“No!” Susan screamed, her vocal cords about to rupture. She dropped into the hole and dug through rubble. Jagged splinters ripped skin from her hands. Dirt clung to her bloodied heel. She dredged debris, crying his name, again and again.

She found him under what used to be a dresser. Prying off the broken furniture, she fell to her knees and caressed his cheeks. Carefully, she wiped dirt from the crevices of his eyelids.

“Wake up,” she sobbed. She dug out his limp legs, buried in a mixture of stone, plaster, and broken wood. “Wake!”

The distinct sound of a fire-engine bell approached but was turned away by the roar of another air-raid siren. She lowered her head to Bertie’s still chest and wailed.

CHAPTER 54 - EPPING, ENGLAND—MARCH 21, 1941

CHAPTER 54

EPPING, ENGLAND—MARCH 21, 1941

Spring rain dripped onto the earthen floor. Susan looked up at the tarp covering a large hole in the roof of the bomb shelter and noticed a corner was loose. She retrieved a spool of string from under her cot and cut off a strip, using a rusted paring knife that had been salvaged from the rubble. She stepped outside. The string wriggled in the wet wind. As she began to secure the tarp, she glanced at the spot that was once her lovely cottage.

The debris had been removed, and the hole filled in, now distinctly marked by newly sprouted grass—thin, wispy, and two shades lighter than the rest of the yard. Although the flower beds had been either destroyed in the blast or trampled by village volunteers during a hasty demolition, sparse patches of resurrected crocuses and daffodils now decorated the lawn. Scarring the grounds was a pile of stone and lumber that had been placed next to the loo.

It had been some months since Bertie’s funeral and over six months since the Luftwaffe began their aerial raids, which continued almost nightly. The passing of time had done little to ease her pain. And solitude, she believed, only exacerbated her regret, the horror of that dreadful night seared deep within her soul.

Refusing to leave Epping—and her family’s farm, for that matter—she’d chosen to temporarily live in the bomb shelter, surviving on cold rations: bread, boiled eggs, turnips, and wilted cabbage. She collected her water, for both drinking and washing, from a rain barrel. She slept on a cot buried under mounds of musty blankets, which did little to keep her warm or muffle the nocturnal war that raged in the skies. She stayed in the shelter, except for the coldest of nights, when she accepted an occasional bed and a warm bath at the McCrearys. Although Mrs. McCreary had offered for Susan to move in, Susan had politely declined by saying, It’s only temporary. But a day turned into a week, which turned into a month. And winter turned to spring.