“I’ll fetch ours,” Alice said to Maud and Liza. To Kate, she added, “I’ve put the accounts on your bed.”
“The accounts?” Emmie realized she was holding a stack of plates and put them down very, very carefully, lingering as the others jostled out. “I’d forgotten that Alice is treasurer.”
Kate grimaced. “Just what I was wanting. More paper. Alice is really quite brilliant with numbers, so at least I won’t have to go and fix all her figures. I just—it’s just so much. I’d like to see Maud handle half of it,” she added viciously.
“Would you like me to go through them for you?” Emmie asked tentatively. She could almost convince herself that she was offering just to help, just because Kate was overwhelmed, and not because she wanted to see those numbers before Kate did. Just in case. “I know I’m not as good as you are with numbers, but I can make sure the columns tally. It would be one less thing for you to do.”
Kate blinked, hard, and, in a rare gesture of affection, put her hand on Emmie’s arm. “Thank you. I appreciate it, I really do. Especially since I know just how much you hate arithmetic.”
Emmie felt like the lowest sort of crawling creature. “It was all the fault of that governess of mine, rapping my hand whenever I got a sum wrong—which was pretty much every single time. I still cringe whenever I see a row of figures.” She was, Emmie realized, hardly helping her own case. “But I don’t mind, really.”
“Bless you,” said Kate, giving Emmie’s arm a squeeze. “But even the Smith Unit hardly demands that sort of sacrifice. If you’re determined to beard dragons, could you go see Marie? You know she likes you better than the rest of us. She said something about digging up some extra dishes for us. . . .”
It appeared that digging was the operative term.
“The Germans never found them,” said Marie proudly, holding up a dirt-encrusted dinner plate in the canvas-roofed kitchen of the old gatekeeper’s house, where Marie cooked for them on the one working range left in the whole village. “Idiot Boche.”
“They’re beautiful,” said Emmie, yanking her mind away from Kate and those accounts. Through the clinging earth, Emmie could just make out a red-and-white design. “What a lovely pattern. And how clever of you to hide them.”
“I wasn’t going to let those swine eat off them.” Marie clutched the dish in both hands, her face contorted with anger and grief. “They were my wedding dishes.”
“Oh,” said Emmie. She took the plate from Marie, holding it very, very carefully. Her wedding dishes, symbol of her life with a husband who was away now, off at the front, his prospect of coming home slim. “You’re so kind to let us use them.”
Marie thrust a trowel at Emmie. “Here. I’ve marked the spot by the moat. See you don’t break any.”
Emmie set the plate tenderly down on the ground. It was really a rather ugly plate. But to Marie—did she look at it and wonder if her husband would ever come home to eat off that plate again?
One could argue that it might have been worse: Marie’s husband hadn’t been shot outright or shipped off by the Boche; he was fighting and free—but, still, how awful, to be constantly wondering, with every German plane overhead, if this, this was the bomb that would end it all, with every tremble of the earth if this was the sapper who would make her a widow.
It made Emmie feel very small. No matter how hard they tried to help, they were just passing through. This wasn’t their tragedy. It was the Maries who were suffering, who had had their lives upended, who had buried their china so the Boche wouldn’t eat off it. It seemed almost wrong to be digging it up so that a group of American officers could be served roast beef and cauliflower au gratin. Never mind that those American officers were fighting to free France. It still made Emmie feel that they were imposing.
Kate would tell her that she felt too much, that she shouldn’t give way to every stray emotion.
What would Kate feel when she found those accounts Alice had left for her?
They mightn’t be that detailed. It would just be numbers. It wasn’t necessarily all itemized—at least Emmie hoped it wouldn’t be. Maybe there would just be one lump sum for payments from all Unit members instead of individual ones. Emmie dug her spade deep into the damp earth. She was probably worrying about nothing. These weren’t real worries, not like Marie’s. And if Kate did find it—well, it had been such a little lie. Not even a lie, really. More of an omission.