“Well, do try to enjoy yourself while you’re here,” said Maud patronizingly. “Before you have to go back to the wilds.”
“I do miss the cream from our cows,” said Liza wistfully. “In Paris, you can only get milk with a doctor’s prescription. I’ve had to take my coffee black.”
“Yes, but you can get tickets to the opera,” said Maud. She eyed Kate’s headgear. “And hats that haven’t been gnawed by a goat.”
Kate grinned. “Minerva sends you her love too.”
“Her love? She owes me a lace collar and two hats,” said Maud indignantly.
“Bill it to the Unit.” Kate couldn’t resist adding, “You’d never know the place now. We’re drowning in luxuries. Mrs. Barrett even found us a piano.”
They parted with insincere expressions of goodwill, but Kate found the meeting acted on her like a tonic. No matter how annoying Maud might be, she was somehow Kate’s now, like a horrible cousin one couldn’t disown. She didn’t miss her precisely, but she was strangely glad to see her. And be annoyed by her again.
Liza paused halfway down the block, said something to Maud, and came hurrying back. “I just wanted to say . . . if you need me, I can come back, you know. I had to get my pass renewed that time—remember how they had the wrong name for me? So I did it when I was here getting my collarbone fixed and the new one is good until April.”
“Are you sure?” asked Kate, touched despite herself. “You were so looking forward to canteen work.”
Liza looked back over her shoulder at Maud, dropping her voice so she wouldn’t be heard. “I miss Grécourt. I even miss the mud. It’s dreadful being cooped up in a canteen instead of out there, getting about.”
“What about our boys?” Kate asked. They’d heard a lot about Our Boys before Liza and Maud had left.
“We’re doing our best for them, but they don’t seem to want awfully to be saved from temptation.” Liza sounded genuinely bewildered. “Oh dear—that’s Maud calling. Give my love to the girls! And the goats.”
Kate watched Liza run off after Maud, thinking what a thoroughly decent person Liza was. If she’d been a little more patient, managed everything a little better, would Maud and Liza have stayed? It was only now that they’d gone that it was clear just how much they’d done for the Unit, and Kate felt guilty for mocking them for decorating their barrack. She’d misjudged them, horribly.
She’d misjudged a lot of people. But mostly Emmie. If Emmie left the Unit—she wasn’t sure she could forgive herself for it.
Julia had tried to tell her, but Kate had ignored her, because Julia was Julia, and because, from the day they’d started Smith, she’d had an idea of what Emmie was, and she’d stuck to it, an idea compounded entirely of her own insecurities. She’d just assumed, she’d always assumed, that Emmie’s name and position shielded her from everything, that being a Van Alden made her impervious, dancing obliviously through life, showering charity on lesser mortals. She’d wanted, if she were being honest with herself, to bring Emmie down a notch, to make her feel what it was to be small. Because Emmie’s father belonged to private clubs and Kate’s had driven a wagon full of beer.
But Kate’s father had loved her. Her stepfather loved her. Even her ridiculous brothers loved her, when they weren’t busy tormenting the life out of her. Her mother, who didn’t approve of what she was doing, had come to see her off and sent her boots.
And what did Emmie have? A mother who cared for everyone but her. A father who ignored her. A friend who wasn’t much of a friend at all.
There was no point in going over it again and again, Kate told herself. She’d finish her errands, get back to Grécourt as soon as Mrs. Barrett and the rail system would allow, and do her best to make up for the damage she’d done. In the meantime, she had fruit trees and chickens to acquire.
Florence had told her to see the national nurseries about fruit trees, the next step in the grand replanting project.
A very nice lieutenant received Kate cordially, offered her coffee, showed her their survey of the area, and told her it couldn’t be done.
“Why not? Is it the cost?” He’d shown her their maps of the region, estimating that to replace the fruit trees destroyed by the Germans in their villages would cost somewhere between six and seven thousand dollars. It was a sum that made Kate’s stomach clench, but if there was one thing that she had learned in helping to run the Unit, it was that sums that had seemed unthinkable to her were well within the reach of Smith’s alumnae.