Chapter 16

Dear Anne,

I have heard it said that if you do not give a dog a job, he will make one for himself. So long as my official orders from Washington are to "stand by," I will throw myself into the work I feel most equipped to tackle, which is assisting my Norwegian friends as best I can. I might be without a chancery to call my own, but I am not without resources or connections...

"I completely understand, Mr. Trainor. And I've sent your information on with a request for additional funds to be used to assist American citizens with evacuation. If you call back in a week, I hope to have a better answer for you."

Mr. Trainor did not want to call back in a week and made sure Daisy knew it along with how he was personal friends with Secretary of State Cordell Hull and she'd be sorry when he made a formal complaint—oh and by the way, this is what happened when women were put in charge instead of staying in the kitchen where they belonged.

Right up until that moment, she'd been sympathetic to poor Mr. Trainor's plight. Mustering every last drop of empathy, she managed to get off the phone without informing him of just what he could do with his misogynistic bullying. Still, she felt as if she'd been flayed alive by the time she slid the receiver back into its cradle, and it was only ten in the morning.

Daisy had thought her days on the road had been long and chaotic. Now she looked back on them with an almost nostalgic feeling of freedom, from ringing phones and clattering typewriters; the constant jostling of reporters for the latest reports; the breaking headlines, and the reams of papers moving across her desk in a blur of cables, telegrams, reports, filings, letters.

There were not enough hours available for the demands of her position, and always there was one more name on a list of those to meet, one more letter from a panicked family member requesting information or assistance, one more luncheon invitation, drinks meeting, evening reception. After a hectic week spent at the Grand Hotel in the heart of Stockholm, she chose to retreat to the resort town of Saltsj?baden, a short train ride outside the city. At least there she had the comfort of distance to buffer her from the pulls on her attention. Her days and evenings might be crowded, but her nights could be spent in quiet pursuits like knitting or listening to music on the wireless.

Last night had not been one of those nights.

She had been up to all hours in conversations with Sterling and his deputies only to be met by reporters as soon as she returned from the American legation. Stevens from the Christian Science Monitor and Callendar from the New York Times trailed her through the hotel lobby, asking for her take on the arrival in Oslo of Reichskommissar Terboven and what she thought of the British withdrawal from southern Norway. She hated to shoo them away, very often they gave as much as they gathered, so she spent another hour chatting over drinks at one of the hotel's bars and didn't make it to her bed until nearly dawn. A few hours of sleep and back into the city to do it all again, so she was not at her best by the time the telegram from Alexander Kirk, the American chargé stationed in Berlin, arrived on her desk that evening.

"He's certain?" she asked Mr. Whitney, who, even in silence, had a way of radiating effrontery.

"It came direct from the German administration in Zakopane."

"So he never made it out of Poland."

"Doesn't look like it."

Daisy rubbed at the space between her brows where the tensions of the day gathered and ran over the conversation in her head. How she would offer the news. How Cleo would take it. Once she might have been able to predict with relative accuracy the stubborn shock and frantic disbelief that would follow such an announcement. Now she wasn't as certain.

Cleo had always been a whirlwind, age turning the tantrums of her youth into the brashness of adulthood. That had changed somewhere between Oslo and Stockholm. Perhaps it had been Miss Kristiansen's death that caused this new composure. Perhaps it had happened earlier. There was no way of pinpointing or maybe there was no point in time at all, but a series of moments, one building on another like blocks. It was as if the winds had calmed, allowing a space for questions and for doubt. A space for forgiveness.

Daisy reread the telegram as if she might catch some inner meaning behind this new information. But the words were sparse, and one could make of it as much or as little as necessary. Kominski was dead. Cleo had her answer.

That was an end to it.

Or it should be.

As usual, it was close to midnight before she arrived back at the hotel in Saltsj?baden. Instead of pausing for a nightcap or a restorative cup of tea, she headed up to their suite. She'd settled on the direct approach as the best way to deliver her news. It's how she preferred it. She assumed Cleo would be the same.

Their suite was spacious with a lovely view of the water. She found Cleo preparing to go out—clipping on a pair of earrings, searching her closet for a serviceable pair of shoes. Her short choppy curls had grown long enough to brush her shoulders.

"A late dinner?" Daisy asked, envious of the young's seemingly unending well of energy.

"I'm going to the Virveln dance palace. There's someone there I owe a visit and payment on a debt."

"Your man with the van?"

"Well, to be perfectly accurate, it wasn't his van. Athena belonged to Sam."

"Athena?"

"The van's name was Athena. Not sure why. Something to do with a barmaid in Greece, but Emmitt... he plays the drums. He was the one who convinced Sam and the others—"

"Cleo, for heaven's sake, stop talking." Simple. Straightforward. Beating around the bush was for cowards. "I've had an answer to our inquiries from Berlin."

Cleo's body went stiff as a board, her lips a twisted slash of crimson in a face gone gray. "Micky's dead, isn't he?"

"I'm afraid so, my dear." Daisy waited for the shock to expand into disbelief and then suspicion. Instead, Cleo straightened the gaudy pink diamond and its wreath of costume rubies against the hollow of her throat. A touch as if to anchor herself in the present with a reminder of the past.

"I shouldn't be surprised, should I?" She turned back to the mirror, her eyes awash in tears or perhaps it was a trick of the reflection, for when she faced Daisy next, there was nothing but hard angles and stubborn planes. "We're at war."

A crowd of young people milled outside the Virveln dance hall, laughing as they jostled and debated whether to go home or head somewhere else, where the beer was cheaper, the girls prettier, the band hotter.

Cleo pushed her way past them and into the lobby, pausing at the coat check before taking a moment to freshen up in the retiring room. Women chatted as they reapplied lipstick, added an extra dab of perfume, lamented over torn hems, laddered stockings, crushed toes. Cleo let the crowd leave before she stepped to the mirror. She smiled, frowned, tipped her head to the right, tipped her chin up. All as if she might see Micky's death written on her face. A visible mark no amount of Max Factor would hide. But there was only an odd sallow-green cast to her skin that she blamed on the poor lighting.

Mother had told Cleo once that she had known the exact moment of Father's death—that she had felt a pain in her chest and immediately fainted dead away, and when she had come around, she had known his soul had departed. She would not be convinced, no matter how Cleo argued, that it was far more likely that at seven months pregnant and suffering from indigestion, she had simply grown lightheaded and lost her balance. Now here Cleo was looking for signs and portents, unable to believe Micky could die without a clap of thunder or a shift beneath her feet to mark his passing.

Breathing in the ballroom's all too familiar scents of perfume, hair tonic, and sweat, Cleo felt a dizzying sense of déjà vu that had her steadying herself against a wall. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself back in the Black Cat, Micky shredding it on the trumpet for an audience that couldn't get enough. The musicians around him had changed over those final months; Ady and Arthur saw the writing on the wall and left for Paris, Szymon fled east ahead of the German advance. Micky had merely bent to the current regime like a reed, playing what he was asked without question, the good American renouncing his degenerate music. What he'd convinced Cleo then was smart business, she began to see as simple cowardice.

It pricked at her grief like a burr. If Micky had been wrong about that, what else might he have been wrong about?

Women sat along the edges of the dance floor, swaying to the music and shooting wistful glances at the men leaning against the walls smoking cigarettes and elbowing each other like schoolboys at recess. Every few minutes there would be the tap on the shoulder that would send another couple out into the scrum on the dance floor.

Cleo wasn't interested in kicking it up with a Lindy hop or a tango. She ignored the looks and the invitations as she slid her way toward the stage, where the band was killing it with a stripped-down version of "Swingin' the Blues" that had the place rocking.

She counted heads. There was Norman trading his crooner's microphone for a hot piano, Sam working his bass like a madman. Sweat beaded on Paulie's forehead as he led the band on his trumpet, Dud right behind him on the trombone, the two of them throwing the melody back and forth between them like a ball. She stood on tiptoe to see over the crowd of dancers for a glimpse at the man behind the high hat, snare, and tom who held them all together with his crazy rhythm. He caught sight of her and grinned, bringing the music to a crescendo before fading out.

All five safe in one piece. She felt a knot in her gut loosen.

An announcer took the stage, sending the dancers scattering to the bar for another drink and leaving Cleo alone at the edge of the stage. The band set down their instruments to towel off and recover, except for Emmitt, who shouted, "Hey, Park Avenue! You're alive! Dud bet me fifty bucks we'd never lay eyes on you again. The bastard owes me."

"You're all well? You made it out without any problems?"

"All present and accounted for, though we had to put poor Athena out of her misery outside of Torsby. Paulie played taps and Sam wept like a baby." He searched the ballroom. "That kid with you?"

She shook her head. She'd tried not to think about Einar when Aunt Daisy's conversations turned toward updates from battlefields around Rombaksfjord in the north to the town of ?ndalsnes in the south. She convinced herself he was safe when soldiers trickled over the border into the camps, wounded or ill and recounting tales of firefights and nonstop air attacks and artillery the Norwegians had no hope of countering. But it was as much a story as all the others she'd told herself: That Micky was alive and safe. That Petra would recover. That the world wasn't on fire.

Emmitt seemed to recognize her thoughts. "I'm sure he's aces," he said with a brotherly squeeze of her shoulder. "He looked like he could take care of himself."

She reached into her handbag. "I came to bring you what I promised." She handed him an envelope. "Well, maybe not quite what I promised. Aunt Daisy wasn't as pleased to see me as I let on."

He shoved the envelope into the breast pocket of his jacket. "Since most of them were expecting you to skip out completely, this is pure gravy."

One of the stagehands gave a shout. "I'd best get back." Emmitt seemed to realize this was a final farewell. His face dropped into somber lines, mouth pulled against the stubble of his face. "Take care, Park Avenue." He looked around at the crowds already jumping with anticipation of the next number, at the bright faces of the young men and women. "For some reason the saying ‘fiddling while Rome burns' keeps running through my head these days."

I t had been a week since Cleo said goodbye to Emmitt and the others. A week since Aunt Daisy had shattered her hope with the news of Micky's death. She'd barely made it out of bed the first few days, and when she finally did, she stayed hidden away in her tiny cubby of a hotel bedroom, playing endless games of solitaire.

She expected Aunt Daisy to drag her out by her ears at any moment, but that wasn't her godmother's way. She had the annoying habit of sitting back and making one come to their own conclusions. It meant that Cleo could grieve undisturbed, but it also meant days of uninterrupted introspection. A sifting through of memories and choices and what-ifs that left confusion in their wake.

This afternoon, Cleo shuffled the playing cards before placing them one up, six down; two up, five down; three up, four down. Through to seven before she laid the deck at her elbow on the table, taking up the first card. A five of hearts. She scanned the cards in front of her, searching for a spot to set it down.

Voices carried from the parlor, where Aunt Daisy was entertaining guests. She'd invited Cleo to attend, but she'd demurred under the pretext of a headache.

Not entirely a lie.

Just not entirely the truth either.

Still, it was almost impossible to hide oneself completely away. The suite her godmother had taken, while larger than most, remained cramped. Only the sea view from Cleo's window gave the illusion of space. Otherwise, it was like living in a shoebox.

No move. Cleo flipped the next in her pile. Ace of spades.

"‘Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men... We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.'" Aunt Daisy had a way of speaking as if she was addressing an unruly crowd of suffragettes in front of New York City Hall.

The response to this recitation was lost in the laughter that followed.

Cleo's hand hovered over the spread of cards, but her mind couldn't take in the specifics of suits and numbers. Aunt Daisy had broken her concentration, her thoughts flying in a million directions like shrapnel. Cleo blinked, her vision a wash of blurry tears. She hated women who cried. Moping was even worse. Yet here she was wallowing in woe-is-me tears, which made her angry and pathetic.

Petra was dead.

Micky was dead.

Losing them had broken Cleo's increasingly fragile notion that war happened to other people. That she was a mere bystander, grieving on cue for the bad things that happened, but never truly touched by them. Seeing it all through the lens of someone who could always just turn away.

She couldn't turn away now.

If someone killed a person you loved, that made them your enemy. That's how it worked. A little voice reminded her that her father's death had also come at the hands of Germans, and it had never bothered her before. She silenced the voice by telling herself that she'd never loved her father. His death didn't count.

Cleo flipped the next card. Seven of diamonds. And the card after that. Five of diamonds. And the card after that. By now, she wasn't even trying to make a play. Her brain was stuck, habit carrying her forward.

"I've been invited to speak about my experience in Norway with the American Women's Club next week." Aunt Daisy's voice carried up the stairs.

"Of course you were" came the reply. "You're all anyone can talk about these days." Cleo didn't recognize this woman's voice, though the round breathiness to her vowels seemed vaguely familiar. "Your name's on every editor's lips from San Francisco to Bar Harbor. You've put the plight of the country on the front page."

Cleo set down the rest of her deck, following the sounds of luncheon being finished off with coffee and cake. Not because she was hungry—she wasn't. But because this woman's voice reminded her of someone. She stopped short of barging into the parlor, but she stood on the threshold and listened.

"As it should be, Mrs. Thorson," Aunt Daisy replied. "Refugees are pouring across Sweden's borders, hundreds every day. They'll need help with housing, food, clothing, medical care, and that's just in the first few days."

"We had a cable out of Chicago from a new group calling themselves Norwegian Relief. They're already organizing committees across America to help with fundraising efforts. Donations will be used to assist with the very basics at first, but they have grand plans for future needs that might arise. Minister Bulls has already begun preparations."

A third voice, but not nearly with the back of the theater volume of the other two. "The amount of work is staggering. One looks at the enormity of the situation and simply despairs. How can we possibly do it?"

"How do you eat an entire elephant? A bite at a time, Inge." There was a scrape of a fork on a plate as if to demonstrate. "A bite at a time."

Cleo felt her heart flutter in her chest. Of course. That's where she'd heard that voice before—or one so similar as to make her chest hurt. Petra had spoken with the same swoop and swing of Norwegian combined with the flat sharpness of English.

"Won't you come and join us, Cleo?" Aunt Daisy called out. A command couched as a question. Trapped, Cleo pushed wide the door and stepped into the parlor.

Aunt Daisy was lunching in company with two older women, broad-beamed and businesslike in traveling suits dusted with crumbs. But these were no minor-league paper pushers if the pearls and the unmistakable scent of Joy perfume was any clue.

Aunt Daisy introduced them with a sweep of her arm. "Mrs. Sillen and Mrs. Thorson are part of a group working with the Norwegian Refugee Office."

"You poor dear," Mrs. Sillen tutted, her round, dimpled face and pink rosebud mouth scrunched in concern. "Your aunt told us of your loss. Such a tragedy."

"Tragedy is an act of God, Inge. This was an act of war." Mrs. Thorson's accented voice held none of Mrs. Sillen's pillowed sympathy. "What will you do now, Miss Jaffray?"

What would she do? Go home like everyone assumed—and probably hoped—she would? Shut away her unanswered questions along with her anger and her grief and her guilt? Go back to living in the big house on Fifty-Seventh Street, the seasons delineated by the events on her mother's social calendar, her father staring down on the two of them, censure in his unblinking gaze?

If you were only more like me, he always seemed to say.

Some of her indecision and her pain must have been visible because Mrs. Thorson reached into her handbag and pulled out a business card. "No time to dillydally. Come see me when you decide you want to fight back."