Susan wavered. Her mind and body were drained. Her heart ached with remorse. She’d never given up on anything in her life, at least nothing that mattered. But how could she go on? Tired, hungry, and defeated, she closed her eyes and said, “Very well.”

For the afternoon, under a drizzling rain, they loaded the pigeons onto Jonathan’s lorry. Susan gathered her few belongings—an armful of clothes and the tea tin. She had Jonathan drive her to see Mrs. McCreary; she returned the sewing basket, kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her for all she’d done. Before departing, she gave Mrs. McCreary Jonathan’s address in Northampton where she could be reached.

As they drove away, Susan’s hands trembled. Be an egg. She buried her fear, determined to someday return to Epping, assuming Britain wasn’t occupied by Hitler’s army. “I’ll be back after the war,” she whispered to herself.

CHAPTER 55 - EPPING, ENGLAND—JULY 18, 1996

CHAPTER 55

EPPING, ENGLAND—JULY 18, 1996

“Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,” Susan counted.

“No peeking!” a small boy shouted.

“Yes, no peeking, Grandmother!” a girl called.

“Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .” Susan pressed her hands over her eyes. A cabinet squeaked open and abruptly closed. The screen door banged against its frame. The patter of small feet faded away. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. Ready or not, here I come.”

Susan lowered her hands. Her eyes squinted, adjusting to sunlight spraying through the kitchen window. She stood from her chair, hoping the pain in her knees would allow her to hold out long enough to finish the game. Last week, she had only enough stamina in her rickety legs for two rounds of hide-and-seek, disappointing her grandchildren—Hugh, age five, and Evie, seven. So today she’d chosen to use her cane, an ugly metal contraption with four miniature stubby legs. “It’s for extra stability,” her doctor had said. But she hated it. And rarely used it, except for when she needed extra endurance, like the days her daughter, Clover, dropped off the grandchildren.

Susan hobbled over the hardwood floor. A warm breeze blew through an open window near the fireplace, the only original part of the structure, although the stones were now in all the wrong places. She’d rebuilt the cottage five years ago, much to Clover’s dismay. “Perhaps it would be more prudent to consider a retirement home,” Clover had said. But although she respected Clover’s opinion, it was her life. And most of her life, at least to this point, had been centered in London.

During the remainder of the war, Susan trained war pigeons in Northampton. After the war, she finished her studies and became an ornithology professor at the University of London. She got married at the overripe age of thirty-three. Raised a child. Retired. And buried a husband, Duncan, after a long and arduous battle with colon cancer. Her mark in this world, she believed, was nearly complete.