“Are you Chinese?”
“My grandfather was from Hong Kong. He came to the US to build the railroad.”
“Hmm.” Kitty tilted her head as she looked back at him. “Lewis doesn’t sound Chinese.”
“It’s Welsh. My dad’s side of the family were miners from the South Wales Valleys.”
“Where does your family live now?”
“San Francisco.” He put his hand inside his jacket and took out a wallet. Opening it up, he held it out to her. Encased in the left-hand section was a black-and-white shot of a smiling, fair-haired man who towered over the petite woman he had his arm around. In the background was a bridge that looked as if it were floating on a cloud.
Kitty felt a familiar lump form in her throat as she looked at it. “It’s . . . a lovely photo,” she said.
“Where’s home for you now?” he said, as he slid the wallet back into his pocket.
She glanced down at the dusty ground. “Here, I suppose.” She looked up, saw the confusion on his face. “It’s a long story,” she murmured.
“There’s coffee in there.” He tipped his head toward the guardhouse. “You want some?”
At the hospital, Jadzia was sleeping.
“She needs to rest until the infection subsides,” Delphine said to Martha. “I gave her another dose of the tranquilizer half an hour ago.”
“How long will she sleep for?”
“She should be out until well into the afternoon. Father Josef’s going to look in on her later. I’m hoping he might be able to talk to her—calm her down a bit.”
Martha nodded. “He’s been good with the other women in here. He seems to understand what they’re going through, despite . . .” She trailed off, not wanting to sound disrespectful.
“Being a man?” Delphine finished the sentence for her. “And an unmarried one, at that.”
“He’s not a bit like the priests at the church I used to go to as a child—they always seemed so remote.”
“He doesn’t judge people; that’s what I like about him,” Delphine said. “I wonder if he was always like that or whether the war changed him?”
“His faith must be mighty strong to have survived what he went through.” Martha didn’t know if Kitty had told Delphine what Father Josef had said about the Nazis using him for medical experiments. She hoped not. It would be a terrible thing for Delphine to know. Bad enough that her husband and son had died in Dachau, without imagining what they might have suffered while they were prisoners there.
“He’s going to bury the baby tomorrow,” Delphine said. “He said no one needs to be there but him.”
“I think that’s best,” Martha replied. “I don’t suppose it would help Jadzia if we waited till she was well enough to be there.”
Delphine shook her head. “He must have known she was pregnant, mustn’t he?”
“Who?” Martha frowned.
“The boyfriend. I wonder if he ever thinks about her, now he’s back in America with his wife and family? If he has any idea of the misery he’s caused?”
“I doubt it,” Martha said. “You can imagine him boasting about it to his pals in a bar somewhere, can’t you?”
“And there must be hundreds like Jadzia across Germany. I suppose not all the men were so uncaring; some of them really would marry the girls if they were allowed to.”
“They have to see that, don’t they—the US government, I mean? The major said things might change by the end of the year.”
“I hope so.” Delphine glanced at the sleeping figure in the bed. “But whatever happens, it’s not going to help her, is it?”
Sergeant Lewis was leaning against the desk in the guardhouse, a mug of coffee in his hand. Kitty was sitting in the only chair. Despite the basic furnishings and the bare wooden walls, it was cozy. She wasn’t sure why, but she’d found herself telling him things that she’d never felt able to say to Fred.
The sergeant’s name was Charles, but he said he preferred Charlie. She’d smiled when he’d said that—and told him that her real name was Katya, but she’d always liked Kitty better.
“The old ladies I lived with in London gave me that name,” she said. “They said it would be safer if my name sounded English. There was so much anti-German feeling in England. Telling people that I wasn’t German didn’t seem to make any difference. So, that first year in London, I went from being Katya Blumenthal to Kitty Bloom.”