“But your unit fired back?”

“Those of us who were still alive.” She looked down, concentrated on the big hand still holding hers. “Fritz wasn’t one of them. He’d thrown himself over me. To protect me. By the time I pushed him off me, he was already dead.”

Tom hesitated. “I thought married couples weren’t allowed to serve together?”

“They’re not. We’d gotten married a few weeks before that—we’d gotten two weeks of R&R stateside, and Fritz proposed. Took me home to meet his family. They wanted to be a part of the ceremony, so . . . I said yes.”

“They were good people? Fritz’s family?”

“Yes. Very good people.” Too good for a woman who’d only married their son because she couldn’t have the man she wanted. “I liked them very much.”

“Have you seen them? Since Fritz was killed, I mean.”

“Yes, as soon as I landed in the U.S. after my discharge. They live in Jersey City and I flew into Newark, so it was close by.” They’d held on to her as they’d all cried, and she’d cried with them. “And then I got on a plane to Chicago to see you all.”

“Last Christmas,” he murmured.

“Yes.” She’d arrived as the Hunters and the Buchanans—the family who’d taken her in after her sister’s murder—were sitting down to Christmas dinner. It was then that she’d learned Tom’s Tory was dead.

“You didn’t say anything,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell us about Fritz then?”

She turned her face into Pebbles’s soft muzzle, shaking her head.

“What?” he demanded, his tone going sharp. “Why didn’t you?”

The thinly veiled anger in his tone snapped the lid off her own temper. “Because someone would have asked to see his picture,” she spat. “And then they would have known the truth.”

“What truth?”

Yanking her hand free of his, she unlocked her cell phone and found Fritz’s official army photo. Dressed in a pressed uniform, his body ramrod straight, he’d been so handsome. So stern. But that hadn’t been him. Fritz had laughed and loved and was generous to a fault.

She shoved her phone at Tom, who sucked in a harsh breath.

“Oh.”

She laughed bitterly. “Yeah. Oh.”

Because Fritz Pohlmann and Tom Hunter could have been brothers. Same body type, same size, same chiseled jaw, same blond hair. Fritz’s eyes had been brown, though. At least when she’d looked into his eyes, she’d seen Fritz. Not Tom.

“He looks like . . .” He trailed off, staring at the screen.

She took her phone from his hand and turned it off. “You. He looks like you.”

Tom lifted his gaze to hers, searching for what, she wasn’t sure. “Why did you marry him?”

She swallowed hard, shame forming like a boulder in her chest. “I shouldn’t have. But . . .” She sighed. “You’d met Tory. You’d popped the question and she’d said yes.”

He flinched. “When did you get married?”

“February first would have been our first anniversary. He was dead by March first.” She’d gone to New Jersey on the anniversary of his death, to grieve with his family. It had nearly torn her apart. Meeting Mercy and the Sokolovs a month later had pulled her out of a dark place.