The Winter Guest (9 page)

A noise at the door to the church made Helena jump. Her eyes darted across the room and she braced herself to hide once more. This time, though, Sam did not seem alarmed. It was not footsteps, but an animal scratching. “Look!” He whistled and a second later a medium-size, scraggly dog pushed through the door and bounded over to where Sam sat on the ground. Sam laughed as it nuzzled him, throaty and deep, and the sound seemed to lift her above all of the worry and despair. His face was animated like Michal’s had been on Christmas morning in better times.

Helena opened her mouth to warn him—the dog was a stray, one she had seen roaming the outskirts of town in a pack that she had admonished the children to avoid. Lately there were rumors that the dogs, unable to find the usual scraps of food in the garbage, had gone feral and attacked a child, that they might have rabies. Then, watching Sam stroke the dog’s fur, she sighed inwardly. There were so many things to worry about these days; strays hardly seemed to be one of them.

“You like dogs?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I guess so.” She’d never had a dog. The children would have loved one. Pets were a luxury, though, another mouth to feed when there already wasn’t enough to go around.

“Here.” Sam gestured toward the dog. Helena hesitated fearfully. But the animal lay tamely in Sam’s lap. “He won’t bite.” Sam had brushed the dog, she noticed, perhaps even washed it somehow. She lowered her hand to pet the animal, and as she did, her fingers met Sam’s beneath the fur.

“I have a Labrador at home,” he said, smiling as a faraway look crept into his eyes. His hand rested lightly on hers and lingered, too firmly to be accidental. Her heartbeat quickened. “A yellow pup, just over three years old. He would love this place, with the trees and hills and so much room to run.” Helena had not really considered his life beyond the walls of the chapel before today. But now a picture emerged of pets and day trips to the countryside. Was there a girl who might go along with him?

Sam continued. “The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is take Scoop—that’s his name—out of the city for a swim down at Johnson’s farm and...” He stopped as her expression fell. “Lena, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Helena pulled her hand away, stiffening. Sam sounded so excited about leaving. She could hardly blame him for not wanting to stay, cold and in danger, thousands of miles from home. But the idea still nagged at her stomach. She had gotten used to Sam being here and he was going to leave, just like Piotr had left Ruth, and Tata had left them all.

Suddenly she could not hold back. “It’s just that when you go, I’ll be sad.” He did not answer and she felt foolish for having said anything. “You must go, of course, and it’s all very selfish of me, but I’ve gotten rather used to our visits.”

“Have you?” He smiled brightly. “I would have thought you’d be glad not to traipse halfway up a mountainside with food.”

She opened her mouth to protest, then saw that he was teasing. “Not funny.” She reached out to swat at his arm playfully, but he caught her hand and intertwined his fingers with her own, sending tiny shocks of electricity through her. “When do you think you’ll go?”

“Soon.” The word cut through Helena like a knife. “I’ll wait long enough to let my leg heal a bit more and then make a break for the border,” he replied, so quickly she could tell he had been thinking about it for some time. That couldn’t be terribly long, she calculated, judging by the ease with which he’d moved outside the chapel today. “I’ve got to get out before the heavier snows fall.” She nodded. He could never survive the winter in the chapel, even with the provisions she brought. And at some point the trail would become impassible, either for him to get out or her to visit. Helena had wondered about that even before finding Sam, how she would get to her mother when the weather got bad. She would have to leave extra food, bribe Wanda or one of the other nurses to make sure Mama got some of it. “Probably in another week, maybe two,” he added.

“So soon!” she cried out before she could stop herself, the immediacy of his planned departure a blow. She had not realized until that very minute how much these visits—and Sam himself—had come to mean to her, the space they had taken in her life. She looked away, not wanting him to see the tears that welled up uncontrollably. Anger rose unexpectedly within her. She had been just fine before he had come here and made her want things that without him she never would have missed—things that simply could not be.

“Lena,” Sam said, the use of the pet name familiar now. He grasped her hand once more.

Astonishment replaced her anger. She swallowed, sensing a moment coming that she had lived a hundred times in her dreams. “Y-yes,” she managed, looking up at him.

He lowered his head, bringing his lips to hers, warm and rough. She froze, caught off guard by the tingling sensation that seemed to envelop her all at once. His lips tasted improbably like apples just a day too ripe. She leaned in, eager for more.

Then just as quickly, he pulled away. “I’m sorry,” he said, flustered. “I never should have done that.”

“I don’t mind,” she replied breathlessly, reaching for him, still light-headed. Her skin tingled.

But he straightened, moving farther from her. “No, we can’t.”

“Why not?” She stiffened at the sudden rejection, then stood up, eyes burning.

Sam leaned forward and caught her hand, sending the dog scurrying from his lap. “Helena, wait.” He pulled up to one knee, grimacing, and drew her back down. “I’ll be leaving,” he said, and his words slammed into her. He cupped her chin in one hand, his lips so close she could smell the sweetness she had tasted a moment ago.

“But you’re here now,” she protested.

“At some point soon, though, I’ll have to go and...” He clutched her fingers tighter in his own. “And I don’t want to make this harder on either of us.”

Helena stared hard at the wall, too proud to push the matter further. “I wonder what it would have been like if we’d met somewhere else.” Then hearing the unintended weight behind her words, she blushed. “Not that we would have, of course.”

“I think about it all the time,” Sam replied quickly, sensing her discomfort and hastening to ease it. “If we’d met back home, I would have asked you out. Courting, my mother says.” He laughed. “No one our age calls it that anymore. I would’ve taken you to Nickel’s soda shop for an ice cream soda, or maybe an egg cream. They have a television and everything.” Helena had seen a film once, on a projector in the town hall, but television had not come to the village. He continued. “And then maybe I might have worked up the guts—I mean, the nerve—to ask you to one of the dances they have at the lodge on Saturday. Nothing fancy—just an old guy on a piano, and the ladies’ auxiliary sells punch and cookies.” He stopped speaking and she wondered if he was lost in memories. But then he stood with difficulty, leaning on his makeshift crutch and extending his hand down to her.

“Shall we?” She hesitated. Did he really mean for them to dance, right here? Then she stood, her body about a foot from his, looking at him uncertainly. She had whirled Dorie around the room in play and she had seen her parents dance once many years ago when they thought no one was watching. But she had not, in fact, ever done it properly herself.

“Here.” Sam reached out and took her hands gently, placing one on each of his shoulders. Then he put his own hands on her waist, just above the hip. “Is that okay?” She nodded, suddenly unable to find her voice. “Good.” He inched nearer to her. “I might even come closer, if the chaperones allowed it,” he joked. She did not respond but instead rested her head on his shoulder, surprised at her own boldness, and at the same time feeling she had been doing this her entire life. The damp stone of the chapel walls and Sam’s unwashed smell and the liquor that clung to Tata’s coat melded together into a kind of cologne.

He began to hum a few bars of a song she’d heard on the radio, before they’d stopped playing music. “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places...”

A minute later, Sam stopped humming. They stood motionless, not quite dancing but swaying, bodies pressed close. His face was just inches from hers now, his breath warm on the rise of her cheek, and she wondered whether he might kiss her again, what he would do if she kissed him.

“Well, I guess that’s it,” Sam said a moment later, a note of reluctance to his voice. He straightened and she pulled away. Helena was suddenly chilled, as though the fire in the stove had gone out. They sat down again. “Of course, if we were back home I’d have competition.” She cocked her head, not understanding. “Other boys, wanting to ask you out and dance with you. I’m sure it’s no different in your village.” She stifled a laugh. If only he knew.

“I dated, of course,” he confessed, though she had not asked. “The usual sorts of things.” Helena had no idea what that meant—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Had he taken girls to dances or movies or had it been something more? Such things, which Ruth spoke of longingly, once seemed silly to Helena. Now she was fiercely jealous of the faceless girls who had been there with Sam—and who would be there again after he went home.

He continued. “But it wasn’t like this. I like you, Lena, and I think—” he swallowed “—that you like me, too.”

“I do.” The words came out too bluntly, something Ruth said was a particular flaw of hers. Helena had to be honest, though, especially now staring into Sam’s rich chocolate eyes. “But once you go, this will all be gone, too.” She waved her hand around the chapel, then between the two of them to clarify.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “You could come with me.”

She inhaled sharply. “Me?” He had mentioned imagining them somewhere else, but she had not thought him serious.

“It wouldn’t be easy, but there are ways. We have to get to the border.”

We.
Her breath caught as she comprehended the audacity of his idea. He was talking not just about leaving, but about leaving
with
her. A portrait unfurled in her mind of the two of them living together in a modest house, although where she could not fathom. The very idea of it filled her with happiness. She saw it in that instant, she and Sam walking from the chapel, not looking back. But how could that possibly be? Mama and her siblings and all of the reasons they could not be together came crashing down upon her then, water dousing a flame.

“I can’t leave my family.”

“You could go first and send for them.”

“My mother would never be well enough.”

Sam pressed his lips together, his silence confirming the grim truth. There was nothing he could say that would give her hope, and he would not lie to her. “Then I won’t go, either,” he said stubbornly. “I won’t leave you.” He wanted to protect her, she knew. The notion that, trapped in this chapel, he could prevent any danger seemed ludicrous. But just his being here made her feel safer somehow. “Not after all that you’ve risked for me.”

“You can’t stay,” she countered. Every day he remained here made his discovery more imminent.

He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again, unable to argue. The air fell flat and silent between them. A pigeon fluttered in the rafters above.

“The timing,” he said. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.” Timing had never been on her side—Mama taking sick, then losing Tata, leaving them alone as the war worsened.

“Goddamned war,” he added ruefully, forgetting not to swear.

“But if it wasn’t for the war, we never would have met,” she pointed out.

“Well, I’m not going just now,” he said, forcing a smile. She nodded—whatever time they had together would have to be enough.

“Do you have a photo?” he asked. “Of yourself, I mean. I should like to have one.”

“I’ll look for one.” Did he mean for now to keep company in the chapel, or to take with him when he was gone?

“I don’t want to know,” she announced suddenly. He cocked his head, confused. “When you’re planning to go, I mean. Just leave. To say goodbye...I couldn’t bear it.” She brushed at the stinging of tears in her eyes, ashamed. He did not answer, but drew her into his embrace. Nestled in the warmth of his arms, she felt a safety and comfort she had not known since childhood, or maybe even then.

“It’s late,” she said, noticing through the window how the sun had dropped behind the trees.

“Too late for walking. You should stay.”

In an instant, she could see it, a night lying beside Sam under the coat, huddled close for warmth. But she shook her head. “I must get back.” She had never been gone overnight before. Ruth would be beside herself with worry.

“Here,” he said, holding up his flashlight. He fiddled with the object and it gave off a faint yellow beam as he pressed it cool and hard against her palm.

“I can’t take that.” Without his flashlight, he would be alone in the darkness of the chapel.

“I insist.” Her hand brushed his as it closed around the metal. “You need some light to make it home.”

“Fine,” she said, relenting somewhat. On this point, she could see that he was right.

At the door to the chapel she wondered for a second if he would try to kiss her again. Instead, he drew her close to his chest, his arms forming a fortress around her that she never wanted to leave. A moment later, he released her. Helena stood motionless for several seconds, wanting to hold on to everything between them in case it did not come again. “You need to go now, before it gets any darker,” he said.

Reluctantly she turned and started through the woods, the air away from Sam colder than ever. Even with the light, it was almost impossible to see and she moved more slowly, taking care not to catch her feet on the tree roots. Her skin still tingled from his last embrace. Thoughts leaped through her mind, colliding with one another midflight:
Sam cares for me, too... I could go with him... I cannot.

For the first time in her life, Helena wanted something that was real and something for herself. She could not have it, though, without betraying those closest to her. She pushed down her thoughts, trying to focus on the path before her. But she could not contain her sadness. It was only a matter of time before she came back to the chapel and found him gone.