face froze. He pushed him into Sasha's arms, and ran into the next room to find Zoya. His face was white as he found her in their bedroom.
“The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii!”
“Oh my God …” He pulled her into the other room with him to listen to the news, as the announcer explained in staccato tones what had happened. They all stood rooted to where they stood, as Matthew tugged at Zoya's skirt and tried to get her attention, but she only picked him up and held him close. All she could think of was that Nicholas was twenty years old. She didn't want him to die as her brother had with the Preobrajensky. “Simon … what will happen now?” But she instinctively knew as they listened. Simon's predictions had finally come true. They were going to war. President Roosevelt announced it, with a voice filled with deep regret, but not as great as Zoya's. Simon enlisted in the army the following morning. He was forty-five years old, and Zoya begged him not to go, but he looked at her sadly when he came home.
“I have to, Zoya. I couldn't live with myself if I just sat here on my ass and did nothing to defend my country.” And it wasn't just for his country, it was for the Jews in Europe that he did it. All over the world, the cause of freedom was being destroyed, he couldn't sit back quietly and let it happen.
“Please …” Zoya begged, “Please, Simon …” She was overcome with grief, “I couldn't live without you.” She had lived through that before, losing the people she loved, and she knew she couldn't survive it again … not Simon, so gentle and so dear, and so loving. “I love you too much. Don't go. Please …” She was gripped with fear but he couldn't be dissuaded. “Zoya, I have to.” They lay side by side in their bed that night, and he touched her gently with the big hands that held his son so lovingly, the same hands that touched her now and held her close to him as she cried, terrified of losing the man she loved so dearly. “Nothing's going to happen.”
“You don't know that. We need you too much for you to go. Think of Matthew.” She would have said anything to make him stay, but even that didn't persuade him.
“I am thinking of him. The world won't be worth living in when he grows up, if the rest of us don't stand up now, and fight for decency and what's right.” He was still aching over what had happened in Poland two years before. But now that his own country had been attacked, there was clearly no choice. And even Zoya's passionate lovemaking that night and renewed pleas didn't sway him. As much as he loved her, he knew he had to go. His love for Zoya was equaled only by his sense of duty to his country, no matter what it cost him.
He was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, to train, and three months later he came home for two days, before leaving for San Francisco. Zoya wanted to go back to Mrs. Whitman's little place in Connecticut to be alone with him, but Simon felt he should spend his last days at home with the children. Nicholas came home from Princeton to see him off, and the two men solemnly shook hands at Grand Central Station.
“Take care of your mother for me,” Simon spoke quietly in the din around him, always gentle, always calm. Even Sasha was crying. Matthew was crying too, although he didn't understand what was happening. He only knew that his daddy was going somewhere and his mother and sister were crying, and his big brother looked unhappy too.
Nicholas hugged the man who had been a father to him for the past five years, and there were tears in his eyes as Simon spoke to him. “Take care, son.”
“I want to go too.” He said it so low that his mother didn't hear him.
“Not yet,” Simon answered. “Try to finish school. They may draft you anyway.” But he didn't want to be drafted, he wanted to go to England and fly planes. He had been thinking about it for months, and by March he couldn't stand it any longer. Simon was in the Pacific by then, and Nicholas told them the day after Sasha's seventeenth birthday. Zoya didn't want to hear it, she