If the rate at which the food disappeared was any indication, the party was a success. Delphine’s pride was uncontained as she watched her mother’s Ratatouille disappear in first—and then second—helpings. Hot dogs were a thing of the past, though most of the guests had opted for the less dangerous versions.

  “It’s like eating a sad in a bun,” Maggie had said after experiencing a Chicago style hot dog. “With a sausage hidden underneath.”

  “I remember standing at a counter at Wrigley Field and hearing someone order a vegetarian Chicago style hot dog,” Aric expined. “When I asked her what that was she said, everything except the hot dog.”

  “Does Chicago have its own version of anything else?” Peter asked as he sipped his wine.

  “Chicago deep dish pizza,” Aric said as he nodded.

  “That’s not pizza,” Carol protested. She was a purest, and only accepted New York style pizza as being the real deal, “that’s focaccia.”

  Owing to the ck of Chicago natives at the party, the argument—which might have led to fisticuffs otherwise—ended there.

  Maggie had eventually found an equilibrium that allowed her to look at Ed occasionally and not feel dizzy. Her daughter’s comfort with her father in his present state helped, as did his youthful colleagues’ casual acceptance of Ed’s younger appearance.

  “What sort of accident was it, exactly?” Margaret Hardwick had asked one of the men—not the beautiful one, one of the others whose name she couldn’t remember.

  “It’s hard to expin,” the man had replied—as far as she could understand through his prominent Welsh accent. “We still don’t understand it.”

  “You said he’d had an accident. That he was disfigured,” she’d scolded her daughter in hushed tones.

  “I never said disfigured. I just said you needed to be prepared.”

  “You should have told me what to be prepared for.”

  “You’d have thought I was crazy.”

  Maggie had to admit that Roz was probably right on that point, but still—

  “How did you and Ed meet?” Edith asked her, interrupting her train of thought. She’d meant it as an icebreaker—a simple question that should have had a simple answer.

  The answer was not simple.

  Maggie seemed embarrassed for a moment. Roz had heard the story many times, and as far as she knew there was nothing to cause her mother to look so hesitant.

  “They grew up together in Newcastle,” Roz started off, the familiar beginning that she knew so well.

  “I actually grew up with Ed’s sister Mabel,” Maggie said. It was the first deviation Roz had ever heard in the story.

  “Aunt Mabel?” Roz asked, puzzled. Her father’s sister was three years older than he was. “How could you grow up with her? She’s older than you are.”

  “Mabel and I are the same age, dear,” Maggie replied shyly. “We were born the same year.”

  Roz was confused, and it showed on her face. “But you and dad were born the same year.”

  Her father was suddenly at her side. He might have been there for a while and she hadn’t noticed.

  “No. I’m three years older than your father. We thought it would be easier if everyone thought we were the same age. People wouldn’t understand why your father married someone so much older than he was.”

  “But three years is nothing,” Roz argued.

  “Not then it wasn’t,” Ed expined. “Not where we grew up.”

  “But you liked each other anyway. You started dating.”

  She could see the pain on her mother’s face. She didn’t understand. She heard the story a dozen times.

  “I started dating Ed’s brother Henry,” Maggie said as Peter took her hand. Edith looked at the older woman’s face, which was calm, but strained.

  I’m sorry I asked, Edith thought.

  There was a picture of him in her dad’s house. Uncle Henry in uniform. He was young, happy. And at the time still alive.

  “Uncle Henry who died in the war?”

  Maggie simply nodded. “He was older than me. We dated, fell in love. We pnned to get married. He volunteered for the Navy when the war broke out. I volunteered for the WRENS.”

  Roz’s brain felt like it was on fire. All her life she’d been told one thing—and in an instant, that version of reality was gone. Her mother’s first love hadn’t been her father. It had been someone Roz had never met in person, only in stories. Stories she now realized were incomplete.

  “We’re a Navy family, Maggie’s too,” Ed expined to Edith. “Maggie and I both lost uncles during the Great War. Both Royal Navy. It was the most natural thing that Henry and I would join the Navy, and that Maggie would become a WREN.”

  “It was terrible, but it was also exciting,” Maggie said. “Everyone our age was joining up, Navy or WRENS.”

  “Teddy Russell joined the Army. As far as I remember, he was the only one. Got a commission through OCT after basic training.”

  None of this was familiar to Roz. It was like she was hearing a completely different version of a familiar nursery rhyme.

  “But—” she said just as the doorbell rang followed by a rapid knock.

  He’d thought he’d imagined it, but more than one head turned at the sound.

  “Wonder who that is?” Ed asked. Everyone he’d invited was present, had been for hours.

  “You should go and see,” Maggie said, happy for the reprieve. “We’ll wait for you to get back.”

  The road was crowded with cars. Tess had to park halfway to the roundabout and walk back. Even from a distance she saw that Ed Martell was hosting a celebration of some kind. She looked down at her mud stained pants and boots, and her shirt sleeves that were rolled to her elbows, her armpits damp from sweat and worry. Her hair had looked wild in the brief gnce she caught in her rear view mirror. But none of that was important. She would crawl naked across broken gss if that’s what it took to get Evie her miracle.

  The walk back to Ed Martell’s house gave her time to rehearse yet again what she would say.

  Dr. Martell, you won’t remember me. My name is Teresa Moreno. I’m a member of the governing council of the university. I was present for your demonstration on the roof of Senate House. I’m here to plead for the life of my best friend.

  She’d seen him on campus a few times after that. For some reason, standing on the roof that rainy afternoon, she’d thought he was much older. Certainly older than she was. He started teaching at the university in 1961. Either he’d been a child prodigy or he was older than he looked. Either way she would do whatever he asked, pay any price he required, if it meant helping Evie.

  She stopped at the front door. The noise from the back yard was loud enough that she wasn’t sure they would hear the doorbell above their merriment and the sounds of Miles Davis. She pressed the button twice and then added a series of knocks on the door.

  Ed Martell opened the door to the vision of a mud and sweat stained woman with wild hair and wide eyes. She looked vaguely familiar.

  “Can I hel—”

  “Dr. Martell, you won’t remember me. My name is Teresa Moreno. I’m part of— I’m a member of the governing council at the university.”

  That’s where I know her from.

  “I was there when— I was present for your demonstration on the roof of Senate House. I’m here to beg— to plead— for the life of my best friend.”

  It sounded like something someone would say before a judge as they pleaded for leniency. He didn’t understand what was happening, but whatever it was, his front step was not the proper pce for it.

  “Why don’t you come inside,” he said before his nose caught a whiff of horse manure.

  The study was neat as a pin. Roz’s notes and typed sheets stacked in separate piles, held down by a pair of paperweights that Ed had been using as bookends. The smaller room quickly filled with the barnyard smell that had accompanied this woman—who had herself been as neat as a pin, though somewhat moist when Ed had seen her st—indoors. Ed was seated on the cushion that Roz used to soften the wooden chair on which she sat many hours each day typing. The chair that Teresa Moreno occupied—or at least the cushions—would need professional cleaning after her visit.

  She had gotten through her well rehearsed request with only occasional stumbles. She’d expined the situation as clearly as possible.

  “She can’t lie down. Not anymore. Not for a while now. At first her vet thought it was a back or hip injury. But it wasn’t. He couldn’t find anything. He even called in a colleague from the Royal Veterinary College. Same result. But something is wrong. She’s losing weight. She keeps falling over when she sleeps—because she won’t lie down. She’s dying right in front of me, and I can’t stop it.”

  Ed knew nothing about horses besides where not to stand to avoid being kicked or bitten. But he knew she was not asking him to help. The fact that she’d mentioned the roof of Senate House told him everything he needed to know. But he needed her to say it.

  “Miss Moreno, I am very sorry—for you and your horse. How can I help you?”

  “The man from the roof. From that day. He’s the one who’s been healing all those people, isn’t he? Curing cancer. Fixing damaged hearts and broken bones. He healed an entire family that should have died in a car accident. That was him wasn’t it?”

  Ed Martell had never sat in his living room while a conversation took pce in his study. He had no idea how good or bad his walls were at blocking sound. Sure, he could hear Roz’s typing from his front yard. But aside from that he didn’t have a clue. So he could be forgiven for not knowing that every word of his conversation was audible to his daughter and ex wife as they sat motionless, their ears riveted to every word that was being uttered.

  “Yes. That was him. It’s one of his gifts. Healing injury or illness. And as far as I know in all his attempts he has never failed.”

  She had been holding on as tightly as humanly possible. The sounds of happy, merry people—seemingly without a care in the world—continued a short distance from the somber pair who sat in the study. Each roar of ughter felt like a dagger in Tess’s heart. How could the world continue to revolve—how could anyone still be happy—while she was enduring the unendurable. Finally, it all became too much. And as she broke down, and her breathing became gasping—sobbing—she made one st plea.

  “Please. Please help her.”

  Ed swallowed the knot in his throat before simply nodding. He reached over and put his arms around the crying woman and let her racking sobs beat against his chest. When she found her composure again he stood and opened the study door. He wasn’t surprised to see Roz and Maggie seated together, but he had no idea they’d heard everything.

  “Would you ask Aric to come in, please? he asked his daughter quietly.

  Aric and Teresa were away. Ed returned to the living room and sat down next to Roz. Both women were looking at him like they were seeing him for the first time.

  “What?” he asked.

  “We could hear you talking,” Roz said gently, afraid he might be mad. “In the study. We could hear your voices coming through the vent.”

  Ed’s eyes went to the small metal grating on the wall that the living room shared with the study. It was, after all, a small house.

  Roz had already heard as much. But Maggie—

  “You can’t speak a word of this. It’s not just me. Aric’s life could be in jeopardy if anyone found out.”

  It was a lie. Neither of them had seen Aric in full bloom. Ed was still not sure that he had. But they were all certain that he was tapping into unlimited energy, maniputing forces that could crack the pnet like an egg. He pitied anyone who tried to hurt Aric or anyone he cared about.

  But if it kept them quiet about what they’d heard, then the lie was worth it.

  Maggie had had too many shocks in close succession. She’d only just begun to come to terms with the man seated next to her being so much younger. Now she thought she knew how it had come about, but that knowledge had left its own mark on her, and the dizziness—that had only just departed—was now back.

  “I won’t breathe a word to anyone. Who would I tell that wouldn’t try to have me committed?”

  Ed smiled. “It’s not an uncommon conclusion to reach.”

  Roz’s mind was also reeling. But she had something else she wanted to discuss.

  “So,” she said, pausing for almost ten seconds before continuing, “you and Uncle Henry.”

  “God,” Maggie said as she pced her face in her hands. “I’d forgotten...yes, me and Henry—Henry and I—where did we leave off?”

  “He was the one you dated. He was the one you loved.”

  Maggie’s face grew wistful as she remembered the man whose photo hung on the wall a short distance from them. She’d stared at it for a few minutes after arriving, silently asking it what had happened to his younger brother.

  “We were going to get married the next time he was home. But his ship was torpedoed at Dunkirk, and everyone aboard was lost.”

  She could speak of it without pain now, though that hadn’t always been true.

  “I was at sea when it happened,” Ed said. “And for the year afterward. Mabel said for the first six months my father wouldn’t speak his name. All the photos of him were put away, though my mother would take them out and look at them when my father wasn’t around.”

  Maggie nodded in agreement. “I visited them a few times, to grieve with them. To talk about Henry. But his father wouldn’t allow it. Mabel and I would talk, but not at her house.”

  The sounds of celebration continued outside. As far as Ed could tell there was plenty left to drink, and still hamburgers and chicken cooking on the grill. In Aric’s absence Alex had taken over tending the charcoal and cooking duties. Ruth made a brief appearance to check on Ed. Everyone else seemed oblivious to the stark difference in atmosphere inside versus out.

  “Your grandfather was of the old generation. When his brother William died at the Battle of Jutnd he took it hard, they all did. And they reacted the same way. Didn’t speak William’s name. It was too painful.”

  A burst of ughter emerged through the patio door as it opened, letting in the smell of burning charcoal and roasting chicken. Hank’s date Amy’s smile disappeared in an instant when she saw the three somber faces in the living room. Her silent quizzical face drew a smile from Ed.

  “Down the hall, first door on the right.”

  Roz realized she was still holding a gss of white wine in her hand, and had been the entire time. The French woman who’d brought four bottles of Clos de Durance — Bnc de Garde — had almost bitten her head off during their st meeting, and after hearing her father’s—and then Aric’s—conversation with the woman who’d tracked horse shit into her borrowed home, Roz was closer to understanding why.

  “We were isnds of grief,” her mother continued, “when we should have come together—helped each other. But back then—people didn’t go to therapy sessions. There were no support groups to help us, not like there are today. There’d have been no point. We were expected to just get on with it. I got two days’ leave after the news, and then went right back to the plotting table. Uniform crisp and spotless. Shipshape and Bristol fashion. Death was no excuse.”

  “Everyone lost someone,” Ed said before sipping from his gss. “And the war was still raging. We knew we’d lose more. But we put off grieving until the war was over.”

  “Then when Ed survived, when he came home, both our families expected that he would take Henry’s pce,” Maggie said as she looked directly at her ex-husband. Not off to one side. Not at his chest. At his young face, and his bright eyes. His dark hair that had grown thicker. She remembered the man she’d stood next to at the altar. The one she’d barely known past being the middle brother of the Martell cn. Ed fshed her a brief smile, just like he’d done on that day in 1946. Ed looked enough like his older brother that she could convince herself it was Henry standing with her. For a short time at least.

  Roz felt something squeeze her chest as her mother described repcing one Martell son with another. Married in ’46. New daughter in ’47. Divorced in ’50. Married again in ’53.

  All this time she’d thought it was something she’d done. Her young mind could not have understood the complexity of the husband/wife retionship, even one as happy as Mum and Peter’s. Even now, at the ripe old age of 34, she was still not capable of understanding what had driven her parents together and then—barely four years ter—apart. As if he’d been reading her thoughts, her father spoke.

  “We were never meant to be together, me and your mum. She was always meant for Henry, as he was meant for her. We tried. We didn’t love each other, not like they did, but we tried. Because that’s what was expected of us. But we were doomed from the start. It was never going to st.”

  The memories of Henry—their time together, their hopes and dreams, his death—had burned the dizziness from her brain, just as time had erased most—if not all—of the pain of those memories.

  “We didn’t have the luxury of grief at the time. It was 1940. We were fighting for our lives. The Yanks were still sitting on the fence. We didn’t know if we’d survive as a nation. Afterward, well...it’s an old tradition. Biblical. Nowadays people would scoff at the idea. But not then. Not in Newcastle.”

  Roz sat motionless, stunned — grieving in her own quiet way.

  “So you two should never have gotten married.”

  Ed leaned over and kissed his daughter on the forehead.

  “We should have gotten married. It gave us you. Whatever else came out of it—the good times, and there were a few of those, and the bad—you’re the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  Maggie looked at him and smirked.

  “Fine. I might change one or two things.”

  Maggie shook her head, a smile pying at the corners of her mouth.

  Ed ughed. “You really hated that wallpaper, didn’t you?”