The Land Beneath Us (Sunrise at Normandy #3) - Sarah Sundin Page 0,50

send a cablegram today.

No, it was Christmas. First thing tomorrow morning. He’d make the message vague enough for all the eyes that would see it, yet clear enough for her.

“I won’t abandon you, Leah.” He crossed the footbridge and broke into a run, desperate to write his reply. “I won’t.”

23

CAMP FORREST

FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1944

Leah brushed a finger along the book spines in the 720 section of the library. Architecture. How she’d hoped to peruse that section.

She’d never sift through Camp Forrest’s collection again. Dr. Adams wanted her to quit now that she was in her third trimester, and today was her last day. Since everyone thought she was only five months pregnant, Leah stated that her recent surgery had made the doctor cautious.

Her fingers halted on a book on early American architecture. What if it contained a photo of one of the buildings in her memory? She would never see it.

Leah sighed and shelved two volumes from her cart. Hoping to find clues about her hometown and surname in library books had been na?ve. Her childhood memories were foggy and sparse and distorted by time.

Although she would never stop yearning to know her name and to find her sisters, bearing the Paxton name and feeling her daughter’s tiny kicks eased the ache.

“Leah Paxton,” she whispered, and she wheeled her cart to the next aisle.

Thank goodness she could keep that name. The arrival of Clay’s cablegram had nearly torn her heart out. She was preparing herself for a telegram come spring, not right after Christmas.

But the message soothed her qualms: “NO NEED TO WORRY STOP NOTHING WILL CHANGE STOP LETTER COMING STOP YOURS CLAY.”

Leah shelved books in the 800s. She hadn’t received that letter, but she no longer feared annulment. And he’d never signed his letters “yours” before. How could one word fill her with such warmth and joy?

Her cart empty, she pushed it toward the circulation desk. At the card catalog, Miss Mayhew chatted quietly with Miss Elliott, who had started the first of the year.

Miss Elliott had graduated from the library school at Emory University and could catalog, research, and make acquisitions, as well as work the circulation desk, a more qualified librarian than Leah and a suitable replacement.

The two graduate librarians laughed softly about something. Already they were colleagues. Leah had never been more than an assistant.

Grief pooled in Leah’s lungs. Miss Elliott was living the life Leah had wanted. It would never be hers, because she’d been orphaned and abandoned and assaulted.

Why did people like Miss Mayhew and Miss Elliott receive all the good things in life? Why did Leah receive all the bad things? Why did everyone mistreat her?

A flutter of kicks in her belly, and Leah drew a deep breath to calm down.

Clay didn’t mistreat her. And her original dream might have died, but a new one had formed—raising this sweet child and giving her a happy home.

Leah walked at a fast clip down Moore Street under a moonless sky. At eleven o’clock, few lights shone from windows. An icy breeze wafted around her legs, and a bush beside her rustled.

Leah scooted away, her heart hammering. Every shadow, every noise made the scar on her chest throb.

An MP escorted her every night from the library to the bus stop at Camp Forrest. But no one escorted her the three long blocks from the bus stop to her home.

Was the wolf still out there? He’d wanted her dead, and he’d failed. Was he stationed at the base? Or had he shipped out with one of the many units that had trained at Camp Forrest?

The Bellamy house stood on the corner of Washington and Moore. In daytime, a cheery brick home. At night, dark and brooding. Leah inched into the backyard, watching for unfamiliar shapes in the victory garden and by the chicken coop.

Praying, she dashed to the little house. She thrust her key in the lock, flung open the door, turned on a lamp, and threw the deadbolt. She might be the only person in Tullahoma who kept her doors locked, day and night.

Leah sighed and leaned back against the door.

Everyone assumed Leah loved the privacy of her new little home, but she wasn’t used to sleeping in a room alone. In a house alone. With straw-thin doors and windows and walls that would succumb to one puff of the wolf’s foul breath.

She could still feel his darkness crushing her, pounding, ripping, humiliating.

“No. No.” Leah pressed her fists to her chest. “I’m home. I’m safe. The