Page 75 of The Light Between Worlds

“There’s a blanket in the back seat,” Jack says after I hide a yawn for the third time. I tuck it in around my shoulders, then rest my head on one arm propped up against the passenger window ledge, but I can’t sleep. I’m too anxious about what’s to come in Yorkshire, and too nervous about being in this quiet, sensible car next to this equally quiet, sensible young man.

Instead I watch the market towns roll past, with their sleepy houses and shops and leftover air raid sirens. I build castles in the air, imagining impossible things—that I’ll find Evelyn at the end ofthis drive, that she’s somewhere in Yorkshire, that this last connection will be the one that matters, that brings me peace.

I’m so lost in thought that it takes me ages to realize Jack is humming, so softly as to be almost under his breath. I sit up with a sigh and he turns to me with a smile. “Hello, you.”

“How far have we come?” I ask. It’s only now I notice that Jack’s got a road map on one knee, and that I’ve been a completely useless passenger when I might have helped.

“Not halfway yet.” Jack glances down at the map. “We’re almost to Kettering, if you want to stop. I wouldn’t mind a bite to eat, and I’m sure you’re hungry, too.”

“No, but I’d have another coffee.”

Jack frowns but says nothing besides, “It’s settled then. We’ll take a bit of a break.”

I bite my lip, not sure I’m in a place to be making suggestions, but he notices. “Go on; if you’ve got something to say, out with it.”

“Can we just stop a moment? Pick up some sandwiches and find somewhere quieter to eat them? I don’t think I could manage sitting in a pub for long, is all.”

Jack nods. “Of course. England’s not lacking for fields. I’m sure we can find one to oblige us.”

In Kettering we stop at a pub and walk in to order sandwiches and coffee. Though it’s not terribly busy, I was right—the noise and the people would be more than I can bear just now. I stand next to Jack while we wait, and can’t keep from tapping one foot compulsively until he shifts a bit closer so his shoulder brushes mine. I’m not sure why he did it, to get weight off his bad leg, or to steady me, but having him so close makes me feel less adrift.I keep still until our sandwiches are ready, nicely wrapped up in brown paper.

We carry on for a while until Jack brings the car to a stop alongside an empty, flat stretch of road. There’s nothing to see in any direction except fields and hedgerows and grazing sheep.

“Will this do?” he asks.

I smile in answer and get out of the car. Together, we spread the blanket on the green grass between the hedgerow and the road, and make a picnic of our lunch. I take a sandwich to please Jack and nibble at it unconvincingly, but he’s had my thermos refilled with coffee at the pub. We pass it back and forth between us and watch the new lambs gamboling about beside their mothers. The wind still has an edge to it, but I’m warm enough in my sweater and scarf and wool stockings.

“Philippa,” Jack says eventually. “What is it you’re hoping to find in Yorkshire? Only I’d hate to see you disappointed, is all.”

I set the thermos down. “To be honest, I don’t know. And I understand that it’s foolish for me to expect to find anything, but I can’t stop looking. I owe it to my sister, to ask all the questions, to turn over all the stones.”

Jack smiles. “I hope someday I’ve got someone who believes in me half as much as you believe in your Evelyn.”

Pulling up a handful of grass, I let it be carried away by the wind, one blade at a time. “I left her when I shouldn’t have. I’m more at fault in this than anyone else cares to admit. It’s not just painters who have to make repentances.”

Jack leans back on his hands and squints at me in the afternoon sun. “If I thought you’d listen, I’d tell you that you can’tbe responsible for another person’s choices. But I know there’s no changing your mind.”

“No.” I squint back at him. “I’m afraid you can add stubbornness to my list of terrible qualities.”

We sit a little longer, watching the sheep and soaking in the sunshine, and I wish I could stay in this moment forever—that I could capture this fragile, transient happiness and keep it for my own. But eventually clouds pile up away eastward, and the wind gets colder, and we’re forced back into the car as it begins to rain.

The wipers are working double time and I’ve got my knees pulled up to my chest, and the blanket, still smelling vaguely of grass, wrapped around my shoulders when a derelict barracks with boarded-up windows looms alongside the road. A tall fence topped with barbed wire surrounds it, and the whole thing looks closed off and menacing.

Jack’s knuckles go white for a moment on the wheel.

“I’m sorry,” I say, though I’m not sure what for. For everything, really—for how life is so often just a long, slow way of dying. “The war’s impossible to forget, isn’t it? Just when you think you have, something crops up. A place like that, or an old leaflet, or you’re silly and use up your sugar ration too soon.”

“I don’t need any of that.” Jack raises his left hand. “I carry my reminders a good bit closer.”

For a while the only sound is the rain and the wipers, hurrying back and forth.

“You can ask what happened,” Jack says finally. “People always want to know.”

I shake my head. “Idon’t have to know. Not if you don’t like to talk about it.”

Jack shrugs. “I’d rather you did, though I’ll warn you, it’s a very short story, and a stunningly unheroic one.”

Pulling the blanket tighter, I watch him driving, his scars still visible in the low light. “Tell me, then.”