Eve’s panic subsided a bit as she steered her car into her neighborhood, passing rows and rows of identical bungalows. She’d thought the community looked very American when she’d first seen it, with its tidy green lawns and white picket fences. Now the neighborhood seemed stark and boring. The land had been a cow pasture before the war and the streets still looked naked with only a few spindly trees, struggling to grow. She had a fleeting image of the lush, formal gardens at Wellingford Hall, remembering the rainbow of colors, the gravel walkways, the comforting clip-snip of George’s pruning shears.
Before the war. Before everything changed.
Audrey leaned forward to stare through the windshield as they turned in to her driveway. “This house . . . it looks like the one Robert was going to build for me.”
Eve couldn’t reply. She remembered the brochures and floor plans Robert had sent, remembered Audrey’s anxiety and uncertainty. “The house seems so small . . . only two bedrooms!”
“Fewer rooms for you to clean,” Eve had told her. Eve parked beneath the carport and was just opening her kitchen door for everyone when a familiar pickup truck pulled up and tooted the horn. Tom. He called to Eve from his open window. “Hey, Audrey!”
Eve and Audrey both turned and answered at the same time. “Yes?” Could this get any more complicated? Eve hurried to the truck, where Tom sat with his arm on the windowsill. “Hi, Tom. What brings you here?”
“I stopped by to see if you and Robbie wanted to come out to the farm with me. We’re bottle-feeding a new baby lamb.”
“Thanks, but we have company,” she said, gesturing to them. “Maybe another time—”
“Uncle Tom! Uncle Tom!” Robbie called as he scampered down the driveway. “Can I go out to the farm with you?”
“Not today,” Eve said, catching him before he reached the truck. “We’re going to have ice cream, remember?” She lifted Robbie into her arms and turned to say goodbye to Tom, but Tom wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at Audrey and her son, studying them. “An old friend of mine from London stopped by for a visit,” Eve said, backing away from him, inching toward the house. “We have a lot of catching up to do. Cheers, Tom! Toodle-oo!”
“Yeah, bye.” He didn’t move his truck. He was still staring at Bobby and Audrey.
Eve hurried back to the carport and herded everyone into the house. She pulled Popsicles from the freezer and tried to send the boys into the back garden to eat them, but Audrey’s son refused to leave his mum’s side. “Would you like one?” she asked Audrey. “Everyone in America eats these when it’s hot outside. There’s a month’s worth of sugar rations in each one.”
Audrey didn’t seem to hear her. “Wait! Was that Tom?” she suddenly blurted. “Robert’s friend, Tom? One of the Famous Four?”
Eve could have lied and said no, but the pieces of her life were quickly slipping from her grasp like a fistful of marbles and she couldn’t seem to catch them fast enough. She nodded.
“I would have loved to meet him.” Audrey peered through the window in the kitchen door as if she might run down the driveway to stop him. Thankfully, Tom had driven away. “The last we heard he’d been wounded . . . somewhere in Italy, wasn’t it?” Audrey asked.
“Yes. He survived, though.”
“The four friends . . . ,” Audrey mused. “Robert, Louis, Tom, and . . . who was the fourth?”
“Arnie.”
“That’s right. Robert was so distraught when he learned that Arnie had a nervous breakdown. He used to tell me stories about how the four of them grew up together and played on the same sports teams.”
“Mostly basketball. It’s very popular over here. Do you want one of these Popsicles?”
“How did Tom know who I was? Or . . . was he talking to you? Was he calling you by my name?”
“Well, I . . . He . . .”
“What’s going on, Eve?” She looked puzzled, but Eve could tell the pieces were starting to fall into place. “He called you Audrey—and you answered him!”
Eve couldn’t draw enough air to speak.
“You stole my place, didn’t you? That’s why you were at the Barretts’ house!”
“Listen, Audrey—”
“You’re posing as me and saying that Harry is Robert’s son. You keep calling him Robbie, but his name is Harry.”
“I can explain—”