Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

“Sure, Jack.”

“Well, it’s like this, Rio. I was wondering what you intend to do after this is all over.”

Rio shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Every day that passes I know less and less about the world later, after, that whole world . . . and I know more and more about this.” She indicates the room with a wave that widens to encompasses the whole war. “It’s like my head will only hold so much, and all of this has kind of shoved all of that other stuff out of my brain.”

“I suppose what I really mean is . . .” He draws a deep breath. “. . . whether you plan on marrying that pilot.”

Rio’s eyes have closed, and she pries one open to look at him. Some other time, some other place, she might have been missishly coy, might have told him it was none of his business. But coyness is one of those things her brain no longer contains. And if she were Diane Mackie, she might have managed to be so stern, so unapproachably, perfectly military that Jack would not have dared even bring this up. This is a personal conversation at the worst possible time and in the worst possible place.

One thing she does know, and it makes her heart sink: Jack isn’t asking because he’s interested in Strand, he’s asking whether Rio will be free of romantic obligations.

“I don’t know about Strand,” she says. “He’s . . .” She hesitates, feeling that she is somehow betraying Strand even by having this conversation. But again, with her future about evenly divided between death and a POW camp, she doesn’t really care. “I suppose it comes down to the fact that Strand . . . Captain Braxton . . . well, he lost his nerve.”

Jack frowns. “What does that mean?”

“He’s AWOL in Paris. And last I was with him, he wasn’t intending to go back.”

“He deserted?”

That word still burns when Rio thinks it. She can’t yet bring herself to apply that terrible word to Strand. All combat soldiers have bad times when they can’t take it, have to be pulled off the line. Frontline soldiers do, from time to time, just walk away. But they almost all return, and their brothers and sisters don’t hold it against them because everyone knows it could be them next.

But true desertion is a different story. There are deserters, even from frontline units, thousands of them, but no one has a kind thing to say about those who save themselves at the expense of others who must do their dying for them.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says.

“Mmm. Are you?”

Jack says nothing.

“Look, Jack, I know what you’re asking.”

“Do you?”

“I’m your sergeant. I’m the one who has to send you out on patrol, maybe get you killed. I can’t . . . I mean, I don’t know, Jack, I don’t really know how to be ‘Sarge’ and ‘Rio.’ And until this is over I have to be ‘Sarge.’”

Jack nods. “The truth is, Rio, I’m afraid I’ve fallen—”

“No!” Rio snaps, and places a hand on his arm. Then, more gently, “No, Jack. No.”

He subsides, seeming smaller. “A man facing death wants hope, Rio. Or Sarge. Am I a complete ass to even hope?”

She squeezes his arm. “Hope is good. Now, get some damn sleep, Stafford.”

“Right, Sarge.”

Rio relieves Chester at the entryway, her sleepiness banished for the moment. She can shut Jack down, but she knows what he meant to say, what he may even sincerely feel.

It seems crazy, sitting in a stinking hole in a Luxembourg forest, to even daydream about after. Just a month before, “after” had seemed imminent. People talked about the war being over by Christmas. Well, Christmas was less than two weeks away, and it sure didn’t seem likely.

And yet her mind returned unbidden to thoughts of after. Thoughts of Gedwell Falls. Her mother’s arms and emotion. Her father’s handshake and repressed tears. Parades? Would there be parades like there had been after that last war? Would anyone feel like celebrating?

At times in the past Rio had pictured a nice little cottage. She knew just the street she wanted to live on. At times she walked through her imaginary cottage trying to picture the furniture she would like, the curtains she would pick out, the rugs. . . . But it never quite worked, and the imaginary cottage had become less and less detailed and specific over time, rather than the reverse.

She imagined herself at home, timing her dinner preparations for the moment when Strand would return from his job—whatever that was.

Kiss, kiss. What’s for dinner, sweetheart?

Oh, you know how I love your meatloaf!