Had a bomb gone off?
Turning the corner, she found the street was a blast furnace. Cries and the yelping of a dog echoed from somewhere in the smoking haze.
“Dafydd! Lisbeth!”
Terror stricken, she saw a gaping hole where the post office had been. Now it was a flaming heap of collapsing stone. A figure writhed in the burning driver’s seat of the Red Cross truck. Horrific. The doctor was trying to open the truck’s door. Kate kept moving, she had to find her family. “Dafydd, where are you?”
She tried to see through the smoke, inching her way along a wall that was hot to the touch. Finally she could see through the smoke enough to make out a burning petrol supply truck, its front end crumpled and smashed into—no, no, it couldn’t be. The truck had crashed into the Tilly, creating a fireball.
Screaming and stumbling toward the burning Tilly, she inhaled acrid smoke. The wall sparked into flame and began to crumble. She heard a baby’s cry. Lisbeth. The last thing she remembered was a rush of raining soot.
Kate blinked awake to bright lights, a burnt hair smell in her nose. She felt a cold disk against her chest.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the naval hospital. I’m the duty doctor.”
Kate’s eyes focused on an older woman with short gray hair, a stethoscope hanging from her neck, who was feeling for her pulse.
“You’ve been treated for burns and smoke inhalation,” the doctor was saying. “And for shock. All your vital signs are stable.”
“I want to see Dafydd,” Kate said, trying to sit up. “My baby.”
The doctor sat down next to Kate on the bed, taking Kate’s bandaged hand. “Miss—”
“It’s Missus,” she said. “Mrs. Rees.”
“Mrs. Rees, we’ve had a terrible tragedy—”
“What happened?” Kate’s foggy mind struggled to remember.
“There was an attack,” the doctor said, fury in her voice. “The Germans torpedoed a ship—the Royal Oak. There were twelve hundred men and boys aboard.”
“But—” Kate’s memory was coming back—the glittering white heat, the Red Cross vehicle in flames. “There was a petrol truck,” she said suddenly.
“Yes,” the doctor said softly. “In the confusion of the attack there was a horrific accident. Three vehicles, including a petrol truck. It caused a huge fire. There were many casualties.”
“You don’t understand,” Kate said, as she tried not to understand. “My husband was with my sick baby, waiting for me by the post office. They must have been taken to safety.”
“They’re gone. I’m so sorry.”
“Gone?” She grabbed the doctor’s arm and pulled herself up, startled by the sudden pain in her burned legs. “Gone where?”
“They didn’t make it.”
“No, that’s not true.”
“I’m afraid no one survived.”
That’s when she felt the searing pain in her gut. “Then how did I?”
“You were lucky.”
“Lucky?” She threw the covers aside. “I don’t believe you.” Struggled as the doctor held her down. “We have to find them.” She was screaming as a nurse came toward her with a hypodermic needle. “Don’t you understand?” And then she felt the jab.
June 16, 1940
Hoy, Orkney
More than half a year had passed since the crash and Kate still woke up sick every day. This morning she’d gone to where the post office had stood, now an empty sore of a fire site, the whole place fenced off up to the pier it bordered. Scapa Flow’s oily water churned below. Only a buoy in the harbor marked the watery grave of the sunken warship HMS Royal Oak. Her mind returned to its fiery sinking, lurching like a wounded whale. She climbed through the wire fence and combed through the rubble and burnt wood, up to her knees in soot. Always looking for a trace of Lisbeth, Dafydd. To find something for the hole in her heart.
She tossed charred bricks aside, finding chunks of mortar, shards of glass. Dug deep and felt a piece of smooth metal. Under it something jagged—a scorched wooden baby rattle, the handle blackened. Her heart fractured. Lisbeth’s favorite. How had it survived the flames? It was as if fate were being especially brutal. Sobbing, she brushed the soot off, kissed it. Held it close to her chest.
Flapping in the rubble was a torn and crinkled newspaper page—a photo of a candlelit rally, Hitler standing before a giant swastika. The man who had taken her family away. And for what?
An aching split her insides. Nothing could fill the emptiness.
Below her foot a shard of glass sparkled in the morning sun. She thought about how easy it would be to pick it up and slice her wrist, put the emptiness behind her forever.
The wind blowing over the treeless fields carried the bleating of sheep. She thought of her pa back in Oregon. When she was a little girl and her stupid brother had tripped her, Pa had told her to get up. Get up and get even.
She stared at Hitler’s picture and wiped her tears, letting her anger fill her.
You’ll pay.
“I’m still shocked ye came back ta work,” said Greer, grinding out a cigarette with her toe in the brick factory yard.
Kate shrugged. “What else would I do with myself, Greer?”
Without work to distract her, she’d find herself on the roof, ready to jump.
Greer was local, the only good friend she’d made working in munitions assembly. Today, as usual, they ate lunch together perched on wood boxes of ammunition stacked in the factory yard under a metal canopied supply lean-to that protected them from the weather. Across from them at the other end of the dirt yard was the warhead examination room, beyond that the hurriedly built torpedo depot. In the adjoining building was the recreation center, where Greer’s gran worked. The recreation center was a vital part of the military complex, hosting activities to boost morale on this remote island.
Troops marched past, headed toward the power station on the freshly tarmacked road, as Greer divided her doughy pasty, which was wrapped in a creased, much-folded piece of newspaper, and shared half with Kate. Kate had little appetite. Everything tasted like cardboard after her loss. She hated this dried-up pasty. Yet the doctor had warned her she’d get sick again if she didn’t eat, and then she wouldn’t be able to work.
“Don’t ye want ta go back home ta Oregon?” asked Greer.
“Nothing makes it across the Atlantic anymore with the U-boats, Greer. Not even letters.”