“We’re both leaving again tomorrow,” he said. “Let’s just try to enjoy this beautiful city for a few hours. Try to enjoy this?”
“My thoughts exactly,” I said. I held up my glass. “To tonight.”
“To tonight,” he said, clinking it. “And now, Fiona Denning, I want to hear about you. Tell me more about Boston and your family, your sisters and your schools. Tell me about your favorite flavor of ice cream and that job with the mayor. Tell me everything.”
“Oh well, if I’m going to do that, you’ve got to reciprocate,” I said. “I want to hear all about the legendary boxing career that all your soldiers keep bragging about.”
“Ha! Not exactly legendary, but yes, I will tell you,” he said. “It’s still early. We’ve got time.”
We sat by the window at the little café table with the snow falling outside, and we talked and laughed for hours, the owner bringing over another bottle of wine and more small plates of food and even a basket with freshly sliced baguette, which felt like a luxury. I learned about Peter’s life growing up in New York City, about his Italian parents and his younger brother Anthony and his little sister Danielle.
I told him about being the oldest of four sisters and what I loved about Boston, the neighborhoods and the Red Sox and the Common and the Charles. I talked about how Viv, Dottie, and I became friends at college and all the crazy issues I had to deal with at the mayor’s office on a daily basis.
We were a couple. Except that we weren’t at all. We were like so many others, Americans living together inside the war. We all used every mental trick and emotional stop valve we could muster to get through it, not unscathed, but at least in one piece. We used music and dancing, laughter and drinks, and if we were really lucky, we used a night like this to help us survive.
Right now, Peter and I were in our own separate space outside of everything, living for this brief time together because it made us feel hopeful and human. And tomorrow we would go back to the war and hope for another moment like this in the future, though there were no guarantees there would ever be one.
We stayed at the café until they started shutting off the lights, and then we found a horse-driven taxi to take us back to where we were staying—the H?tel Normandy for me, Paris’s new Red Cross Rainbow Corner for him. He put his arm around me protectively, and I closed my eyes and leaned against his chest, wishing the night didn’t have to end.
“When I saw you in the club tonight wearing this dress?” he whispered in my ear. “I’ve never seen anyone look so beautiful.”
“Thank you. I wanted so much for you to be there.” I smiled. “I owe Dottie and Viv for sending you that letter. I’m sorry I didn’t do it myself.”
Our faces were so close I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. I lifted my head, and we were face-to-face, his look of longing mirroring mine. We both leaned in, but right before our lips touched, he pulled away, a tormented expression on his face.
“Fiona, I have to tell you something,” he said. “I should have . . .”
“Shh . . . ,” I said, putting my finger to his lips. “Not yet. Please. Kiss me.”
He let out a sigh and took my face in his hands, and finally our lips touched, and we kissed. We kept kissing, long and slow, and I leaned into him as he pulled me in close. There is nothing like the euphoria of a first kiss, one that I hadn’t even realized I’d been waiting for so desperately. It felt like my heart might burst from my chest.
The driver cleared his throat, and I realized that we were in front of the H?tel Normandy far too soon. Peter helped me out of the cab and walked me inside the hotel. It was so late nobody was at the front desk.
“My carriage just turned into a pumpkin,” I said as we walked inside. “I know you have something to tell me; I think I’ve known all night.”
It was true. In our hours of talking about our lives at the café, I had purposely not mentioned Danny once, and neither had he. Danny had been there, though, as a shadow, a question left unanswered, a hole in my heart that hadn’t yet healed.
“I . . . I just wanted this night for us,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t ask sooner.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you earlier,” he said. He put his forehead on mine before he pulled away and took a letter out of his pocket. He brought me over to one of the lobby sofas and sat me down.
“I finally got this letter from Hank at the IRC.” Peter looked at me with compassion and so much more. I crossed my arms and braced myself. Here was news that was about to change my life. Again. “They found him, Fiona. Second Lieutenant Daniel Barker is at a POW camp in East Prussia for Allied airmen known as Stalag Luft IV. He’s alive. At least he was alive as of this report two months ago.”
“How many are at this camp?” I asked, simply because I didn’t know what else to ask or how to process this information.
“Over six thousand,” he said.
I sat there staring into space. Trying to remember Danny’s voice, his face, the last words we said to each other. I put my head in my hands. Danny hadn’t died a year ago like I thought he had. He was alive just two months ago. He might still be alive today.
I wanted to cry, but I knew if I did I wouldn’t stop, because not only would I be crying for Danny, I would be crying for everything lost in this war. For Tommy Doyle and Monty and the rose on every grave and the thousands of families grieving. Selfishly, I would be crying for myself and Peter, caught in this purgatory between war and real life.
“You asked me to find out, and I did. I thought at least if I can’t have you, I can do this one thing for you. You deserve to know where he is. To know he’s alive.”
I looked up at him and grabbed his hand.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Some men would have thrown the letter in the trash and not told me.”
“I could never do that,” Peter said, his expression pained.
“This war has changed my life forever, it’s changed who I am,” I said. “I was wrapped up in my grief at home, and then I came here and threw myself into this job, and it’s turned out to be this crazy, fulfilling life that I wouldn’t trade for anything. And it’s led me to you. But before all this, Danny was the man I was going to marry, and I owe it to him to try to find him.”
“I understand,” he said, looking down at my hand, and we sat there in silence for a few moments.
“Do you . . . will you still marry him?” he asked, looking up at me. “You know what? Forget it, don’t answer. If he was lucky enough to love you first, he’s probably lucky enough to make it through this war.”
To love you first. Those words hung in between us, and I knew they were true. Peter loved me. And now I knew that it was possible to be in love with two people at once.
“Peter, I need you to know, I feel . . .”
This time he put his finger to my lips and took my face in his hands once more and kissed me, a more desperate, passionate kiss as we pressed against each other, all of our emotions and questions wrapped up in it.
“In another life . . . ,” I said.
“In another life, we would leave the Normandy and I would whisk you away to a romantic hotel with a view of the Eiffel Tower.” He looked at me with an intensity that made me blush.
“And I wouldn’t hesitate to go,” I said, because I couldn’t deny it.
We looked at each other, thinking of what that night would be like, until he broke the spell.
“But in another life,” he said, letting out a deep breath, “you wouldn’t have a fiancé who’s in a POW camp, holding a black-and-white photo of you, the one thing that’s kept him going all this time.”
I had pictured that very scene in my mind. Poor Danny. What had he endured? And again, I was overcome with grief and guilt. If he knew what I was doing right now, it would devastate him. I nodded, feeling my eyes fill with tears.
“I know you’re hurting, and I understand why. Just . . . thank you for tonight; it’s the best night I’ve had in this war by far. No, not just in this war. It’s one of the best nights of my life. I’ll never forget it,” Peter said, playing with the strands of hair that had fallen out of my comb.
“Write me? Please? I think we’re heading in the same direction, yes?” I said.
“We are, and I wish you weren’t,” he said, helping me off the sofa, his expression serious as he pulled me into a last embrace. “You’ll be closer than ever to German territory. Be safe, listen to the officers you’re with. If they tell you things are getting hot, get your girls out. Fast. Don’t do anything foolish. Keep yourself alive.”
“You better do the same,” I said. Then I added, “Can I keep your Purple Heart?”
He laughed and whispered into my hair, “Not just that one.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
December 3, 1944