“What about your father?”

“I don’t remember my father. He left my mother soon after I was born.”

“Oh, Sam.”

The room was hot and stuffy, and they were both naked, stuck to each other like a pair of coals that had burned out together. Irene loved the way her belly fit into the curve of Sam’s side. She didn’t want to rise. Every part of her felt heavy and grafted onto Sam. She didn’t think she could move. She asked, “So what if it’s a girl?”

“No girls. After Pixie? No, I can’t take another girl, Irene. I can’t take that kind of hurt again. It’s got to be a boy. That’s all I ask, a son.”

“You’ll find her again, Sam. She’ll come back to you. She will.”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “How could your own husband not know you were pregnant?”

“Because he hasn’t seen me naked in months.”

“Still.”

“Well, the flight suit’s baggy. And I’m tall, so it doesn’t show that much, anyway. If you’re not looking for it, if you don’t want to see it, you don’t see it.”

He stubbed out the cigarette and kissed the top of her head. “Fair enough. But all the same, we’ve got to get you out of here. The sooner the better.”

When they got down to the hangar fifteen minutes later, they were amazed to find that it was full of children. The Republicans wanted to evacuate them from this strip of war zone bordered by the Bay of Biscay on one side and the Nationalist-held territory to the south. At the ports they were loading children on steamers, bound for England and Mexico and the Soviet Union. But these ships were filling fast, so someone had decided that the children with relatives in the eastern regions—those still under government control—should be transported there by air.

“It’s too dangerous,” said Sam. “What if some German patrol bumps into us? They won’t give a damn that we’re a civilian aircraft.”

But the Republican officers insisted. Whatever the danger, it was worse here in Biscay, which Franco was determined to bomb into submission and then take by force. Irene just shrugged. “I can fly them to Valencia in less than two hours. We can take three planeloads in one day, maybe four if we leave right away.”

Sam said darkly, “Can I speak to you for a moment, Señorita Foster?”