She turned the pages to the first chapter, the sound a quiet whispered shush in the empty shop. There was a special scent to paper and ink, indescribable and unknown to anyone but a true reader. She brought the book to her face, closed her eyes and breathed in that wonderful smell.

It was startling to think a year prior to this, she hadn’t been able to appreciate such small moments. But in a world as damaged and gray as theirs was now, she would take every speck of pleasure where it could be found. And much pleasure was to be had in reading.

Grace cherished the adventures she went on through those pages, an escape from exhaustion and bombs and rationing. Deeper still was the profound understanding for mankind as she lived in the minds of the characters. Over time, she had found such perspectives made her a more patient person, more accepting of others. If everyone had such an appreciation for their fellow man, perhaps things such as war would not exist.

Such considerations were easy to muse over there in a rare beam of sunlight, but far more difficult to hold tight to in the blacked-out streets of London with Mr. Stokes.

The improved weather brought with it an influx of bombers who sailed easily through the clear skies to unload their destruction. It was on one such night that Grace found herself on duty when the familiar droning of planes announced their unwanted arrival.

They flew like a murder of crows in the blackened sky, their presence evident in the scrolling beam of a searchlight. In previous raids, they would have opened their bellies by now.

And yet still they came, growing larger, louder until the small hairs in Grace’s ears trembled at the noise. The ack-ack guns cracked in the thin night air; the hint of their smoke in the distance acrid. She craned her head back to stare up at the formation above her head. A searchlight passed over a plane just in time to see as its bottom split open and a large, pipe-like shape slid free into the sky.

A bomb.

Above her.

She watched, transfixed. Her mind screamed run, run, run, but her legs wouldn’t listen. The bomb whistled a note that pitched higher as it gained speed. As it came closer.

That shrill note called her to her senses and she turned from it, grabbing Mr. Stokes’s arm as she did so, pulling them back behind a wall framed with sandbags. The whistle became a shriek and her entire body went cold with fear.

The sound stopped abruptly and her heart with it.

That was the worst moment, when it fell, in the split second before it detonated. When you didn’t know where it had gone.