Raskova’s eaglets. You’ve met Comrade Stalin.” That damned awe in Yelena’s voice again. “We’ll have no shortage of recommendations when we apply to join the Party, you’ll see. Then we can pull strings for an apartment we don’t have to share with three other families, get plush jobs at the Zhukovsky Academy or anywhere we like.”
She was gabbling now, all hope. Such good, normal, usual things to want. Probably most of the women in the regiment cherished similar dreams for after this war was done.
“It’s not too much to want, Ninochka. You, me, a home, a baby or two, a job flying civil routes instead of bombing runs.” Yelena leaned forward, brushed her lips over Nina’s. “All we have to do is survive the war, and we can have it.”
“Maybe it isn’t too much to want,” Nina said. “But what if I want something else?”
“What?” Yelena smoothed her cheek. “Do you not want to live in Moscow? We don’t have to, I know you don’t like it—”
I don’t like Moscow, or Irkutsk, or the Old Man, Nina thought. I’ve come thousands of kilometers across Russia, and I haven’t seen any part of it I liked except the skies. She was happy flying over it, because then she didn’t have to look at it: a land of implacable crowds and draped bunting, bread queues and the eternal droning of loudspeakers, ruled over by a wolf.
When the war is over, what do you want? Yelena was still waiting for her answer. Such a simple question, surely the simplest question of all for soldiers at war. Everyone dreamed of what came after the bloodshed was done. Everyone, apparently, but Nina, who could honestly say she’d never given it a single thought. Who had never thought at all beyond the present, beyond a night spent flying and a morning spent kissing Yelena. Who would take this strange, perilous, nighttime life in the regiment over any other in the world, even with all its griefs and its terrors.
What do I want, Yelenushka? Nina thought, looking at her lover’s eager smile. I want to fly missions, hunt Germans, and love you. And the only thing on both your list and mine is you.
Chapter 31
Jordan
June 1950
Boston
You have no desire at all to marry Garrett Byrne. Anneliese’s wry comment still reverberated even as Jordan tried to busy herself behind the shop counter.
Of course I want to marry Garrett, she told herself. I’ve got a half-carat’s worth of sparkle on my left hand proving how much I want to marry him.
Ruth’s voice drifted up from the nearest display case. “May I hold the violin?”
“It’s not a toy, cricket,” Jordan said absently. “It’s a late-nineteenth-century copy of a Mayr.”
“But it’s small,” Ruth begged. “It’s my size.”
“That’s a half-size violin, Mr. Kolb says.”
“Very pleased to meet you at last, Mrs. McBride.” Tony Rodomovsky’s voice issued from the front of the shop, where he stood with Anneliese in her black suit. “My condolences for your recent loss . . .”
Anneliese murmured some reply as Jordan bent back over her own work: trimming down one of the prints of her dad she’d made late last night. It was a good portrait, very good—she could judge her own work well enough to know that.
You could do something with that shot, the thought whispered. Something professional.
Like what? she answered herself. You aren’t a professional. She was a girl with a nice job behind this counter, and an entertaining hobby in the basement. In spring she was going to be a wife with a nice husband going off to work every morning, and an entertaining hobby kept in the spare room.
“I’ve prepared the weekly report if you would like to see it, Mrs. McBride.” Tony came back to the register behind Anneliese in her full black skirts, black jacket, and little black hat with the spotted net chicly angled over her eyes. “Just a moment.”
“What do you think?” Jordan asked her stepmother as Tony vanished into the back room, remembering Anneliese had dropped by to give the new clerk a final look.
“He seems quite charming. If you’re satisfied with his references, I see no reason not to keep him on; you’re a good judge of character.” Anneliese gave Ruth a quick hug and looked at the shop clock. “I’m meeting with your father’s lawyer about the will; can you keep Ruth until closing? Oh, my—” Seeing the photograph of Dan McBride.
“Isn’t it him to the life?”
Anneliese nodded, tears in her eyes. Jordan gave her black-gloved hand