“I got better at it,” he replies flatly. “A lot better, in fact. Medicinal purposes. Or so I told myself. Good for the pain. And remarkably effective if you start early enough in the day. Until you start losing whole days at a time. Then it gets tricky.”
“The pain . . . It was from your wounds?”
He looks at me for a long time. So long, I think he won’t answer at all. “Sure,” he says finally. “Let’s go with that.”
There’s no mistaking his meaning. I’m to blame. Not his father. Me. Because of the lies his father told him. Lies he chose to believe. Still, the rawness of his response finds a chink in my defenses. “Will you tell me what happened to you?”
He eyes me coldly. “Why?”
I lift my shoulders, feigning indifference. “I thought it was part of what we’re supposed to be doing—like an autopsy to determine the cause of death.” I sound like Anson as I throw the words at him, flat and unfeeling, and I’m not sorry. “We both know how it started; we were there. Then we went our separate ways, and things get a little fuzzy. After forty years, don’t I deserve the rest of the story?”
He drops down onto the arm of the nearest chair, right leg extended stiffly, and I’m briefly reminded of Owen. “I was on the way back from a drop one night. It happened so fast, I never saw it coming. I caught one in the side, another one in the shoulder. They dragged me out of the truck and into the woods. I figured they’d kill me. Instead, they shot me through both legs and left me there. I don’t know how long it took for me to drag myself back to the road, but it finished me. I closed my eyes and made my peace. When I came to, there was a Nazi in rubber gloves digging around in my shoulder. Apparently, Red Cross workers made excellent bargaining chips, though I never did find out who they traded me for.”
He looks away then, eyes clouding. “It’s a pretty shitty way to get out when you figure how many guys don’t. You’re on your way home and they’re still just a number on a list, part of the daily tally—because their fathers don’t have the right last name.”
I suppress a shudder, remembering talk of the stalags: starvation, forced labor, grueling interrogations, and electrified fences. I’ll never forgive Owen Purcell for the harm he has caused—to me, to my daughter, to Anson—but I can’t fault him for pulling every lever in his power to bring his son home.
“How long were you held?”
“Six weeks in the hospital before being transferred to the camp at Moosburg for three and a half months. I was kriegie number 7877.”
“You were . . . what?”
“A kriegie. It’s the shortened version of the German word for POW. We all had numbers. Mine was 7877.”
There’s an ache at the center of my chest, the stirrings of an old wound. I’ve been living with his death for so long, but somehow this is worse, knowing what he endured, and that he feels guilty for having survived it.
“Your father . . .” I stop, pull in a breath, then start again. “There was a telegram saying you’d gone missing. Your father called everyone he could think of, but no one knew where you were. They said you’d been ambushed and that you were likely dead. And then your father sent me away—knowing I was carrying your child. He never told me you were . . .” I close my eyes, fighting tears. “I didn’t know, Anson. If I had, nothing would have kept me away.”
“Not even Myles Madison?”
Maddy’s name brings me up short. And there’s a new edge to his voice, harder and colder, as if he’s caught me at something. “What does Maddy have to do with us?”
“Not us—you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do.”
He’s staring at me, reproaching me for something, but I don’t know what. “Please tell me what you’re talking about.”
He folds his arms again, his smile so cold it raises the hair on my arms. “What if I told you I did look for you? That when my father claimed not to know where you were, I paid an investigator—a Mr. Henry Vale—to find you? And he did.”
All the air seems to go out of the room. It can’t be true. It mustn’t be. If he’s known where to find me all this time . . . I take a step back, then another, until I’m backed against the bar. “You knew I was here? The whole time? And you stayed away?”
He shrugs. “Three’s a crowd. The pictures were nice, though. I thought you made a lovely couple. A bit old, but maybe you prefer them distinguished. Some women do. Where is he now?”