Susan finished tying down the tarp, then scanned the empty green pasture. The sheep, and even the lambs, had been requisitioned by the government to clothe and feed the military. Her grandfather had adored his sheep and had only sheared the flock for wool. And it saddened her to think that, although it was necessary for Britain’s survival, Bertie’s beloved lambs were now canned meat.

She made her way to a pigeon loft. Along with the cottage, most of the lofts had been destroyed. With only a few pigeons remaining, Susan consolidated them into a single loft. As she opened the door, she glanced at the grain barrel, which had been Duchess’s favorite perch. Her hopes of Duchess returning had been snuffed out months ago. All she had left of her pet pigeon were memories. And Ollie’s messages that she had so bravely carried out of occupied France.

Each morning, Susan read Ollie’s messages. Before meals and sleeping, she prayed that he was alive. But as months passed, her belief that he would someday return slowly faded. Now, several months since Ollie’s last note, she’d become resigned to the fact that she’d never see him again. And that everyone she loved had been taken by war.

Susan poured grain into the feeding tray. The pigeons swarmed and pecked. Less than fifty pigeons remained, a fraction of the nearly 1,000 that had once filled their lofts. Most were old pigeons or squabs, unsuitable for service. But she didn’t care that these birds were of no use to the National Pigeon Service. They were alive. And for the moment, that’s all that mattered.

Leaving the loft, Susan picked a handful of daffodils and placed them in the basket on her bicycle. Having no use for the truck, she’d sold it to buy an old woodstove and pigeon feed. She pedaled to the village with cold rain pelting her coat. As she turned into Epping Cemetery, the bicycle’s tires bounced on chunks of gravel, causing her arms to rattle. She braked near a patch of upturned soil and leaned her bicycle against an alder tree adorned with long brown cones. She gathered the contents of her basket and walked to a newly chiseled hunk of limestone. She kneeled, rain seeping through her skirt, and stared at Bertie’s headstone. A twin marker a few feet away bore her grandmother’s name, Agnes Shepherd. Her parents, casualties of the Spanish flu pandemic, were buried on the opposite side of the cemetery.

Susan placed half of the flowers on her grandparents’ graves, keeping the remainder for her parents when she finished her rounds. As she stared at the etched stone, her guilt swelled, crashing like waves in a storm.