catastrophe, not to mention what the enemy could do. Before each mission, Robert Worley painted a Celtic cross on the side of his plane, and the word “Danu,” a fresh one of each over the last—so many times that the cross and the word were a messy inch thick.
“You think I’m crazy?” he asked Charlie once.
Charlie shook his head. “No crazier than I am.”
He’d tried to leave it at that. He hadn’t come to Europe and the Great War wanting friendship. Friends were something to which he no longer felt entitled. He had not been there to save his family. He had lost Emma even if he believed he had been protecting her. He was doomed to an endless sameness, a seventeen-year-old body that even his recklessness seemed unable to destroy.
On the other hand, how could he leave this world without f inding Emma again? It would be a greater sin than any he’d already committed.
Still, if Charlie had allowed himself a friend, it would have been Robert Worley.
Maybe that was why he’d agreed to pose together for a single photograph with their unit during the war. He hated the idea of nostalgia, but he understood Robert’s f ierce desire to prove to Jane that he was what he’d claimed to be—a handsome soldier in a sharply pressed uniform, a hero of the skies.
So Charlie stood with one foot on a tree stump, his arm draped over Worley’s shoulder, both of them staring straight and solemn into the camera—Worley’s expression to act the part, Charlie’s because he felt grim.
A few days later, Charlie killed a man face to face for the f irst time. Worley was with him. They were shot down by the most basic of anti-aircraft f ire while on a recon mission in the French countryside not far from Marseille.
They’d managed to land the rickety two-seater biplane, a Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.8, as it smoked and sputtered, but just barely and with enough impact that the whole contraption split into pieces as they hit the ground.
Worley broke a leg and dislocated his collarbone, and Charlie’s arm got sliced open at the meaty part near his shoulder.
They were armed, but not battle ready. Neither was ready to die. By the time he was f lying over France, Charlie understood the idiocy of his choices, but the heedless anger surging through him hadn’t dissipated even one tiny bit. If he had lost everything, then at least he could destroy the enemy and save the world. If he succeeded, it would be a sign. A redemption. He would f ind Emma someday. He would make things right again.
Robert aimed his Colt at the German soldiers who attacked them as they were still crawling from the burning wreckage of the plane they’d affectionately named Ethel, managing to get off a few stray shots. Ethel seemed a big girl’s name, and the biplane was a blocky-looking old bitch that nonetheless f lew like a dream unless it was hit by machine-gun f ire in the fuselage.
The Germans began shooting.
It was Charlie whose aim rang true, hitting one German soldier directly in the belly, then grabbing up his bayonet as the man fell, slumping into the muddy f ields that incongruously smelled of springtime along with blood and excrement and other stenches of death. A tree of some sort was blooming not far away, tiny white blossoms that, if he’d had the time, would have made Charlie’s heart ache. Overhead, three black crows cawed and dipped lower in the bright blue sky. The biplane was still burning and the heat of the f lames licked at Charlie’s back.
Robert Worley was crawling, trying to stand.
Charlie thought of Emma, just a f lash of memory. Her hair, dark and shining and wavy. Her bright eyes. The way the crook of her neck smelled damp and sweet when he nuzzled his nose against it. The taste of her when they kissed—like oranges and spice and the morning air when the ocean breeze blew cool and salty. Her softness when he pressed, hard and eager, against her. The way her body f it with his, exactly, perfectly right.
He f igured he would die. Why else would his brain stop midbattle to send him these thoughts?
Instead, he charged forward, screaming sounds he had no memory of once it was all over. He plunged the bayonet into the other German, felt it stab through skin and intestines and bone. He would never forget the horrible sucking sound it made