out of the pit.
Coughing, he stared up at the blue sky, then pushed himself up to his knees. He’d done pretty well. Only a third of the men remained in the pit, and it had taken two men to remove Clay.
But would a middle-of-the-road performance be enough to stay in the Rangers?
6
CAMP FORREST
THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1943
“Good night, gentlemen. We’ll open tomorrow morning at eight.” Leah let out the last three soldiers and flipped the sign on the library door to read “closed.”
Leaning back against the closed door, she grinned at her domain. Darlene said she was crazy to enjoy being alone in a library late at night, but it was heavenly.
After she turned off unneeded lights, she retrieved her purse from behind the circulation desk and headed to the stacks. Tonight she was up to the 280s in the Dewey decimal system, and she pulled out a volume about the Orthodox Church.
At a table she pulled a composition book and pen from her purse. Perhaps this book would yield a picture of the ornately decorated church in her memory or of a Greek surname.
No pictures graced the pages, but Leah transcribed a few names. None sounded right.
The ink flowed so smoothly from her new pen. She’d purchased a celluloid pen with a swirl of greens that reminded her of a mountain brook, but it wasn’t the gold pen of her dreams, the sort of pen her classmates had received from family for high school graduation.
What would it be like to have family to love her and give her a personal gift? Since she and her sisters had been sent to an orphanage when their parents died, their other family members must have been dead or in Greece.
Leah had spoken Greek well enough to assume her parents were immigrants, but she’d spoken English well enough to conclude the immigration wasn’t recent. She’d clung to the Greek language, but Mr. and Mrs. Jones had beaten her every time she used “that foreign heathen talk.”
With a shudder, Leah riffled through another chapter. It was for the best that she’d fallen ill and they’d abandoned her in Des Moines.
If only they’d given the orphanage more information about her background. Leah had been allowed to read her report before she left Iowa, which had been both painful and futile.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones claimed to have lost her birth certificate and adoption papers. They said her name was Leah Jones and not to let her say otherwise—she was a lying, storytelling kind, always making up silly names for herself. Like “Thalia.”
They’d only adopted her to help in their store one day, but when they lost the store in the Depression, they had no more need for Leah.
“Can’t afford her. Too sickly. Never stops crying,” the report had read. They hadn’t said where they’d adopted her from and had marched out without looking back.
“Thank you, Lord,” Leah whispered. “Thank you for leading them to a good orphanage.”
She simply had to find the blessings, even in the bleakest conditions.
A clicking sound, and Leah looked toward the circulation desk. Nothing. But the service club next door was open until ten thirty, so soldiers would be milling around outside. That must have been what she heard.
Leah perused the final chapters, but the book hadn’t helped. None had. Was finding her sisters a hopeless quest?
Callie. Polly. She remembered their sweet baby faces.
In third grade, Leah had read a book about Greek mythology in the school library and had seen her own name among the muses. If her parents had named her Thalia, after the muse of idyllic poetry and comedy, was it possible they’d named the twins Calliope and Polyhymnia, after the muses of epic and sacred poetry?
Even if it weren’t true, the idea captured Leah’s imagination.
She turned in her composition book to the poem she was writing. It needed one more stanza, but the words evaded her.
Three muses dance, their hands entwined
A circle of love, as one.
Thalia laughs, an idyllic song
Of earth and fields and home.
Calliope calls, an epic ballad
Of valor and heroes and might.
Polyhymnia chants, a sacred hymn
Of praise and truth and faith.
Still no final stanza. Leah leaned back in her chair and stretched.
Odd. The door to the storage room behind the circulation desk stood open, and the light was on. They always kept the door closed, since Miss Mayhew said it gave the library a neater appearance. And Leah had a lifelong habit of turning off lights upon leaving a room.
This time she must have forgotten. Perhaps she