Page 110 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Holt shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “People are more afraid of the fever than they are of the Spanish. The fear might be enough.”

“Or the fever might have taken hold.” Betsy clutched a container of malted milk so hard, Holt was afraid it would shatter. “I don’t know whether to be happy about Kit or terrified for Ava.”

“What about both?”

Betsy didn’t seem to hear him. She was lost in her own terror. “I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to Ava. I know, she told me, she’s her own person, and it was her choice to stay in Siboney. . . .”

Betsy broke off, her eyes meeting Holt’s. It didn’t take much to tell exactly what was haunting her. Someone else who had made his own choice. Charles, who had chosen to follow her to Lamia.

It wasn’t fair to hate a dead man. But Holt did anyway.

“If you know that,” he said, “why are you blaming yourself?”

“How can you ask that? You, of all people—” Betsy ducked down into one of the cartons, coming up flushed and disheveled. “I’m meant to be her maid of honor. That implies a responsibility.”

“I don’t think that’s chief among a bridesmaid’s duties,” Holt said mildly, to cover the turmoil of his emotions. She was right; he was a hypocrite. He didn’t know how to stop blaming himself any more than Betsy did. “I’ll ask the captain to send a cable to Cuba. Someone should be able to tell you what happened to the hospital staff.”

Betsy tilted her head, looking at him with something in her eyes he couldn’t quite read. “You always have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

Except when he didn’t. “The captain says we leave for New York at noon tomorrow. We’re almost at the end of this.”

Betsy breathed in deeply through her nose. “Do you think they’ll let us land in New York?”

She looked so tired, with the great circles under her eyes, the hollows below her cheekbones.

“If they don’t, we’ll just sail the seven seas. You can turn pirate. I can picture you with a cutlass.”

“Ha,” said Betsy, but her mouth turned up at the corners, just a little. It made Holt feel like king of the world. Or at least ruler of a small principality. She hesitated, frowning at a bottle of beef extract. “What will you do when this is over? If this is ever over.”

“I don’t know,” Holt said. He couldn’t see himself going back West. It already felt vaguely unreal, his life there. “I suppose there’s always Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.”

That won him a snort. “You never made that convincing a cowboy. Even with the mustache.”

Holt took the beef extract from her, adding it to the collection on the counter. “I liked that mustache. Maybe I should grow another one.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“A beard like the Ancient Mariner?” There was only so long he could avoid the question that was hanging over both of them. “What about you? What will you do?”

“I don’t know.” Betsy set down another bottle, turning it so the label faced just so. “I could retake my exams and go back to the American School.”

“You don’t sound delighted by the notion.”

Betsy reluctantly abandoned her bottle of beef extract, not meeting Holt’s eyes. “All I ever wanted to do is excavate—and the American School wouldn’t let me do that.”

“Then find someone who will.”

Betsy frowned at him. “It’s not that easy.”

“Neither was this,” said Holt. “That didn’t stop you.”

“It’s different. I couldn’t not do what I’m doing here.” She bit her lip. “I’m so tired I don’t know what I’m saying.”

But that, thought Holt, looking at her bowed head, was just when the truth came out. When you were so tired you didn’t know what you were saying.

Like the other night. The night they weren’t talking about.

Holt wanted, more than anything, to just reach out and open his arms to her. To stand there, together, not saying anything at all. Just being. Because they both already knew more about each other than anyone in the world. They could just be. Together. And that would be enough.