arm on my back after I’d slumped over in my chair, trying to hide my tears from the other women. “What’s the matter, dear?” Mary asked softly.

“It’s Gerard,” I said. “I think he signed up.”

Mary patted my back as my tears dotted the crumpled paper in my hands, smearing Gerard’s beautiful handwriting into patches of muddled black ink.

“What do you think it would be like to be a military wife?” Kitty asked me that night before bed. She sat in a pink cotton nightgown on top of her bunk, brushing her blond curls—and clearly feeling just fine—as I tried, unsuccessfully, to read.

I set the book down. “You can’t be saying you’re already thinking of marrying Lance, are you?”

Kitty didn’t answer; she just continued brushing her hair. “I suppose the lifestyle could have its benefits,” she said. “All the traveling and the excitement.”

“Kitty, but you’ve only just met him,” I said.

The evenings were the only time we talked anymore—at least, those evenings when Kitty wasn’t out with Lance.

Kitty set her brush down on her bedside table and climbed into her bed, pulling the coverlet up to her neck, before turning to me. “Anne,” she said. Her voice was childlike, curious, naive, tremulous. “Did you always know that Gerard was the one?”

The question caught me off guard in a way it wouldn’t have in Seattle. “Well, yes, of course I did,” I said, remembering his letter from earlier today. My devotion to him swelled. “I just knew.”

Kitty nodded. “I think I have the same feeling,” she said, turning her head to the wall before I could question her. “Good night.”

Westry had been away on a mission to another island for thirty days, and when he returned on November 27, I waited near the men’s barracks, pretending to gather hibiscus, in hopes of meeting him on the pathway. It was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, and the buzz in camp revolved around two things: turkey and cranberry sauce.

“Hey, you, nurse!” one of the men shouted from a third-story window. “Do you think we’ll get a bird?”

“Do I look like the cook?” I said sarcastically.

The soldier, barely nineteen, if that, smirked and recoiled. It had taken me months to become comfortable with the ways of men and war. No longer shy, I grunted at those who grunted at me and greeted inappropriate remarks with retorts that leveled the playing field. Mother would have been beside herself.

Twenty minutes of flower picking resulted in no Westry sighting, so I retreated to the barracks with a heavy heart and a bag full of hibiscus.

“The mail came,” Kitty said, tossing an envelope on the bed. “It’s from your mother.”

I shrugged and tucked the envelope into my dress pocket as Kitty peeked into the flower-filled bag I’d set by the door. “They’re gorgeous,” she said. “Let’s get them in water.”

She plucked the blossoms from the bag and arranged them, one by one, in the water glass on her dressing table.

“They’ll never keep,” I said. “They’re a terrible cutting flower. They’ll wilt by morning.”

“I know,” she said. “But don’t they look so pretty
right now
, just as they are?”

I nodded. I wished I could see the beauty in the moment the way Kitty did. It was a gift.

She stood back and marveled at the makeshift vase, packed with bright red blooms that would be limp by the time we came back from dinner, before glancing at her bedside table. “I almost forgot,” she said. “I also got a letter from home. From Father.”

Kitty tore the edge of the envelope and pulled out the letter, reading at first with a grin. But then a frown appeared, and a look of shock. Tears began a slow trickle down her cheeks.

“What is it?” I asked, running to her side. “What does it say?”

She threw herself on the bed, burying her face in the pillow.

“Kitty,” I persisted, “tell me.”

She didn’t budge, so I picked up the pages of the letter that had fallen to the ground and read it myself, in the words of her father.

I tucked the letter into Kitty’s dressing table.
The damned mail. Why does it come and haunt us the way it does? We were getting along fine until the letters started arriving.
“Kitty,” I said, leaning my face into hers. “I’m so sorry.”

“Just let me be,” she said quietly.

“I’ll bring dinner up for you,” I said, hearing the sound of the mess hall bell.

“I’m not hungry,” she whimpered.

“I’ll bring it anyway.”