Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH|
That night, I returned to my yellow house in Clarksville.
Colonel Mercer had wanted me to stay somewhere else.
I refused.
My husband had planted the maple tree in our front yard.
My son had taken his first steps across the living room floor.
Every wall held a memory.
I wasn't going to abandon all of that because somebody wanted me frightened.
Still, I agreed to have the local police include my street in their patrols and to keep my phone beside the bed.
That was a reasonable compromise.
At eighty-one, I had finally learned that accepting help was not the same thing as surrendering.
I made tea.
Then I carried Edward's photograph into the living room.
It was the picture of him standing beside Thomas Mercer and Peter Reese.
I placed it on the coffee table beneath the lamp.
There was something about it that troubled me.
Not the men.
Not the jeep.
Something in the background.
I put on my reading glasses.
Then I took out the magnifying glass I used for crossword puzzles.
Behind the three soldiers stood a woman.
She wore a medical uniform.
Her hair was pulled beneath a cap.
At first, I thought she was me.
But the woman was shorter.
Her face was narrower.
And she wore a small necklace I recognized immediately.
My breath caught.
"Clara."
Lieutenant Clara Bennett had been one of the finest nurses I ever served beside.
She was from Alabama.
She laughed easily, sang badly, and could start an intravenous line in a moving helicopter.
We had shared a tent for almost seven months.
Clara disappeared two weeks after the evacuation.
The official report said she had been transferred.
I never believed it.
Not completely.
She had left her favorite sweater behind.
Clara loved that sweater.
It was blue, with a missing button near the collar.
She had worn it on every cold night.
A woman who remembered to pack extra needles for everybody else would not have forgotten the one thing that made her feel at home.
I looked at the photograph again.
Clara was holding something.
A folder.
On the cover was a dark rectangular stamp.
I recognized those letters.
R.M.C.
My hands went cold.
I reached for my phone and called Edward.
He answered on the third ring.
"Quinn?"
"Do you remember Clara Bennett?"
The line went silent.
Then he said, "Of course."
"Do you know what happened to her?"
"She was transferred."
"That's what they told us."
Edward sighed.
"Quinn, there are things I haven't told you."
I closed my eyes.
"Edward, we're both old enough to know that secrets don't become harmless just because they survive."
He was quiet.
Then he said, "Clara came to see me after the evacuation."
I sat down.
"Where?"
"At the hospital."
"When?"
"Two days before they moved me."
"What did she say?"
"She told me she'd found a second set of supply records."
My heartbeat quickened.
"What happened to them?"
"She hid them."
"Where?"
Edward hesitated.
"She wouldn't tell me."
I looked at the photograph.
"Did she know about Bell?"
"Yes."
"And Harlan?"
Another pause.
"She suspected him."
I pressed my fingers against my forehead.
"Edward, what happened to Clara?"
His answer was barely audible.
"She died in 1970."
I felt the room tilt.
"How?"
"Officially, a car accident."
"Officially?"
"Quinn, I never believed it."
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I heard him cough.
"Edward, you need to rest."
"So do you."
"That's never been one of my strengths."
He laughed softly.
"Good night, Captain."
"Good night."
After the call, I sat alone beneath the yellow light.
The house was silent.
I remembered Clara teaching me a ridiculous song about a cat that refused to come home.
I remembered her writing to her younger sister every Sunday.
I remembered the day she told me that if she ever got married, she wanted a small ceremony near the ocean.
And I remembered one more thing.
Clara had once given me a book.
A battered copy of Little Women.
She had written a message inside the cover.
For Quinn, because some women are born to fight and others learn when they must.
I stood.
My knees ached as I climbed the stairs.
In the spare bedroom, an old cedar trunk sat beneath the window.
Inside were photographs, letters, uniforms, and things I hadn't touched in decades.
I found the book wrapped in tissue paper.
Its cover was cracked.
Its pages smelled of dust.
I opened it.
Clara's inscription was still there.
But something else had been written beneath it.
A sentence in tiny pencil marks.
THE TRUTH IS WHERE THE CHILDREN LEARN TO REMEMBER.
I stared at the words.
Then I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because I understood.
Clara had known me better than almost anyone.
She knew I wanted to become a school nurse.
She knew I believed children should learn the names of people who had served.
And she knew what I had promised to do after the war.
I reached for a box of photographs.
There it was.
A picture of the first Veterans Day program at the elementary school where I had worked.
Behind the children stood a glass display case.
Inside were donated military artifacts.
Among them was a small wooden box.
Clara had mailed it to me before her death.
I remembered receiving the package.
There had been no letter.
Only a note asking me to preserve the contents for a future school exhibit.
I had assumed it contained ordinary keepsakes.
The box had remained in that display case for decades.
But the school had closed six years earlier.
The artifacts had been transferred to a county historical society.
I checked the time.
It was nearly midnight.
I couldn't call the museum until morning.
I returned downstairs.
Then the doorbell rang.
Three slow chimes.
I froze.
Nobody visited me at midnight.
I approached the front window and looked through the curtain.
A car stood at the curb.
Its headlights were off.
A man waited on my porch.
He was tall.
He wore a dark coat.
And in his hand was a photograph.
I did not open the door.
Instead, I called the police.
Then I spoke through the locked door.
"Who are you?"
The man hesitated.
"My name is David Bennett."
My heart stopped.
"Bennett?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Who was your mother?"
He took a breath.
"Clara Bennett."
I gripped the doorframe.
"Clara never had children."
There was a long silence.
Then he said something that made me sit down on the stairs.
"She did, Captain Braddock."
May you like
His voice broke.
"She had me three months after she left Vietnam."
