Page 13 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Betsy hunched over her carpetbag, cradled in her lap like a baby. “My brother wouldn’t think so. He had his sense of humor surgically removed when he started at the Harvard Law School.”

“He knows you’re here?”

“He will when he gets the bills.” At Kit’s look, she added defensively, “It’s my money. He can’t touch it. But he’s trustee.”

“All the responsibility, none of the authority? He must love that.”

“He’s just waiting for me to overspend my income so he can refuse to disburse the principal.”

“Is that what you’re here for? To annoy your brother?”

Betsy glanced out the window, at the smoke-smudged landscape, trying to think of a convincing reason that sounded less crazy than the truth. I’m here because I dared my best friend to take some risks for once in her life but I didn’t mean this, not this, never this, and now I’m afraid she’s going to die and it will be all my fault and she’ll haunt me forever.

Kit laughed. “Honey, you look just like my six-year-old when I catch her with her brother howling, swearing right and left she never took his toy, when it’s right there behind her back.”

“Maybe I just want to nurse the sick.”

“And maybe the moon is made of green cheese. You’ve met the sisters. There’s a certain air of zealotry about them. You, not so much. I know why I’m here; I know why they’re here. Why are you here? And what does this Miss Saltonstall have to do with it?”

Betsy forced a smile. “I’m not a war story.”

“Anything can be a war story.” At the look of alarm on Betsy’s face, Kit backed up. “Don’t look like that! I’m not going to make you a women’s page feature. Unless you give me good reason.”

She was joking. Sort of. Betsy suspected that if it suited her, if it got her a larger headline, Kit Carson would have no compunction about making her a women’s page feature—and no shame about it either.

A woman had to do what a woman had to do to survive in a man’s world.

She respected that—but that didn’t mean she wanted her private torments pasted over the yellow press. There was too much in her past that didn’t bear inspection. Greece. Turkey. Switzerland.

Betsy narrowed her eyes at Kit. “How are you keeping up with the work? If you’re not really a nurse.”

“Any mother picks up a certain amount of practical nursing.” Kit grinned, and Betsy found herself fighting liking her. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have thought twice; she would have taken to Kit immediately, just as she’d taken to Aikaterini. Back before. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to bore you talking about my babies. Or maybe just a little. I have to talk about them sometimes, get it out of my system.”

The coal smoke made Betsy’s throat feel scratchy. “Do you ever worry you might not make it back?”

Kit shrugged, looking away. “I worry I might not make it over there. Do you know that they won’t let any women reporters near the encampments? Not even here in Tampa. What do they think? We’ll swoon?”

“There are more women reporters here?” Betsy asked, grabbing at the back of the seat in front of her as the train rocked forward.

“At least four of us I know of. All trying to get the story of the century. If one of those bloated buffoons bunking with the boys doesn’t scoop us first.” Kit’s foot tapped impatiently against the sticky floor of the train. “They’ve got William Randolph Hearst and Stephen Crane up there on the verandah of the Tampa Bay Hotel, cozying up with the brass, and every bit reporter you can think of sharing tobacco chews with the troops. They’ve even let in a cameraman from the Edison Kinetoscope Company! But no women. Not one.”

“Maybe they think our constitutions are unsuited to the rigor of warfare.”

Kit gave her a surprised look. “Don’t you know it! You sound like you’ve heard it before.”

“I used to be an archaeologist.” No, that wasn’t entirely true. Betsy licked her dry lips. “I wanted to be an archaeologist. They told me women don’t dig. They told me to try training as a librarian.”

“They told me I could write for the women’s pages. This month’s hats and next month’s shoes.”

“What did you do?”

“I wrote it.” At Betsy’s expression, Kit gave a quick, sharp laugh. “Honey, I can write about hat trim in my sleep.”

“Why?”

“Because they wouldn’t let me on the paper any other way. I’d have written about the life cycle of the ladybug if that was what it took. What matters is getting your foot in the door.”

“But what if they won’t let you stick the rest of you in and you’re just stuck with your foot clamped in a door?”