Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“It’s a cinch that any land you buy there will go up in value.”

“Except I think she wants to build the house for herself. I don’t think she wants me out there. I embarrass her.”

I couldn’t meet his eyes. “How could anybody be embarrassed by you? You were at Kasserine and Salerno and Omaha and Saint-Lô and the Bulge. Don’t talk about yourself like that, Hersh.”

“She just got back from Los Angeles. I made dinner reservations for us at the San Jacinto Inn. I filled up our bedroom with flowers. She told me she had a stomachache. Then told me it was her time of the month.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“There’s something else I got to tell you. A guy from a wire service called me. He asked if Linda Gail and I were friends with a Communist by the name of Rosita Holland.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said if he was calling Rosita a Communist, he was a damn liar. I’m correct on that, right? Rosita was never a Communist?”

“Would you feel differently toward her?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not a good answer.”

“Maybe her family was. That doesn’t mean she is,” he said.

“What if I said she was?”

“Then she wouldn’t be Rosita. Why are you talking to me like this, Weldon?”

“Because she’s my wife. Because people are trying to hurt her, and my friends are either behind her or they aren’t, no matter what her politics were.”

He sat down on the side of the bed. He was in his socks and undershirt, and there was a V-shaped area of tan below his neck. The top of his forehead was pale above his hat line, and the effect made him look older than he was. There was a strange cast to his face, like that of a man who had seen into the future and realized the Fates had perpetrated a terrible fraud. He picked up the .45 from his stack of shirts and opened the drawer on the nightstand and placed the .45 on top of the Gideons Bible inside the drawer. “I had a peculiar experience today,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“I was looking at one of our welding machines. I saw a swastika inside the frame. It was like the Krauts were telling us they were still with us, they weren’t going to forget.”

“Forget what?”

/> “That we made our money off their invention. That we owe them. That maybe we weren’t supposed to come home.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“Linda Gail is in the sack with another man,” he said.

“Sometimes we have to let things run their course. That’s a tough lesson, but it’s the way it is.”

I could see his face darken, his restraint beginning to slip. “What would you do if it was your wife?” he asked.

“Leave my wife out of it.”

“I thought you might say that,” he replied, his jawbone flexing.

“I’m worried about you, partner.”

“Don’t.” He closed the drawer hard, with the heel of his hand.

“You shouldn’t take your anger out on the wrong people,” I said.

“Is Rosita a Communist?”