“You sound mad as a hatter,” I interrupted, having no patience for this. “You’re just looking for someone to blame for the state of the world!”
“Someone is to blame, aren’t they?”
I didn’t have any intention of getting drawn into a quarrel about his increasingly prejudiced thinking. Especially not when I’d come with another purpose altogether. There would never be an easy time to broach it, so I took a deep breath and blurted, “I’m leaving for Chavaniac at the end of the week, but before I go, I’d like to talk to you about Captain Furlaud . . .”
Willie peered over the top of the newspaper. “Tiring of him yet?”
I decided to be patient. Gentle, even. “He’s quite devoted to me and the boys. It isn’t some tawdry—”
“Oh, spare me. You’re not going to give up everything for a man like that.”
“I don’t want to argue, Willie. You and I have tried to make each other happy, but we haven’t managed it. I know you’re capable of great generosity of spirit, so let’s not wreck each other.”
Somewhere in the house, the telephone was ringing, but Willie’s attention was entirely on me. “You’re wrestling with your conscience, my dear,” he said, leaning forward. “If you knew the right thing to do, you’d do it. When the right thing isn’t obvious, you do any damned thing you please and make no apologies. Yet you didn’t file for a divorce when you were in New York, did you?”
“I didn’t wish to be cruel.”
He puffed his cigar thoughtfully. “To me or to your banker? Between me, him, and the war, your life is a three-ring circus, and maybe you like it that way. You’re not going to settle down and become someone else’s little missus.”
My temper flared. “Willie—”
A knock interrupted. It was my husband’s manservant. “Sir, there’s a call for you from Mr. Chapman.”
“Not now,” Willie barked.
“They think they’ve found your nephew, sir.”
A thick silence descended, every other thought driven away. I knew Victor was dead; still, I let myself imagine. Perhaps there’d been some manner of confusion. Perhaps my nephew had been a prisoner of war all this time. Perhaps he’d—
“I’ll take the call,” Willie said, and I had to bring him the phone. After a brief conversation, clipped and flat, I knew my imaginations were cruel hopes. Hanging up the receiver, Willie explained, “The Chapmans want me to identify the corpse. A pilot’s body in a shallow grave somewhere not far from Verdun. They’ve got him in a pine box now and shipped him behind the fighting lines. Some of Victor’s old comrades in the Lafayette Escadrille—the few still alive—went to take a look, but the body is so badly decomposed they can’t be sure it’s him.”
Naturally, Victor’s parents wanted someone who knew him longer to look upon the remains. They wanted Willie to do it, and I knew he would, though it would put his heart to torture. It was a heavy responsibility, and I found myself asking, “Do you want me to go with you?”
Willie dropped his gaze. “You needn’t. It’s an ugly business.”
I wasn’t going to make him beg. Going didn’t change anything, after all. It was an act of simple humanity. And I too needed to know the truth about what happened to my nephew.
Willie remained sober during the long trip, which made him more cross than usual, of course, but I didn’t mind so very much. When it was time for American soldiers to pry open the pine coffin, he asked me to wait outside. “Bea, I can’t imagine I’ll ever be able to wipe what I see from my memory after today, and I want one of us to remember the face of that boy as it actually was.”
I wanted to argue, but in the end, I waited outside, holding a wreath of flowers I’d hoped to lay on the coffin. Then I waited some more. Never good at waiting, even with a book, I wondered if I ought to write a letter to Max explaining what I was doing here with my husband, but decided against it.
On crutches, Willie returned to the car, glassy-eyed and shaken. “It doesn’t look like Victor, but he had letters in his pocket he might’ve been delivering to a friend.”
“He’s been a long time in the ground,” I said gently. “He’s not likely to look like himself.”
Willie rubbed the back of his neck. “You remember his smile, those perfect teeth . . . well, this poor fellow had fillings.”
I recoiled to think how close Willie must have come to the corpse to discover fillings. Then I inhaled sharply, remembering something. “When I saw him at Amiens he mentioned having found some holes in his teeth. Said he had them looked at by a Romanian comrade-in-arms who studied dentistry . . .”