There was a brief hesitation as John reached for the doorknob. This was his own home, yet he felt like a stranger. Unwelcome. Trespassing.
It had been that way since he had returned from Berlin. Helen hadn't come to meet him at the airport. Instead, it had been his Sturmbannführer, Erich Raeder, who had met him with a car and taken him back and dropped him outside his home.
It had been hard then - the hardest thing he'd ever done - to walk up to his house, open his door, and face his shattered family. Even now, almost a month since he had returned, it was still difficult. The empty halls, once filled with Thomas's laughter, were a constant reminder of what they had lost. The move would be good for them, John tried to convince himself as he stared at the empty boxes lining the halls. It would help them move forward.
Maybe he would no longer feel like an outsider in his own home.
Estranged from his family.
From his wife.
Yet the moment he walked through the door he felt that immeasurable void swallow him up, and he feared the distance between them could never be bridged. The life they'd had was gone. Things would never again be the way they were before. They couldn't be. Not with Thomas's death hanging over them.
With a deep breath, John called out as normal and cheery as he could muster, "Helen, I'm home."
No answer followed. He made his way through the rooms in search of Helen. The house was was exactly as he had left it when he had gone to work that morning: Breakfast dishes dirty in the sink, laundry waiting to be done beside the machine. He'd offered to hire help, but Helen had been vehemently opposed to the idea. Next time he would just go ahead and do it. It was after all his job to take care of his wife.
That's why he'd let Kayleigh go. Because while he had a duty to the state to eradicate the resistance threat, he also had a duty to protect his family and nothing - not Himmler, not the Reich, not anything - was going to get in the way of that. He'd seen the films and he knew that somehow that woman was key to their safety. Things could never be the way they were before, he knew that, but they could stop being afraid. Helen, the girls, he could keep them-
"Helen…" John stammered. His voice had never before sounded so small and shaky.
Helen sat slumped over in a chair, her back to him. Motionless.
"Helen," John repeated firmly.
Her back still to him, Helen replied not with her words, but with a strangled noise somewhere between a grunt and a sob.
A sigh of relief escaped John's lips. For a moment he had feared for the worst. "Oh Helen," he cooed softly as he rushed over to her. There was an empty bottle of wine next to her glass on the side table.
Helen swatted him away. "Don't," she warned.
Gripping her firmly by the shoulders, John studied her slack expression and glazed eyes. "What else have you taken?" he demanded.
Helen stood and wrested free of his grasp. "Don't touch me," she slurred. "Don't pretend. Don't-"
"I'm calling a doctor."
Helen snorted. "And tell me, John, what would they do with me? This is the Reich! You know that as well as I do."
She was right, of course. "I'll tell them it was a mistake. You had too much to drink. You didn't-"
"It wasn't a mistake, John."
The muscles in his face twitched. "Listen to me Helen. It was. It-" He swallowed hard. It had to be.
Helen shook her head. "You have an answer for everything don't you?" she said. "Everything, except our son. He's dead, John. Dead. Because of you."
For a brief moment John closed his eyes. Those words never ceased to hurt in the deepest way, tearing him down to the very core. The truth of course, always hurt the most. "Helen please," he begged.
An insolent snort was the reply he was granted.
"How many pills did you take?" John asked frankly.
Helen shrugged. "A couple, I don't know." She shifted uncomfortably under his unwavering gaze. "I wasn't trying to kill myself, John. I, I just… Every time I close my eyes I see them taking Thomas away. I needed to make it stop for a while, I-"
It was of course not the first time that Helen had self-medicated since Thomas's death, and it wasn't that John wasn't aware of it. He was. He was, but when it came to helping her he was at a loss. He felt completely and utterly useless and ineffective for the first time in a long time - perhaps since before the war. There was nothing he could say or do that was going to make this pain go away.
"Shh," John stroked her hair. "I love you. The girls love you." For a split second he thought he felt Helen's body give into his, but then she tensed again and pulled away from him.
"I can't do this," Helen admitted tearfully as she turned her back on him. "I can't, John, I'm sorry. I don't know how. I'm not like you. I can't just bury this and move on like, like nothing happened."
John sighed and watched his wife thoughtfully, his hazel-green eyes solemn. "I never meant for this to happen. You have to know that. Thomas, he…" this time it was his turn to choke up. It wasn't as if he didn't grieve his son - he did. Every single day since he'd received the news it felt like his whole world was torn asunder and it hurt in a way he'd never been able to imagine. Every single day it felt like he couldn't go on, but he had to. There was still Helen and the girls and someone had to.
Desperate to touch her, John took a step forward. Maybe, somehow, if he could just hold her he could convey all those things that he just couldn't say in words: how deeply he was hurting too, how much he loved her, how much he needed her. But Helen wrapped her arms tighter around herself and he stopped.
"If you'd never gone to Berlin," she accused.
John closed his eyes and exhaled softly. "If I hadn't gone to Berlin, we would be at war, Helen."
"So what."
"So what?"
This time Helen whirled around to face him and he noticed just how puffy and red her eyes were from days of crying. "You heard me," she replied. "So what! My sweet, sweet boy," she shook her head. "He'd still be here. He'd still be alive. If you hadn't gone to Berlin he never would have…" tears wracked her body again and John couldn't even dare to imagine how it had been for her watching their son walk out that door and turn himself in to the health authority.
"Helen, I'm sorry."
"Sorry isn't going to bring my boy back!" she spat.
"He was my son too," John reminded her quietly.
Helen made a "harrumph," and turned her back on him once more, staring blankly across the room as if by distancing him she could somehow keep her own despair at bay.
John lowered his head and sighed in defeat. Once again despite his efforts to reach Helen the gap between them only seemed to grow wider. He made his way upstairs, closing the bathroom door behind him. As he stared at himself in the mirror he had to brace his hands on the sink. The face that stared back at him was not the stoically calm one he projected to the rest of the world. It was a face of a man who was exhausted, grieving, and scared. He had needed Helen. He had needed to touch her and hold her. He had needed her to understand. But even though his wife was downstairs in the living room, he was more alone than he'd ever been.
As the days passed John only became more harried. Between the futile attempts to manage his own grief, the pressures of work, and sleepless nights watching over his wife he was clinging to the end of his own rope. Now, however, was not the time to fall apart. With his new position as Oberstgruppenführer any sign of weakness would be an opportunity for his opponents to strike - putting both him and his family at risk.
A knock at the office door startled him out of his thoughts. "Yes?"
Lawrence Klemm opened the door and entered, clicking his heels and gave John the Nazi salute. "Sturmbannführer Raeder on line one," he informed him.
John nodded and Lawrence exited the office.
"Erich," John greeted once he had transferred the call over to a secure line where they would not be eavesdropped upon. "What news?"
"I'm afraid not much, Oberstgruppenführer."
John raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"I have bugged Miss Lane's apartment and been monitoring her as you instructed, but so far she has done nothing suspicious," Erich explained. "She gets up in the morning, goes for a run through the park, returns home, has a shower and eats breakfast then she watches TV or reads a book. Every day the same."
"On these runs, does she stop anywhere? Talk to anyone?" John asked.
"No, Oberstgruppenführer."
"Hmm," John pondered this. "You're certain?"
"I am certain," Erich confirmed. "I follow her myself."
"And at her apartment is there anyone else? Does she get any visitors?" John had no doubt that Kayleigh Lane worked for the resistance after their encounter at the bar. They were missing something.
"No, Oberstgruppenführer."
"What about a husband? Or boyfriend?"
"No one that I have seen."
John mulled this over for a moment. "And she is home every day? No job?"
"That's correct."
"Do you not think that is strange?" John asked. Erich stammered on the other end of the line unsure how to respond, and he added, "No husband, no boyfriend, no job - how do you suppose she pays for the apartment?"
"I- I don't know."
"Keep following her, Erich. Do you understand? Figure out what she does and who she reports to."
"I will. Seig heil, Sir."
"Seig heil, Erich." John hung up the secureline and stared intently at the picture of his family that sat on his desk. Whatever Kayleigh was up to, it was important he find out. Their lives might depend upon it.
There was however little more he could do at the moment, so John turned his attention to more other matters. There were orders on his desk calling him back to Berlin. He only had a few days before he was scheduled to depart, and who knew how long he would be required to remain in the capitol this time. That left several open issues he needed to deal with: a rising subversive group spreading anti-Reich propaganda through the New York underground, Kayleigh Lane, and making sure that Helen would be alright in his absence.
Only one of those issues he was sure how to deal with.
John rose to his feet and strode out the door. "Major Klemm, I will be returning shortly. Have two of my men ready in plain clothes. We are going undercover to stake out the semites who are attacking the Reich with their lies."
"Of course, Oberstgruppenführer." Lawrence nodded.
John made his way downstairs and exited the building. At least going after the group of subversives would give him something to do, something he could be effective at, rather than aimlessly waiting for news from Erich regarding Kayleigh and helplessly watching as his wife struggled with her grief.
"Oberstgruppenführer John Smith."
The slow, deliberate words caught him off guard, but John didn't miss a beat as he turned smoothly toward the voice. "Miss Lane." He greeted tersely, trying not to let Kayleigh see how unsettled her sudden and unexpected appearance made him feel.
Kayleigh rose from the bench where she was sitting and took a few steps towards him with a confidence unbefitting her situation. After all, she was a resistance operative and he was the leader of the American SS.
"What are you doing here?" John asked. Erich was supposed to have been monitoring her. How the woman had gotten past his Sturmbannführer and gotten to him was beyond John, but that was a matter for another time. He would deal with Erich later.
"I want you to call off your surveillance," Kayleigh stated. The absurdity of her making demands of him was not lost on John. She was there alone, one little woman whom he could squash one-handed. There was nothing stopping him from arresting her or having her killed.
Except the films.
But she couldn't know about that. Could she?
John feigned innocence. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
"You think I don't recognize your little lap dog?" Kayleigh growled with a ferocity that did not match her stature. "I mean, he's practically the poster boy for the Aryan race and besides I saw him at the bar. Are you that understaffed that you had no one else you could send to spy on me?"
Of course it had nothing to do with staffing. This was a personal matter, and Erich was the only one John trusted not to betray him. Not that he would ever admit that to her, or to anyone.
"I have a job to do," Kayleigh complained when he did not respond. "And I can't do it with him breathing down my neck."
"Oh," John replied, one eyebrow raised inquisitively. "And what job is that?"
Kayleigh shot him a look. "Killing Nazis," she replied without missing a beat.
An elderly woman who was passing by overheard and practically choked over the words. John, still dressed in full uniform gave the woman a reassuring smile as he grabbed Kayleigh roughly by the arm and hauled her aside. "I could have you arrested," he warned as he forced her to walk with him to gain some distance from prying ears. "You should be more careful what you say, because if the wrong person were to overhear-"
"So you're not the wrong person?"
John exhaled sharply. That wasn't what he had meant. He should have had her executed at the bar - he knew that - just like he should arrest her now. It is what would be expected of him in his position. But he hadn't and he didn't, and now here she was, head cocked slightly to the side, chestnut hair hanging down staring at him with those brown eyes and that smile that he recognized so well from the films and he knew damn well that he wasn't going to anything other than let her walk.
Which is exactly what she did.