“You didn’t have to come get me.” Emmie had been thinking it for weeks now, without daring to say it. “If you hadn’t come after me, I would have stayed the night in Courcelles. It was only because you came running after me that we wound up lost in a snowstorm with those dreadful men.”
“Was I supposed to leave you unaccounted for overnight?”
“Yes!” Emmie was close to tears. “Yes! You should have trusted that I had the sense to stay in place! I’d told you where I was going—you knew where I was going. If you’d asked Red Cross Dave, he could have told you he’d left me there safely. There was no reason for coming after me as though I were a child who’d wandered off into the woods!”
“Bread crumbs and witches?” said Kate sarcastically. Kate always got sarcastic when she was upset. Emmie had always known that about her; she had always accepted it meekly before. “Pardon me for looking after the welfare of the Unit. Some of us have more to do than gadding about with plausible Englishmen.”
Emmie wasn’t sure which infuriated her more, the plausible or the gadding. “Englishman, Kate. One Englishman. And I’m hardly gadding! I’ve been working like a mule while you’ve been lounging in Paris.”
Kate flinched as if she’d been struck. Nothing hurt Kate more than being accused of idleness. “You know I didn’t want to go.”
“But you did. And it was probably a good thing too—it showed us we could all get on without you.” Emmie knew it was cruel, knew it even before she saw Kate’s fine-boned face go white. That was the worst of it; they knew too well how to hurt each other. “As for that Englishman you so despise, at least he treats me like a person—not a golden retriever!”
“I never treated you like a golden retriever!” Kate veered back to the attack. “What do you know about him, really? Only what he tells you.”
Emmie ached all over. But she couldn’t seem to stop; neither of them could. The only way to end the fight was to give in, and she was sick of being the one giving in. “Because my judgment isn’t to be trusted? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“You’ve known him for such a little time and in such strange circumstances. He might have half a dozen wives in an attic in England, Emmie. Or a fiancée waiting for him. Or gambling debts or some other noxious behavior we know nothing about.” Kate’s hands were clenched into fists at her sides. “You know I only want what’s best for you. . . .”
“Do you? Did you, all those years when you didn’t write back?” Emmie could taste bile in the back of her throat. The old hurts pushed up from the very bottom of her gut, pushed up from where she’d hidden them all these years. “One minute you were my best friend in the world and the next you were just . . . gone.”
“I took a teaching position,” said Kate hoarsely. “You knew that.”
“Did your students tie up your hands? Steal your ink? I wrote to you and wrote to you and wrote to you. Don’t tell me you wrote back,” said Emmie passionately as Kate opened her mouth. “Two lines every six months hardly counts. I told myself it was because you were working and busy and didn’t have the time . . . but maybe it was that you just didn’t want to be bothered with me anymore.”
Kate’s mouth opened and then closed again. She shook her head, entirely at a loss for words.
“I made you come out here. I know you didn’t want to. And I know you feel obligated to take care of me.” The words felt like knives; every single one tore at Emmie’s throat. “But you don’t have to anymore. I’d rather fail of my own accord than have you holding me up when you don’t want to.”
Kate’s knuckles were white against the edge of her cot. “You say that now—”
“I mean it!” Stung, Emmie retorted, “I know I’ve made mistakes, but you have too, Kate! What about Douilly? You should have seen something was wrong with Ethel’s reports!”
Kate’s throat worked, as if she was finding it hard to swallow. “When was I meant to do that?” Her voice crackled with frustration. “When I was reading fifteen other reports? When I was driving the truck to take the doctors to every village between here and creation? I can’t do everything!”
“No, you can’t.” Emmie sat back on her bed, feeling exhausted and sad. She wasn’t angry anymore. She wasn’t sure what she was. She felt about a hundred years old. “We’re meant to be a unit, Kate. We’re meant to work together. Not you running around trying to do everything and making yourself and everyone else miserable. That’s what Mrs. Barrett has been trying to tell you. That’s why she sent you away.”