“They don’t know I’m there,” she confessed. “They think I’m with my girlfriend Marcia at her family’s place in the Hamptons, recovering.” Because that is what a good widow would do—and Grace had always been the good girl.
“So you ran away?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t as if she had done anything wrong. She was an adult, no children to care for and no husband. She simply picked up and left. “And I don’t want to go back.”
“Were things so very bad at home?”
“No.” That was the thing of it. They hadn’t been bad at all, really. “Just not right for me. I went right from my parents’ home to Tom without ever thinking about what I wanted for me.” And when Tom died, she realized guiltily, it felt like a fresh start.
Suddenly it was all too much. “I’m rather tired. I’m going to turn in,” Grace said, heading for the guest room down the hall he’d pointed out earlier.
Grace closed the door and lay down in the unfamiliar bed, still dressed, the sheets cool and crisp. The headlights from passing cars caused patterns to dance on the ceiling. She heard water running, the sounds of Mark washing. A creak as he lay down in his own bed.
Grace closed her eyes and tried to rest. She saw Eleanor and the girls then in her mind, seeming to call to her, wanting to tell her something. A betrayal, Annie had said. Someone had given up the girls to the Germans. It might have been another agent in the field. But the girls who had been caught were not all operating near Paris as part of the Vesper circuit, or even the adjacent networks. They had been scattered all over France. To have information on all of them, one would have to have been very high up—or even in charge of it all.
Grace sat up with a jolt. She leaped from bed and raced from the room, feeling propelled by something other than herself. A moment later, she found herself standing in the doorway to Mark’s bedroom. She knocked. Turn away, she thought, panicking. But it was too late. He had opened the door and stood before her, shirt half unbuttoned. “Is everything all right? Did you need something?”
“Eleanor,” she said, jumping right in. “We’ve been assuming all the time that she was looking for answers about the girls. What if she had already found out the truth?” She took a deep breath. “Or what if she already knew because she was the one who betrayed them?”
He hesitated for several seconds, considering the idea. “Do you want to come in?” Grace nodded.
His bedroom was cluttered. Clothes covered the sofa and overflowed from the dresser. He cleared a spot for her on the lone chair, moving his briefcase to the ottoman in front of it.
“So you think Eleanor betrayed the girls?” he asked as she sat.
“I don’t know. But if she did, she might have been trying to hide the truth, rather than find it.”
“It’s a theory, isn’t it? Annie said that Eleanor had a mysterious past and no friends. She was from Eastern Europe. What if she was working for the Germans?”
Grace’s mind spun. She didn’t want to consider the idea, but she couldn’t look away.
“It’s mind-boggling,” she said. “What if Eleanor from the start had been a traitor, sent to infiltrate SOE? She would have used the girls as chess pieces to help the Germans get information. Instead of their protector, she had sent them to their deaths.” She paused, trying to fit the pieces together. “But Annie said Eleanor came to her sister after the war, asking questions. If she was the one who betrayed the girls, why would she have done that?”
“Who knows? Maybe she wanted to make sure no one suspected her.” Suddenly, nothing was as it had appeared to be. Even Eleanor’s death, a simple car accident, seemed shrouded in mystery. Could Eleanor, guilt stricken about what she had done, have deliberately stepped out to be killed?
“I just can’t believe Eleanor would have betrayed the girls,” Grace said. The woman was a stranger, though; anything was possible. “I can’t think about it anymore tonight. I should go,” she said wearily. But she remained seated.
A look of understanding crossed his face. “Sometimes,” he said, “you just don’t want to be alone.” He crossed the room and sat down beside her, too close. Their faces turned toward one another. She closed her eyes, certain that he would try to kiss her and almost wanting him to. He did not. Instead, he ran a thumb along her cheekbone, catching a tear that she had not known had fallen.
A moment later he stood and went to the dresser. He returned with a flannel shirt, which he handed to her. She went into the bathroom to change, smelling him in the fabric even through the fresh scent of the laundry detergent.
When she came out of the bathroom, swimming in the oversize nightshirt, he was arranging sheets on the chair and ottoman, and she assumed that he meant for her to sleep there. But he stretched out on the chair, adjusting his lanky frame to the cramped space.
“I couldn’t possibly take your bed,” she protested.
“I insist. I can sleep anywhere.” She sat on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by the impropriety of the situation and yet not caring at all. Part of her wished he would join her.
She leaned back against the headboard. “What I said earlier about my life before the war... I loved Tom.” It felt odd to be talking about her husband here, in his best friend’s bedroom, but she felt as though she had to explain. “I still do. It was just the life, you know, married, in the suburbs. I never quite fit in.”
“I understand,” Mark replied. “It was like me, at Yale.” Grace was surprised; she had always thought of Mark as one of the guys. “I was there on scholarship. I don’t suppose Tom ever mentioned it.” Grace shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t have, of course. I was always working, waiting tables in the dining hall, doing whatever I needed to earn extra money and make ends meet. Tom never minded, but some of the fellas made sure I knew I would never be one of them. It doesn’t matter in the end. I’ve done fine for myself,” he added, gesturing around the room. “The ink on my diploma is the same as theirs. But I’ll never forget that feeling.”
Grace shook her head. “It was more than just the not fitting in. When Tom was finishing officers’ school, he wanted me to come down to Georgia for the graduation and have a few days together before he shipped out. But I didn’t. I made some excuses about needing to be in Westport for work. But really it just seemed too much, the trip down there. And being among all of those officers and their wives, it was everything I hated about married life, only more so. When I said I couldn’t go, Tom arranged to come to New York and see me before he left. That’s why he was in the jeep. That’s why he was killed.” Not going to Georgia had been the worst mistake of her life.
Mark sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. “You didn’t know, Gracie. We just never know.” They sat together without speaking for several minutes. Finally, he stretched out beside her on the bed. They didn’t touch but he held her hand firmly in his.