O’Hara’s emotionless monotone was strangely comforting. He’d taken the brunt of the exploding window after the Germans machine-gunned it clear out of the wall. The frame bashed his head, resulting in a concussion that made O’Hara upchuck for two straight days. In addition to the egg on the noggin, he had a host of shrapnel wounds along the entire left side of his body.

“Fifty-four stitches total,” he said. “Tell you, Fish, I look like a fucking needlepoint cushion.”

Once he stopped heaving and could sit up without seeing double, O’Hara had never left Kennet’s side. For all his aloof reticence, he made an astonishingly attentive nurse. Positioning a fork in Kennet’s hand, he guided it from meal tray to mouth with deadpan delivery: “Meat’s at two o’clock, mashed potatoes at six o’clock. Avoid ten o’clock, I don’t know what the hell that green stuff is.”

He didn’t bother making idle conversation. Cracking jokes for his own amusement was never O’Hara’s style. But he always made it known he was at hand. Kennet only had to shift or stir on his bed, and out of the dark came O’Hara’s quiet, “Hey, bud. I’m over here.”

The pencil stopped scratching.

“Did you write it?” Kennet said.

“It’s done.”

“Read it to me.”

“Fish…”

“Just fucking read it.”

A rustle of paper, then O’Hara spoke. “I wrote, My friend Hook is dead. Machine gun fire got him right across the back of the head. My buddy’s gone.”

Kennet tilted his head back, trying to close eyes already shut. Trying to block out the world when he was already in the dark.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

He imagined Emil reading the letter. Crumpling it into one sorrowful hand and with the other, reaching into his pocket for a fish hook. Regarding it in his palm, having long known such charms were powerless.

Kennet gazed into the black behind his bound eyelids, envisioning his father sitting at his desk, reaching for pen and paper. Rubbing the three charms at his neck. Reflecting a bit more on the fish hook. Then writing all the things Kennet needed to hear, but would never believe.

It was nothing you did or didn’t do. You didn’t get Hook killed by making future plans. You didn’t sign his death warrant by talking about an adventure drive to New Orleans. Nothing you did or didn’t do could have stopped this.

War blows the rules to shit, gullgosse.