The closer I got to the last place she’d been, the more the hope burned in me that she really might be alive and waiting for me. And once it was Rose and me again, arm in arm against the world, I could do anything.
“Come on,” Finn muttered to a stubborn lug nut or screw head or whatever it was. His Scots burr got thicker, as it always did when he was trying to persuade the car to cooperate. “Rusty aud bitch . . .” He worked away with a wrench, back and forth. “Hold that torch a bit higher, miss—”
“Finn, if you call me miss now, you’ll blow my cover. As spies like Eve would say.” I tapped my fake wedding ring. “I’m Mrs. Donald McGowan, remember?”
He got the bolt to loosen or tighten or whatever. “Grand idea, that ring.”
“I need a picture of my Donald,” I mused. “Something I can look at mistily when I say that my heart is in the grave.”
“Donald would want you to go on with your life,” Finn said. “You’re young. He’d tell you to marry again.”
“I don’t want to get married. I want to find Rose and then maybe run a café.”
“A café?” Finn looked up from the Lagonda’s innards, a lock of hair falling over his eyes. “Why?”
“The happiest day in my life was spent with Rose at a French café. I thought maybe, if I find her . . . It’s an idea, anyway. I have to do something with my future.” Now that I had the Little Problem to think about, I needed a new plan besides my mother’s old one of Get Bs at Bennington until you can hook a nice young lawyer. Strangely, I wasn’t finding my unformed future as frightening as it could have been. I could do something I liked, now. Get a job. What did math majors do, in the practical world? I didn’t want to be a teacher and I couldn’t be an accountant, but . . . “I could run a little business like a café,” I said rather experimentally, seeing a line of orderly account books filled with my neat columns of numbers.
“Donald wouldn’t like it.” Finn had a faint grin as he traded out the small wrench. “His widow, waiting tables and keeping a till?”
“Donald could be a bit of a prig,” I confessed.
“God rest his soul,” Finn said, straight-faced.
What a difference a few days made. He used to talk like he was being charged a dollar for every word that came out of his mouth, and now here he was making jokes. “What do you want to do?”
“What do you mean, Mrs. McGowan?”
“Well, you’re surely not going to work for Eve forever, making one-pan breakfasts to cure her hangovers and disarming her every night before bed.” I sniffed the damp evening breeze—it smelled like more rain might be coming. A pair of old men in crumpled caps were hurrying home across the street, casting anxious looks at the skies. “What would you do, if you could do anything?”
“Before the war, I worked in a garage. Always thought maybe I’d start my own someday. Fix up other people’s cars, do some restoration work . . .” Finn finished up inside the Lagonda, and gently lowered the hood. “Don’t think that’ll happen now.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t be much good at the business side of things. Besides, there are lots of former soldiers looking for work, and even more looking for bank loans. Who’s going to give a good garage job or a start-up loan to an ex-soldier with a Pentonville stint on his record?” He spoke matter-of-factly.
“Is that why you’re haring off to Limoges with Eve and me?” I switched off the flashlight, handing it back. There was dim veiled light from the streetlights overhead, but it seemed very dark without the flashlight’s bright beam. “I know why I’m going, and I know why Eve’s going. But what about you?”
“There’s not much else for me to do.” His soft voice had a smile. “Besides, I like both of you.”
I hesitated. “Why did you go to prison? And don’t say it’s because you stole a swan from Kew Gardens or made off with the crown jewels,” I rushed on, twisting my false wedding ring. “Really—what happened?”
He rubbed slowly at his oil-smeared hands with a rag.
“Eve told us she was a spy in the Great War. I told you I slept with half a frat. You know our secrets.”