Promise Me This (35 page)

“Where have you been?” Maggie asked when Michael walked in the kitchen door late one evening. “Supper was ready an hour past. Daniel and I have eaten.” Maggie sounded more concerned than vexed. She set the last washed bowl in the cupboard.

“I stopped to see Reverend Tenney.” Michael hung his coat and cap on the hook by the door.

Maggie cocked her head. “Oh?”

“He’s a brother over Avalon way—a brother with a lumber business.”

“Do you need more lumber for the gazebos already? Isn’t there another pile behind the barn?”

“It’s not lumber I’m wanting, Aunt Maggie. It’s learning to drive.”

“To drive?”

“Aye.”

“Is this because Annie knows how to drive and you cannot stand that a slip of a lass might know something you don’t?” Maggie placed her hands on her hips and lifted her chin, clearly ready to expound on the pigheaded ways of men. “Haven’t you enough work with the fields coming on?”

“It is something to do with Annie, but not that.” Michael did not flinch. “I want Annie to know everything she can, everything she stands the chance to learn.”

Maggie dropped her hands to her sides. “I’m sorry, Michael. I know you do. But why, then? Why do you need to learn to drive? We’ve no automobile, as near as I can see, and no hopes of buying one this side of a miracle.”

Daniel walked in from the parlor and leaned against the doorpost. “So you’re thinking of going, then?”

“I am,” Michael said.

“Going where?” Maggie colored, clearly annoyed that the men spoke a language she was not privy to.

“To Annie, lass; to Annie,” Daniel whispered and bent to kiss the back of his wife’s neck.

Maggie’s eyes flashed panic. She drew a sharp breath. But before she could speak, Michael cut her off.

“I’ll work the fields by day and take my driving lesson by night—the days are long now. When Mr. Tenney is satisfied that I drive safely, I’ll deliver lumber for the yard in the afternoons for the remainder of the summer—then the deal is square.”

“But—” Maggie began, but Michael rushed on.

“When our fields are harvested and the wood for deliveries is split and the Christmas trees delivered, if President Wilson calls for troops, I’ll go and do my bit. But if America hasn’t joined the fight by then, I’ll go to London and Annie in the new year. I’ll help there, in the hospital work, if they’ll let me. I’ll watch over Annie and do all I can to protect her.”

“They’ll send you to France, Michael. They’re sending everyone to France,” Maggie argued.

Michael shook his head. “Surely, with all the men going off to fight, they need ambulance drivers and orderlies to fetch and carry the wounded returned to England.”

“The English will not take kindly to an able-bodied Paddy slumming the streets safe at home when their own men are dying on the fields of France,” Daniel warned.

“Daniel!” Maggie sputtered, shocked.

“He will hear that and worse. He’d best be knowing it.”

Michael nodded. “I do know it, and I thank you for the plain telling. If I must go, I’ll seek out a private corps. Annie wrote that private citizens are shipping to France on their own—outside the military and outside the Red Cross—to nurse and doctor and create hospitals in houses and churches and halls. They need ambulance drivers—ones who can drive and repair their cars, as well.

“If I help without joining the military, there is nothing to risk my American citizenship. I’ve thought it through from every side, and I mean to go. I won’t leave Annie to face this war alone. I should have gone long ago.”

“We all thought the war could not last,” Maggie whispered. “Can’t you wait for Annie to come here?”

Michael shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. I’ll not have her cross!”

“The danger goes both ways!” Maggie insisted.

“It’s done. I’ve decided.” Michael stood firm, but Maggie’s crumpled features softened his heart. “I’m only taking driving lessons for now. It’s months yet before I’ll go—a good seven or eight at the least. I’ll be here until the new year, unless President Wilson calls for troops. And who knows? The war might take a turn and end tomorrow! But I’ve got to plan this out or I’ll go mad with worry. If I still lived in Ireland or England, I’d be bound to go to war—gone already, Aunt Maggie.”

“But you don’t live there anymore, Michael. You live here. You’re safe here.” Maggie did not seem to notice the tears streaking her face.

Michael opened his arms, pulled her to his chest, and wiped them away. “If Owen had lived, he would have gone back to watch over Annie—and more; he would have surely done his part, Aunt Maggie. I must do mine.” He held her close as her shoulders dropped. “If the fiends are not stopped in France . . . I can’t leave Annie there and do nothing.” Michael sighed. “I’ll come back to you both; I swear it. And when the war is over, I’ll bring Annie home.”

Three things helped to settle the question in Annie’s mind: the first was the sinking of
Lusitania
in early May—she would not knowingly risk the same fate as Owen’s in the cold Atlantic.

The second was that the zeppelins returned to Britain’s shores in May and early June—this time targeting London.

Mrs. Sprague, her nerves frazzled and frayed from the bombing and the growing independence of her only daughter, took to her bed with blinding headaches. Mr. Sprague spent long hours and sometimes several days absent from home, involved in war work that he was not at liberty to discuss. Each week he seemed more bent and gray to Annie than the last. The Spragues had become family to her. She could not leave them at such a time.

The third and deciding factor came in the unexpected form of Michael’s letter and his promise to sail to England in the new year if the war did not end before.

She would wait until the war ended to travel to America and prayed that would not be long.

Annie was astonished by Michael’s bold plan, frightened by the prospect of his week at sea, and thrilled—much to her surprise—by his determination to be near her for the duration of the war.

“It’s wildly romantic, don’t you think?” Connie baited. She spread her hands as though posting newspaper headlines: “‘Gallant Knight Charges across Sea to Rescue Fair Damsel in Distress!’”

“It’s nothing of the sort,” Annie asserted. “It is simply that he promised Owen to watch over me—after a fashion—in a brotherly sort of way.”
Then why am I feeling anything but sisterly toward him now? If my heart races any faster, it will fly out my chest!

“Ta-ta,” Connie teased. “Brotherly, indeed!”

Annie smiled. She didn’t mind Connie’s teasing. She owned—to herself—that it was more than justified. But she’d never tell Connie how the mere idea of Michael again in England stopped her breath.

Through the next weeks Annie found herself staring long into the mirror at night, never seeing her own reflection. She caught herself smiling, self-consciously, over the smallest things, her mind an ocean away. Two long evenings she played with her hair, first pinning it high in one fashion and then taking it down to pin it in another, determined to find the style that drew attention to her best features and wondering what Michael would think of her when he first saw her. She sometimes imagined conversations with Michael and afterward alternately laughed or chastised herself for silliness. She watched the letter flap for the post with the same anticipation as the pigeons waiting outside the kitchen door for breadcrumbs and suet. Letters became food for her heart.

Anticipating Michael’s arrival helped the months pass more quickly for both girls. Despite their long and busy hours volunteering at the hospital and collecting funds for the Red Cross, they longed for something brighter—some activity beyond war and work. The curfew kept them from going out at night with friends, and the gradually increased rationing made rare afternoon socializing less entertaining. But Michael, Annie confessed—if only to herself—was more than a distraction; he was quickly becoming her main event.

Letters raced back and forth between them. Annie assured Michael of her pleasure in his coming in the new year. Mr. and Mrs. Sprague said he would be most welcome to stay with them indefinitely.

Delighted, Annie planned and revised Michael’s welcome-dinner menu over and over, estimating just how much sugar and butter she must hoard to create the feast she envisioned. She was revising the menu yet again, in light of stricter sugar and beef rationing, when the summons came in July, the afternoon of Owen’s birthday.

“Your aunt Eleanor would like to speak with you, Annie,” Mr. Sprague said after returning from his monthly meeting with his most difficult client.

Annie felt the blood drain suddenly from her face and limbs. “Aunt Eleanor wants to see me? Why?”

Mr. Sprague spread his hands. “Let us go into the garden.”

Once outside, Mr. Sprague pulled two wooden chairs close. “Your aunt has a birthday proposition for you, something she wishes you to consider.”

“A proposition?” Annie could only repeat his words. She would gladly never lay eyes on her aunt again. The idea that she would offer a birthday surprise prickled Annie’s skin.

“She would not tell me. She insists on seeing you in person, the day before your eighteenth birthday.”

“A month away.” Annie shook her head, slowly at first and then firmly—an involuntary reaction to the storm of cruel and hurtful memories raised by the image of her aunt. “I cannot. I am sorry, Mr. Sprague, to disobey if you wish this, but I cannot see her.” Annie began to tremble and her voice rose. “I will never go to see her again. I will never let her have power over my hopes or plans or life. I cannot—”

“Annie, I am not asking you to see her. I am only delivering the message of my client. No one will compel you to go to her. And I understand that you do not wish it.”

“Then why tell me when you know—?”

“Because she said that she has an offer to make—something to do with your commitment to the war effort.”

“The war effort?” Annie could not imagine her aunt taking an interest in anything but her own creature comforts. “What does she care of that?”

Wearily, Mr. Sprague sat back. She was instantly sorry for the burden she and Aunt Eleanor had added to his life. “I believe she has had you followed or at least observed. She knows that you have attended Red Cross meetings with Constance and that you trained with the VADs. She either knows or has surmised that you have not been forthcoming with those in charge of the program concerning your age.” Mr. Sprague waved the confusion away. “I have no idea why she would care, but she seems to think that knowledge gives her power of some kind.”

“Do you think she will report me? What good could it do her? And it does not matter; I was seventeen when my training began.”

“Unless you apply to nurse abroad,” Mr. Sprague observed, then studied Annie. “I had not thought of that until Eleanor brought the subject to my attention. I assumed, from our discussion in December, that you had no desire to leave London, but I realize that may no longer be correct.”

“I have considered it, for Connie’s sake, but decided against it. I do not wish to go abroad. I want only to go to New Jersey, and I must wait for that.” Annie shuddered. “I wish she had told you what it is she wants.”

Mr. Sprague shook his head. “She said that she will only make her offer to you in person and only make it once. I told her—if you agree to see her—that I, as your legal guardian at this time, must be present.”

“And she agreed?”

“Oh, she did not like it, but I will not permit that woman to hurt you further, Annie. I would not have allowed the gardens if I had had any idea she would have . . .”

But he did not finish, and Annie, unable to listen, turned away.

“As I said, you do not need to see her. She cannot touch your inheritance from Owen or your trust from your grandfather. . . . There is, however, one other thing—something I have not told you.”

Annie looked up.

“Your aunt’s health—”

“Has she suffered another stroke?” Annie could not stop the spring in her pulse.

“Cancer.” Mr. Sprague waited for his words to sink in. “She does not have long. I spoke with her physician, and he estimates another six months at most.”

Annie sat quietly. She would not outwardly rejoice, but she could not mourn.
Would that she had died when Owen died!
“What could she possibly want with me?”

“I wonder if she is seeking to make peace or restitution before she passes away.”

Annie stood. “She cannot make restitution—not for all the wickedness she’s done.” She felt her throat constrict, her nostrils narrow, as though there were not enough oxygen in the open air. “Aunt Eleanor has never apologized for anything!”

Mr. Sprague’s brow furrowed as Annie, more anxious than she had been since the burning of her gardens, walked the length of the garden and back, then walked it again. At last she slowed and sat down, her agitation partly spent.

If only Owen were here.
She sighed, tugging a loose thread in her cuff.
He would know what to do. . . .

Annie took in the slump of Mr. Sprague’s shoulders, the resignation in his posture. “Do you think I should see her, then?”