On Wings of Silence, page 8
“I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood. You were very loving with her at the end.”
“The kiss.” Raisa met his curious gaze.
“Yes.”
“It was not what you think.” She added a stick to the fire and watched it catch. Visions of Oksana’s final moments repeated in her mind. “I’m in love with you, Raisa.”
“No?”
“No.” Meeting his eyes again, she refused to elaborate. Not to him or anyone. She had promised. She would hold Oksana’s secret close to her heart for the rest of her days.
She added more sticks to the fire before brushing off her hands.
“Call it a final wish.”
CHAPTER 10
The sun was low in the sky the next time he opened his eyes. The forest around him making long shadows in a crosshatched pattern among the trees. It would be dark again soon. How long had he been asleep? He was stiff. The fire still smoldered.
Rubbing at his eyes before straightening his glasses, he wondered where his nurse and traveling companion had disappeared. Before he could make a guess, a steaming tin cup of something was pushed at him. Shit.
“Good, you’re awake. Drink this.” Raisa’s accent hugged the words.
He peered into the cup. It looked brackish and smelled like pitch. “What the hell is this?”
“Pine needle tea. Like my Babcia used to make. Just drink. It is good for you.” She gave the cup a nudge.
Calvin took a sip and grimaced. “It tastes like I’m sucking on a Christmas tree.”
“You are. Just drink. We’re losing light, and I want to check your arm again.” Raisa added her canteen to a small cache before kicking out the remains of their fire. “If you are feeling stronger. We should leave soon.” She tipped her chin toward the pile. “I’ve spent the last few hours melting the last of what snow I could find and filling the canteens. Our water should hold us, and we’ll conserve our energy until we can find food. I’ve seen some rabbit tracks. Next stop I’ll set up a snare or two. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
She pulled his gear closer, knelt by his side, and handed him more aspirin and antibiotics.
“You’ve been busy.” Had he been asleep all day? He stared at the tablets in his hand. When she began pulling on the knot of his sling, he stopped her. “I got it.”
Nodding, she sat back on her heels. His head was still fuzzy, but he went through the motions of checking his wound, all the while fiercely aware of the woman by his side. Her energy hummed in the fading light. The same light caught those coppery threads and haloed her hair. It softened the hard edges of her.
His gaze dropped to her mouth as their conversation from earlier filtered through his mind. Blue underwear to kisses. He needed his imagination for only one of those things. The image of her and Oksana flashed in his memory. “Call it a final wish.” Why did he have a sudden desire to make a wish of his own?
Calvin shook his head to clear away the insanity of such a thought and scanned her face once more. “Have you slept?”
“Some.” She met his gaze. “Not in the habit of needing much.”
“Right. Night bomber.”
“And during the daytime hours, we are busy moving to the next stop, fixing any problems with the aircraft, being briefed on the next night’s mission.”
“But you need sleep.”
“I get sleep. Not much. Enough.” She helped him replace his sling, stood, and held a hand out to him to help pull him to his feet.
“I’ve got it,” he repeated, but when he attempted to stand, his legs hadn’t yet gotten the message, and his knees tried to fail him. Raisa was quick to slip beneath his good arm to steady him.
“Maybe you’re not strong enough to leave yet.”
He clung to her while his head spun. Son of a bitch. “I’ll be fine. Let me get my sea legs.” Calvin pulled deep breaths.
“Sea legs? Maybe you shouldn’t make any of your grand plans to be a pirate,” she teased.
“Maybe not.” Calvin leaned his head back against the tree and smiled. “Glasses and an eye patch? Not a good look for a proper pirate.” Pulling a few deep breaths, his head was starting to clear.
“I like your glasses.” She gazed up at him. “They make you look...” She paused as if trying to find the correct word. “Intelligent.”
“Implying I’m not?” he gave a short laugh.
The side of her mouth tipped. “I did not say that.”
Calvin made note of the perfect way she fit along his side. As if someone had taken his measurements and made her specific for him.
“How do you feel?” The tip of her tongue licked at the “L” in feel.
He had no idea. Dammit it all. He needed to stop watching her talk. It was driving him to distraction. Her closeness wasn’t helping either. “Fine. I’m fine.” He pulled out of her hold.
She placed a steading hand on his back. “Can you travel?”
“Yes. I’m fine.” He took an unsteady step away.
Raisa frowned at him. “You’ll let me know if you’re not?”
He nodded.
“No patrols peeing on our boots, no planes exploding,” she projected. “We will take it slow. No sprints. If you start bleeding again, Calvin, you will tell me?”
He liked the way she broke his name into two distinct parts. “I give you my word.” He started to say, “Mam,” but he decided to drop the sarcasm he’s shot at her in the past. She’d pulled his ass out of the fire last night. Regardless of the rest. Bottom line, he owed her. The least he could do was give her the respect she deserved. Now, to come up with something else to call her.
They’d only traveled a little over an hour, maybe more. With little underbrush through this section of forest, the going was easier. Still, with no clear path to follow, it felt as if they were following a drunkard’s trail. Both were quiet in their own thoughts. Calvin wished his weren’t so loud and muddled. Especially where Raisa was concerned and certainly in light of the current circumstances. But something had shifted between them.
She fascinated him. The more time they spent together, the more he learned of her, the more captivated he became. One minute she was tougher than forged steel, racing away from the enemy; the next she was gentle, caring, teasing. She hadn’t faltered or crumbled under the weight of everything that had happened. Even in her pacing the other night, she held as tight to her control as she was able. Maybe it was her training. Maybe it was her. Whatever it was, it had the power to settle him and unsettle him all at the same time.
Calvin lost himself for the tenth time in studying her back as he kept pace. The brightness of the moon made following the gentle sway of her stride easy. It sure as hell wasn’t helping his growing attraction walking behind her. Think of something else, dammit.
His stomach rumbled in response. “Boy, I sure do wish I had one of those wrinkled carrots right about now,” he mumbled.
“Not me,” she responded over her shoulder. “Not that I wouldn’t be grateful.” Raisa never slowed her sway. She circled another tree. “Since I’ve been away, what I miss most is my mother’s babka. Fresh from the oven. Warm and filled with cinnamon. I can almost smell it.”
Calvin sighed at the thought. “For me, it would have to be the smell of bacon cooking. Fresh eggs and thick country bacon. Besides my mother’s chicken, it’s what I miss most.” His stomach growled in agreement. “And the crispy fried potatoes my dad liked to make on Sunday mornings.”
She glanced back at him over one shoulder. “I like a man who cooks.”
“Just on Sundays,” Calvin interjected. “It gets him out of going to church.” The sound of their steps was muffled in the dark. He squeezed between two trunks. The bark caught at his clothes. “I was dreaming about my mother’s chicken and biscuits not too long ago. It’s the first thing I want when I get home.”
Raisa’s groaned reached him. “Maybe we talk about something other than food. It is only making me hungrier.”
“What do you want to talk about?” Calvin asked, keeping pace. Perhaps benign chatter would help distract him from other things, as well.
“What does the E stand for?” Raisa asked.
“E?” He pushed aside a clump of brush.
“In your name.”
How had she remembered that? “Oh, E is for Everest, after my father. His middle name is Lawrence after his father. Family tradition.”
“And did you race to volunteer, Calvin Everest?” Raisa continued. Her tongue slipping over his name again. She pronounced it ‘Call-ven. Ever-est.’ Damn.
“No. Drafted fresh out of medical school. Promised my father I’d hang my shingle next to his when I get back to Iowa. Now I just have to live long enough to get there.”
“Have you always wanted to be a doctor?”
“I think so,” he sounded pensive. “It was just assumed I’d follow in his footsteps. Like father, like son.”
Raisa stopped, unscrewed the top of her canteen, and took a long drink. She handed it to him. Looking up, the moonlight bathed her face as she scanned the sky. She wiped a stray drop of water from her lip.
“I know something of this. Like father, like son.” She nodded before taking her canteen back for another drink. “My father was killed in the Great Civil War, and my brother Mikhail, rushed to join the Army when the Patriotic War began. One of the first, like my father. Both in a hurry to serve our country. Like father, like son. Died like him too. This is why I volunteered. To fight for our country. There is just my mother and my sisters, Alexandra and Nadia remaining. It is now my responsibility to provide for them, and I felt I needed to fight the Germans to avenge my brother.” She shook her head. “I wanted to fly. And I had the foolish notion if there were enough of us fighting, the war would be over sooner.” Raisa looked at him and shrugged. “So naïve, I was to believe such a thing. But it is a helpless feeling watching all the men in your family and the community march away, and not knowing how to fight yourself.” At his quiet, Raisa held up a hand. “I know, you do not agree with my choice, but I regret little.” She began walking again.
Something she had said flashed in his memory. “So, you didn’t rush to volunteer to find a husband?”
Raisa huffed. “No. Already found one.”
“You’re married?” The woman was full of surprises.
“No.” Raisa moved off again and slowly navigated a fallen tree. “I was engaged. Nikolai was his name.”
“Did you lose him in the war, too?”
“Not yet.” She covered her mouth with a hand and shot him a wide stare. “That was a horrible thing to say. I wish him no harm. He is a good man underneath it all. Will make a fine husband for someone else. We were set to be married, but he has set me aside. Broke our engagement. He is a chauvinist like you.” She flipped a hand in his direction. “Believes I am no longer a proper woman because of what I have done in the war. He’s not alone. Most Russian men feel we are damaged goods somehow.”
“I don’t feel that way,” he defended.
“No,” she huffed. “You only think we are inferior.”
He stopped moving. “I never said that.”
Raisa turned back. “But you object to us fighting at the front.” She folded her arms over her chest.
“Not because I think you are inferior, far from it. I think you are far superior. Smarter. Braver.” Images of the amazing women he served with filled his mind. One in particular he’d never forget as long as he lived. They were some of the most courageous soldiers he’d ever met. And yet... More horrific images flooded his thoughts. “I just don’t think you should be put in that kind of danger. Have to fight for your lives while you witness bodies around you being torn apart. See what men continue to do to one another for power.” His voice raised. “You should be shielded from the horrors. Protected.”
Raisa tipped her head and knit her brows as if what he said was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “And you really believe you can protect us from war? You cannot.” She lowered her voice and hissed at him. “I envy you your privilege to grow up in a country that has not seen war on its doorstep over and over. But do you imagine you can protect your mother from her own thoughts? Whether standing on a battlefield, or sending husbands, sons, fathers, off to fight. We know those horrors without ever having to see them with our own eyes. Our imaginations are so much worse, I can assure you. No one is protected from war. No one. Man. Woman. Child.” She glared at him.
“I cannot understand growing up as you have. I can’t. True. But imagining and participating isn’t the same thing.” Calvin pulled in a deep breath and held her gaze. Why was it suddenly so important she understand him without believing him to be an ass. He sat on a low rock and looked away. He’d not shared what happened in Italy with anyone. Try as he might to bury it away as deep as was possible, here it was again.
“A year ago,” his voice broke. Calvin swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I guess it’s more than that now. We were stationed in Salerno, Italy. I’d just come over. Met a woman there, a nurse. Like me, she was fresh out of school. Farm girl from the Midwest. Her name was Margret, Margret Simpson, but we all called her Betty because she had this beautiful pale, pale blonde hair like Betty Grable.” He motioned to his own hair. “Moonbeam hair, she used to call it.” He remembered her telling him her mother called it that when she was a child. Calvin remembered how it shined as if fell over her bare shoulders like a silken curtain. He hadn’t thought about Betty and her moonbeam hair until seeing Oksana’s. The memory had snatched at his heart the second he saw her. “Betty was a skilled nurse. Amazing. Beautiful. Sweet. Brave.”
“We... I...,” his words tripped again. “We were both reassigned to Anzio. The fighting was fiercest there. We only expected to be deployed for a few days before moving on, but the Germans bombarded the crap out of us and held us down for weeks. Army set up a hospital. We called it a half mile of hell. Forty tents stretched out, two by two, side by side. White with giant red crosses on top. The bastards like aiming for red crosses.” Calvin patted his arm.
“The fighting got worse. We had orders to transfer all mobile patients to bunkers to get them out of range. I stayed close to Betty. Thought if I could just keep her with me, I could shield her or something. She’d be safe, but she heard one of her patients couldn’t be moved and decided to head back to the tents to help with him.” Calvin paused as the memory of what happened slammed into him. He’d never forget that day. The chaos surrounding them as they raced to move the wounded. He remembered her smile as she reassured him, she would be okay. The quick kiss she gave him before she ran back toward the tents. I’ll be right back. Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.
“She shouldn’t have been there,” anger tinged Calvin’s voice. “I shouldn’t have let her go alone.” He slapped a hand to his chest. “Germans hit more than thirty of those damned red crosses. Destroyed the hospital. Killed them all.” The guilt he carried from that day pressed so heavily on his chest. There were weeks afterward he felt he couldn’t breathe. “I wasn’t with her when she got hit. So much for shielding her, right?” Calvin lifted his glasses and rubbed a hand over his eyes hoping to erase the images forever etched in his mind. He straightened his glasses and gave Raisa a hard stare. “Never saw her before they shipped her out. Never said goodbye. Got news she died a week later. Five other nurses were killed along with her. None of them should have been there.”
Raisa’s eyes were wide. “Calvin, I’m sorry.”
“I was supposed to protect her.” Guilt still washed over him. He was back on his feet with a powerful need to keep moving. As if he could somehow outrun it. He pushed past a silent Raisa and muttered, “I’ll take lead for a while.”
All the emotions he’s so carefully buried months ago continued to chase him. The muscle in his jaw threatened his back teeth. Part of him wanted to scream into the night. Put his fist through a tree. But if he succumbed to those feelings again, and lost control, there was no promise he could pull himself out of the darkness that always followed. He pressed on as if trying to escape it all, shoving through the tangle of brush.
Raisa’s voice reached out to him like a lifeline. “You could not have protected her, Calvin. You must realize. Had you been with her, you would both be dead now.”
“There are days I think it would have been better.”
Her hand grabbed at the back of his coat, stopping him. “Don’t say that.” Raisa turned him to face her. She held his gaze in the soft light of the moon. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Never say that.” She clutched at his sleeve. “Think of how many soldiers you did save. How many you’ve saved since then.”
Calvin gave a slow shake to his head. “But I didn’t love any of them.”
CHAPTER 11
Calvin pulled out of her grasp and kept walking. Raisa could feel his pain radiating from him. It hit her hard in the chest. His footsteps faded into the dark, and after a stunned moment, she needed to hurry to catch up to him, all the while searching for the words to comfort him.
Following his wide shoulders, she understood now. It hadn’t been a sense of superiority stroking his strong feelings. It had been the crippling weight of guilt. If anyone could understand such guilt it was her. With Oksana and Polina before her, Raisa understood the burden of that kind of weight. It could drag you into an abyss.
He had to know he couldn’t have prevented what happened. It wasn’t his fault his Betty had gone back. It sounded as if she were as noble and sacrificing as he. Raisa understood his love for her. Together, they would have made an imposing pair.
Even after a year, the grief of losing her was still raw for him. She heard it in his voice. Raisa tried to put herself in his boots. Had she ever felt such a love? Her relationship with Nikolai had been more of an expectation than an actual courtship. Their fathers had cajoled and pushed them together since they were small children. They were well matched but in love? No. Friends, yes, and it had always been her hope had they married the liking one another could perhaps bloom into loving one another. Perhaps that is why his sudden rejection of her hadn’t been as painful as everyone believed.
