Susan made a dinner of stale rationed bread. She toasted it, sliced it in quarters, even slathered it with the last of the gooseberry jam, but it still tasted like the flour had been replaced with sawdust. As usual, Bertie didn’t mind, even complimenting her on the weak tea that had been brewed so many times it barely colored the water. She spent the evening talking to him about the returning pigeons, a brief period of light in what felt like endless days of despair. All the while, her heart and mind were on Ollie.

As the tremor of bomb blasts escalated, she washed the dishes and then helped Bertie onto his chair. He fell asleep with his swollen knees propped on a stool. She covered him with a quilt, blew out the candle, and went off to bed, shutting out the thought that she might never see him climb the stairs again.

Susan layered mounds of pillows over her head, even packed her ears with cotton from a bottle of Bertie’s aspirin, but couldn’t shut out the rumble of explosions. The bombing was relentless. The Luftwaffe seemed to have upped their arsenal, the unnerving silence between explosions less frequent. There were rumors that 30,000 bombs had dropped on London in a single night. Nazi propaganda. If true, German factories were pumping out massive amounts of weaponry. There would need to be miles of assembly lines filling shells with explosives, not to mention ruthless conditioning of Luftwaffe pilots. After all, what human, unless brainwashed, would knowingly drop bombs on women and children? She hoped the British would never resort to such atrocities, no matter how bad things got.

As Susan rolled over in bed, the plug slipped from her ear. She slid her hand under her pillow, searching for the missing cotton, and heard it.

Peck.

She shot up, dug out the remaining plug from her ear, and looked toward the window. The blackout curtain had turned her room into a sightless void, like she had been dropped into an inkwell. Her hands trembled. She waited. Nothing. Only the echo of bombs. I must be going mad, she thought, lowering her head to her pillow.

Peck.

Her heart skipped.

Peck . . . peck.

Susan threw off the covers and ran to the window.

Peck . . . peck . . . peck.

She ripped back the curtain and looked outside. A bomb flash lit up the sky, illuminating the fluorescent feathers of an unmistakable pigeon.

“Duchess!”

The bird angled its head, then tapped the glass with its beak. Peck . . . peck.

Susan struggled with the latch, chipping two fingernails, then threw open the window. Another flash lit up the sky. And there she was. Duchess. Perched on the ledge with her head tilted, appearing surprised at how long it had taken Susan to open the window.

Susan plucked Duchess from the ledge and squeezed the pigeon to her chest. “Duchess! Where have you been?”

The pigeon cooed.

“Susan,” Bertie called. “Are you all right, my dear?”