... aaand it's been another two months since my last upload. I have lost all sense of time at this point, to be honest. This chapter has been sitting around mostly finished on my laptop for a good three weeks, but I couldn't get around to posting it. But now I'm bunkered down in the coolest room in the house to try and avoid melting in this heat wave (38 °C in the shade today...) and I'm too sleep-deprived to do anything else, so here we are.
I hope you like this chapter, writing it has been challenging but also fun and I'm looking forward to further exploring Frances' journey after the war. One thing's for certain: it won't all be smooth sailing for her...
Before we get back to the story, I'd just like to thank you all for reading this fic and sharing your thoughts and comments. Your reviews and reactions mean the world to me. I'm still so excited to see how much you folks like the story and the characters.
Frances had been home for a full week when the news broke. She was setting the table for breakfast, the radio playing in the background, when the partial phrases "Germany has surrendered" and "victory in Europe" caught her attention.
Her brain stalled for a moment as it parsed the meaning of those words.
Germany surrendered.
Victory in Europe.
The glass she'd been holding slipped from her suddenly numb fingers and shattered on the floor. The rolling tinkle of shards set her teeth on edge. "Ah shit."
"Frances? Is everything okay?", Aunt Lola called from the kitchen. "Did I hear something smash?"
She flexed her fingers. They tingled. "Uh, I dropped a glass", she replied, awkwardly bending down to begin picking up the broken pieces.
Her father came rushing in from the living room, eyes wide with alarm. "What happened? I heard a crash."
"Careful, there's glass everywhere."
"Oh! Are you alright, sweetheart? Did you trip? Is it your leg?"
Frances sighed. She'd expected some fussing and hovering, had known her family would worry and fret the minute she had written them that she'd been wounded bad enough to be shipped home. But she really hoped they'd soon stop treating her like she was fragile.
"It's fine", she began, hoping her voice didn't sound as tight to him as it did to her own ears. He meant well, after all.
She was saved from saying more by her twin brother bursting through the front door, brandishing the newspaper and hollering at the top of his lungs about the war in Europe being over.
.
Halfway through Andrew reading the front-page article out loud, she went back to gathering the shards. The article's talk about glory reminded her of another time she'd listened to a speech about gallantry and the privilege of fighting, and it left a curdled taste in her mouth. Limping to the kitchen to fetch dustpan and brush, she made quick work of sweeping the floor.
"Isn't that wonderful, sweetheart?", her father asked.
She looked up, jarred out of her thoughts. "Huh? What is?" Dustpan full of shards in hand, she straightened.
"The soldiers that have been in action longest are gonna be sent home first", Andrew supplied. His beaming grin turns even wider when he adds: "Your friends are coming home soon!"
His sincere enthusiasm pulled a laugh out of her. Hope stirred inside her, but she was hesitant to give in to it. "That's great news", she said, going back to the kitchen to throw the debris away. "I wou– I'm glad."
It sounded lame and she sensed a flicker of confusion from Andrew, but it was better than giving voice to the thought that had crossed her mind. I wouldn't count on it, though. Wouldn't be the first promise the brass didn't keep.
"You should rest your leg, Frances." Her father came over to usher her out of the now crowded kitchen, making Aunt Lola shake a spatula at him. "Come sit down."
She shrugged him off, but sat down, snatching the paper when her brother ran upstairs to call Uncle Archie to the table and asking herself what was wrong with her that she couldn't share her family's excitement over what was arguably the best news she'd heard in months.
Absent-mindedly, she stirred sugar into her coffee, skimming through the rest of the paper. The casualty lists featured no names she was familiar with and the knot in her chest loosened a fraction. She barely listened as Aunt Lola scolded Dad and Uncle Archie not to talk about politics at the breakfast table – "There's enough time in the day for such nonsense, let me enjoy my coffee in peace" –, focusing on mixing the perfect amount of honey into her oatmeal. At least Aunt Lola hadn't tried to pile eggs and bacon and sausage onto her plate like the last few mornings, insisting that she needed fattening up.
Flipping back to the lead article, Frances automatically started eating while she read.
She promptly burned her tongue on the first spoonful.
By the time noon rolled around, it seemed like the entire city was out in the streets celebrating and Frances didn't know how to feel. People hauled tables and chairs outside, food and drinks were quickly organised and served for the impromptu festival. Musicians brought out their instruments and within an hour, the whole neighbourhood was dancing and singing, laughing and eating. Frances sat off to the side on the low wall around the Ketterley's front lawn, cigarette between her lips, watching the festivities.
Andrew was dancing, handing Kitty Friedman over to Linus Ricketts before asking Amelia Montalban for a dance with a flourish. Uncle Archie of course was entertaining a gaggle of kids with various tricks and illusions. Aunt Lola bustled out of the house with pitchers of lemonade and iced tea. Dad was talking to various neighbours, though he kept shooting her glances every few minutes, which she ignored.
She exhaled a stream of silver smoke, wondering if that mortar explosion had broken something in her brain. She should be happy, right? In fact, she should be thrilled. The war in Europe was over, officially. No more fighting, no more death. No more of her friends risking and losing life and limb day in, day out. And yet, while she was happy, relieved and glad, there was a ton of other emotions bubbling and fizzing inside her chest that she struggled to make sense of.
.
Old Duke came lumbering over, two bottles of beer in hand, and lowered himself down next to her with little more than a nod in greeting. He handed her one of the beers, then let his eyes sweep over the happy crowd.
"You're not celebrating."
She shrugged, took a sip of beer. "Couple of months ago, I would've been right in the middle of all those dancers."
"And now? Looking at you, one might just think you're not happy the war's over."
She frowned. "I am. But I've been away from the fighting for months." Most of her scars were hidden under her clothes, only three gnarled lines visible through the stockings, two around her knee and the long jagged one winding up her calf.
"You didn't walk away from the war", the grizzled WWI veteran pointed out, his scrutinising gaze a gentling contrast to the blunt words.
"No, a faulty mortar shell blasted me out of it. Literally."
"Exactly. You were off the battlefield, but you were still fighting. It was simply a different fight then."
Flicking the burnt-out cigarette butt away, Frances shifted to shoot him an incredulous look. "I was lying in a hospital bed, Duke", she reminded him, "with a leg so busted they had to put in a metal plate and pins. And to top it off, I got an infection which then gave me blood poisoning and for a while, the doctors thought they wouldn't be able to save my leg."
Unbothered by the sharpness in her tone, he raised the beer to his lips and replied: "Like I said, fighting a different fight."
A scoff blew out of her nose, her nostrils flaring. Heat flushed into her cheeks and acid burned in her chest. Her fingers tightened around the bottle in her hand, a drop of condensation leaving a tickling trail as it slid down the base of her palm. "Tell that to my friends somewhere in Germany who will be there for God knows how much longer. Probably until command finds a new way to screw them over."
Old Duke regarded her steadily, brows arched a fraction in the face of her biting response. The anger drained out of her as quickly as it had come, and she ducked her head. "Sorry."
Brushing it off with a shrug, he offered lightly: "Bitterness is not a good look on you, Frances."
"I know", she sighed, a rueful laugh mixing into her voice.
.
Relaxing her grip on the bottle, she started picking at the label, watching Andrew and Linus escort Amelia and Kitty to the food-laden tables where they sat down next to the middle-aged housemates Mr Fenwick and Mr O'Donnell from a few houses up the road. Aunt Lola was talking to Mrs Pembrooke who was fixing a ribbon in the long blond hair of her youngest daughter. The girl was 4 years old already, so much bigger than the squealing toddler Frances had babysat when the Pembrookes had just moved to the neighbourhood, less than a year before she'd left for basic training.
Everywhere she looked, life had gone on while she'd been away. On the surface, the neighbourhood and the community were the same as ever, and yet they had changed. Children had grown, teens had turned into adults. People had moved in, moved away, finished school, gotten or lost or changed jobs. Couples had become families or had broken up. Births, deaths, marriages. New houses had been built, existing ones remodelled, refurbished. It was disorienting.
"I feel lost, you know?", she admitted softly. "In the hospital, at least I still had Maxine who understood. We were in the same platoon from the beginning, we've seen and survived the same stuff..." She trailed off with a vague gesture, got herself back on track. "But here? I know things haven't been easy here either, but I don't know, I haven't experienced it. And folks here know war is bloody and miserable and lots of people die and get hurt, but– they don't understand what my life has been the last three years and the other way round."
He gave a pensive hum. "And now you feel out of place, huh? Like an outsider?"
His empathy grounded her. Like when her boots had touched the ground after a jump, right before she would roll to absorb the momentum.
"Yeah." Abandoning her quest to pry the label off the bottle, she took a swig, tasting the tickle of alcohol against the back of her palate.
Her admission sat between them. Duke nodded, more to himself than anything else. "Well, I haven't been through the same things as you have, but I know what war is like, so if you ever want to talk about it, or have a drink, play cards and not talk about it…" A crooked grin crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Door's always open."
She smiled, the first smile of the day that she fully felt. "Thank you."
"Of course. Now, how about we grab ourselves some of Mrs Ketterley's phenomenal pie?"
.
Each carrying a plate of blueberry pie, they claimed a pair of empty seats. Andrew leaned over to squeeze his sister's hand. She squeezed back, silent communication passing between them in one single moment, and he went back to chatting with Amelia.
Frances picked up a fork and eagerly tucked into her slice of pie. "Say, I've been wondering", she spoke up between two bites, "did you get your nickname in the Army?"
"I did. A buddy of mine, Eddie Van Garrett, called me 'Drippy Duke' back in basic training after Samuel Matheson broke my nose." He shook his head with a chuckle, gesturing at his face. "Blood everywhere…"
She winced in sympathy.
"They mostly dropped the 'Drippy' part afterwards because it really is a mouthful, but everyone started calling me 'Duke'. As for the 'Old' part… well I think that one's pretty obvious."
"Oh come on, you're not that old."
He gave a look. "I was already grown up when you were a knee-high little tyke, running around with your brother over there, stealing sweets and causing mischief."
The disadvantage of having moved to sit in the crowd instead of off to the side was that people started including her in conversations and inevitably, kids and adults alike eventually asked her about the war and requested stories. Frances deflected them all more or less graciously and excused herself to ask Andrew to dance with her as soon as possible.
"Be careful and don't overdo it!", their Dad called as they started moving to the cheerful but moderately paced tune.
She sighed and rolled her eyes, a gesture her brother inevitably caught.
"He's just worried, you know."
"He's treating me like glass, Andy", she huffed, leaving out a flashy transition from one figure to the next. "I know it frightened you all when I was wounded and it's only been a week since I've come home, but for Christ's sake, I'm not some fragile flower."
They spun around the pair next to them, switching partners for a few steps before they were paired up again.
Andrew took her hands, steadied her as they dipped and swayed. "You know how Dad is with change."
Not entirely appeased but unwilling to spoil everyone's mood by sticking to the topic – and her thoughts and feelings about this particular day too muddled –, Frances left it at a grudging nod and a sober "Guess we'll all need a bit more time to adjust".
Her brother hummed an affirmative, unfazed and serene, and a stray thought of I hope I can get that nonchalance back crossed her mind. "Bet you two bucks Aunt Lola's gonna give Dad a talking-to before the month's out."
"Bet you five I'll lose my temper first."
.
The song ended and changed to one with a much faster rhythm. The twins paid it no mind, drifting off to the side to continue dancing to a slower tune only they could feel. Even though they were in the midst of a crowd, for the first time in a week, it was just the two of them in their own little bubble. They basked in the comforting familiarity of each other's presence and quietly accepted that despite having changed and grown in different ways, they were still fundamentally them.
A tacit but no less heartfelt "I've missed you" passed between them in the span of a look and a blink.
Out loud, Frances said: "Thanks for not asking."
"You're not ready", he replied with a shrug, simple as that. As if he wasn't itching to know what she'd lived through, as if he didn't want to learn about this part of her life so he could understand better.
She smiled softly. "You'll be the first to know." It was less a promise than just a simple fact and they both knew it.
When they took a break from dancing, Frances went to fetch them a beer and Andrew dragged two chairs to the side where they had a good view of their impromptu neighbourhood orchestra and the dance floor.
Settling in, they toasted each other, then Frances looked up into the sky and thought of her friends an ocean away. Raising her bottle for a small salute, she whispered: "We did it, guys. Now you all come home safe, okay?"
Andrew tipped his head back and lifted his bottle as well. "Hey Mom, look out for them, yeah? For Frances."
He didn't say anything when he saw tears well up in his sister's eyes, just squeezed her hand and turned to watch Aunt Lola and Uncle Archie dance to an energetic swing.