“It’s not raining,” she whispered, awe-struck by something as simple as the cessation of water falling from the sky.

“About goddamned time,” he said, reflexively doing the same as she had, tipping his head up to the sky.

All of a sudden, the deluge began again, striking them full in the face with drops as hard and stinging as rocks. They were rocks, Jess realized. Hailstones, and for some reason, rather than wincing as one hit her brow, she laughed, and so did Dan and they started to run as best they could.

“Next time, don’t say anything and the reprieve might last a little longer,” Dan mock-grouched as they reached her tent.

“I jinxed it, didn’t I?” Jess said, pulling open the tent flap.

Dan smiled when he saw Victorine, soundly sleeping. “Is this your bed?” he asked as he took in Jess’s typewriter and the crate containing her cameras and paper, held up off the ground by rocks. “I thought she was staying in the convalescent tent.”

“She kind of invited herself here. I don’t mind. She keeps me warm.”

“Jess…”

She held up her hand. “I don’t need any thanks. It’s what anyone would do. You love her, the men love her, hell, I’ve half fallen in love with her in one week…” Her voice trailed off at the look on Dan’s face.

“What?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You can’t say that.”

Can’t say what? Jess was about to ask when she suddenly realized. Jinx. If you say the rain has stopped, then it’s bound to start up again. If you say you love someone, then they’re bound to…die.

“I take it back,” she said. “Her bony elbows stick into me all night and you should see the bruises on my legs. She can kick in her sleep harder than any horse.”

Victorine stirred in her sleep, her leg shooting out suddenly and they both laughed. The girl’s eyes flew open. “You came back,” she said sleepily to Dan and he sat on the bed beside her and stroked her hair. Within half a minute she was asleep again.

“Will you read this?” Jess asked abruptly.

In the faint glow of the kerosene lamp, sitting on her bed, Victorine asleep beside him, Dan read her words about Victorine while Jess kept her back turned studiously toward him. When she could no longer hear pages rustling, she said, “I don’t want to send it to my editor unless you approve.”

“You should definitely send it,” was all he said before he gave Victorine a quick kiss on the cheek and left to get Jennings.

Six

Jess’s story about Victorine and the accompanying pictures were syndicated worldwide. I can’t thank you enough, Bel had written. You’ve given Vogue credibility during this period of war that it wouldn’t otherwise have. Jess’s name was one people now knew for something other than how she looked in a dress.

When she’d first learned how far and wide her photographs would travel, Jess sat in the near empty bath at the Savoy Hotel and cried. She cried for Victorine, for the men who made it off the mountain that day only to die by nightfall, for the nurses who had to patch up the men and send them back out into the field, for the people who saw her pictures and didn’t understand that each moment was underlit, hauntingly so, by what had come before, and what would come after.