The Bungalow (15 page)

I smiled, clasping the chain around my neck proudly, before producing a pen and a notebook from my bag.

The mail arrived that evening, just before the Christmas Eve service. I eyed the crate with suspicion and caution, especially after Mother’s last letter, which had been so surprising, so jarring. Leaving Papa with no explanation. Surely there was more to the story.

“Just one for you today, dear,” Mary said, handing me a light pink envelope.

Pink.
I felt my heart lighten.
Definitely not from Gerard.
I hated myself for feeling a sense of relief. It wasn’t that I
didn’t
want to hear from him. No, it was more complicated than that. I looked at the handwriting, so elegant, so perfect, and the return address on the envelope.
Maxine.
I tucked the envelope in the pocket of my dress and turned to the door. But when I heard church bells chiming from the chapel in the distance, I turned back around to see Nurse Hildebrand consumed in paperwork at her desk.
What will she be doing on this strange island, all alone, on Christmas Eve?
She never spoke of family, and if what the girls said was true, her past hadn’t been a happy one.
She must be lonely this time of the year
. It was true that she hardly smiled or opened her mouth unless it was to bark orders at us. But it was Christmas. No one could be alone on Christmas.
Has anyone invited her to the candlelight service?

I approached Nurse Hildebrand quietly. “Excuse me, Nurse Hildebrand,” I began cautiously. “I’m leaving for the night. It’s Christmas Eve—”

“I’m aware of the date,” she snapped.

I nodded submissively. “It’s just that I wanted to, er . . .”

“Make your point, Nurse Calloway,” she said. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that I wondered if you knew about the candlelight service tonight. I thought you might like to attend, that’s all.”

She turned away from her files and looked at me for a moment—a good, hard look of amusement and maybe confusion, too.

“Run along, Nurse Calloway,” she said briskly. “Your shift is over.”

I nodded and walked back to the door, trying to hide my disappointment.
What does it matter?

Kitty had promised to go with me to the service that night, but she wasn’t in the room when I got back. After fifteen minutes of waiting and no sign of a note of explanation, I gave up and went to the closet to find something to wear, which is when I noticed that her yellow dress was missing—the one that clung to her body a little too suggestively.
Where is she going in that dress?
I chose a simple blue frock for myself, then retrieved Maxine’s letter.

The pages drifted out of my hands, effortlessly, and fell onto the quilt on my bed, where I stared at them, studying Maxine’s cursive.
Why does she loop her
y
’s in such a strange way?
And that stationery, with the embossed edges—it was Mother’s.
Who does she think she is? The lady of the house?

Maxine and Papa. It didn’t add up.
Have they loved each other my entire life? Did my mother know? No wonder she has been so cruel to Maxine—Papa’s mistress living under her own roof. Poor Mother! How did I not notice it? How have I been so naive?

I picked up the pages, crumpling them into a tight ball and tossing it into the wastebasket. I didn’t need to read it again. I didn’t want to see it again. And when I walked out to the hallway outside the room, I startled myself with the force with which I closed the door.

If Kitty wasn’t coming, I’d go to the service alone. I couldn’t stay in on Christmas Eve thinking about Papa and Maxine roasting chestnuts together back at home. I shook my head, and made my way down to the foyer. But before I could push open the doors and step outside, my ears perked up. Someone in a room upstairs must have found a radio, and even rarer, a signal out across the great blue ocean that carried the sweet, beautiful, pure sound of “O Holy Night” sung by Bing Crosby. My knees weakened as I listened to the song drifting over the airwaves like a warm breeze, comforting me, reminding me of Christmases in Seattle. With cider. Carolers. An enormous fir tree in the entryway. Papa smoking by the fire. Mother fussing about wrapping gifts. Maxine’s sweets, though I didn’t have the taste for them now. And Gerard, of course. I couldn’t forget Gerard.

“Makes you feel sentimental, doesn’t it?”

I turned around upon hearing Stella’s voice behind me. “Yes,” I said.
If she only knew.

Her face appeared softer in the dim light of the entry way.
Has the island changed her?
“It hardly feels right,” she continued. “No snow. Not even a tree. For the first time, I’m homesick. Really homesick.”

“Me too,” I said, locking my arm in hers. We stood there listening until the song ended and the radio frequency became garbled—the moment lost forever, swallowed up by the lonely Pacific.

“Are you going to the service?” Stella asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I was just coming back to get Kitty. We planned to walk over together.”

“Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” she said.

“Tell me what?”

“Kitty asked me to pass along a message that she’s terribly sorry, but Lance had some special Christmas date planned for her tonight and she won’t be able to attend.”

“A
date
? On
Christmas Eve
?”

Stella shrugged. “You’d know better than I would. Seems like those two are spending an awful lot of time together, doesn’t it? Every time I pass Kitty in the hallway, she says she’s off to see Lance. Lance this, Lance that. But if you ask me, he’s hardly worthy of her affection. The man is dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“Yes,” she said. “Everyone knows how he carries on with the
native
girls. Besides, that man has a temper the size of the USS
Missouri
.”

I remembered the way Atea had looked at him, and the instinct I’d had about him shortly after. But I hadn’t seen his temper flare. Could he really be
dangerous
?

“Well,” I said, “he may have a wayward eye, but it’s Kitty’s prerogative. I’ve tried to get through to her about men before, and believe me, it doesn’t work.”

“You’re a good friend, Anne,” Stella said, eyeing me with a look of admiration.

I thought of my secrets. “Not as good as I should be.”

“Want to head over to the chapel with me?” she asked, glancing at the clock in the hallway, which read a quarter past seven. “Mary and Liz are already there setting up. We can go meet them.”

I smiled. “I’d love to.”

As we walked outside, the radio’s signal regrouped and began transmitting a weak version of “Silent Night” sung in a foreign language I didn’t recognize. It sounded strange and lost, which was exactly how I felt.

Once inside the little chapel adjacent to the mess hall I let out a gasp. “Where on earth did they get a tree?” I eyed the fir standing at attention near the piano. “A Douglas fir, in the tropics?”

Mary grinned. “It was our big secret,” she said. “The Social Committee has been planning it for months. One of the pilots brought it over with the supplies last week. Nobody thought of decorations so we had to get creative. The men deserve a tree on Christmas.”

The choir began warming up to our left, as I looked at the fir tree, adorned with tinsel—handmade from finely cut tin foil—and red apples on each bow. Some of the women must have loaned out their hair ribbons, as there were at least two dozen white satin bows from top to bottom.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, blinking back a tear.

Mary draped her arm around me. “Everything all right, Anne?”

The choir, which was nothing more than a group of volunteer soldiers cobbled together by a lieutenant who was a music teacher back home, began singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and the hair on my arms stood on end. I closed my eyes and could see Gerard’s face smiling at me with his kind, trusting gaze. Maxine and Papa looked on too, beseeching me for forgiveness as Kitty waved in the distance. And Westry was there in the midst. He stood on the beach, watching them all. Waiting.

I felt my legs weaken and my body sway, as Mary pulled me toward a pew. “You need to sit down,” she said, fanning my face with a hymnal. “You’re not looking good.” Then she snapped, “Stella! She needs water.”

The room seemed blurry and the choir sounded as if it were singing the same lines over and over again.
O come let us adore him, o come let us adore him; O come let us adore him . . .

Somebody handed me a mug and I took a sip, letting the water seep down my throat. “Sorry,” I said self-consciously. “I don’t know what happened.”

“You’re working too hard,” said Mary. “That’s what happened. I’m going to speak to Nurse Hildebrand about this. Look at you. Pale, thin. Did you eat dinner tonight?”

I shook my head.

Mary searched inside her purse until she found a candy bar. “Here,” she said. “Eat this.”

“Thank you.”

Men began filing in, removing their hats at the door, and Stella nestled in next to us, followed by Liz. Partway through the service, I turned around to see if Kitty had come late, but instead I noticed Nurse Hildebrand seated in the back. She had a handkerchief in her hand, but quickly stuffed it into her dress pocket when her eyes met mine.