Read Chapter 24: The Fog of War

The ward clock showed half past six when Thomas sat up, swung his legs over the side of the cot, and began pulling on his boots. Maggie watched him from the chair by the window, the wool of his handkerchief soft between her fingers.

"You're not supposed to be out of bed," she said.

"I've been out of bed for three days." He laced the boots with quick, efficient movements, his hands steady. "The doctor cleared me yesterday. Pemberton's just been waiting for the paperwork to catch up."

The air raid had ended two hours ago, and the ward held the quiet of a place recovering from violence. A nurse moved between beds with a tray of medicines. Through the window, the first grey light of morning touched the rooftops, and somewhere in the distance a fire engine's bell faded into the city's muted hum.

Maggie stood. "They're sending you somewhere."

Thomas looked at her then, and the weight of what he was about to say moved across his face before he spoke it. "Stepney. The schoolyard. They've got three bombs down there, and one of them's got a new fuse. The kind we haven't seen before."

"The one from yesterday's call."

He nodded. "They've kept the area clear. The children were moved out before the first one landed, thank God, but the school is close to the docks. If the big one goes, it could take the warehouses with it."

Maggie crossed the space between them and sat on the edge of the cot. She could see the hollows under his eyes, the way his collar hung loose on his neck. He had lost weight in the hospital, more than she had wanted to admit.

"Thomas, you had shrapnel in your shoulder four days ago."

"They took it out." He touched the bandage beneath his shirt. "Pemberton's not sending me into a nest of them. Just the one. The tricky one. Apparently I'm the only man in the unit who's seen this type of fuse before."

"Seen it where?"

He didn't answer. The silence stretched between them, and Maggie understood. He had seen it in another city, on another job, and the men who had handled it then were not all alive to talk about it.

She wanted to argue. She wanted to take his face in her hands and tell him that he had done enough, that the Army could find another man, that the war would not end because he sat one more day in a hospital bed. But she had stood in the shelters long enough to know that there were some arguments the war simply didn't hear.

"When do you go?"

"Within the hour. They're sending a lorry."

Maggie nodded slowly. She unfolded the handkerchief in her hands and pressed it flat against her leg, smoothing the creases.

"I'll keep this with me," she said.

Thomas reached out, covering her hands with his own. His palm was warm, calloused, and she felt the tremor in his fingers that he couldn't quite hide.

"I wrote you a letter last night," he said. "I've been carrying it in my pocket, trying to decide if it was too much."

"Too much for what?"

"Too much for a man who was just about to go defuse a bomb." He smiled faintly. "I didn't want it to sound like a goodbye."

"Then don't let it be one."

He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded envelope. The paper was creased from being folded and unfolded, the corners soft. Maggie took it from him, feeling the weight of it, the way his hand lingered for a moment before letting go.

"Read it when I'm gone," he said. "I meant every word, but I want to say it to you properly first, next time I see you. The letter is for the part of you that needs reminding while I'm away."

Maggie tucked the envelope into the pocket of her tunic, next to the handkerchief. She leaned forward and kissed him, careful of his shoulder, and he held her there with his good arm for a long moment.

"I'll be in the shelters," she said against his mouth. "I'll be where you need me to be."

"Just be alive when I get back. That's all I need."

---

The lorry came at seven, a squat green vehicle that rumbled up to the hospital gates like an impatient animal. Thomas shrugged into his greatcoat, wincing just once when the weight settled on his shoulder. Maggie walked with him to the gate, her hand in his, the morning cold enough to fog their breath.

A sergeant leaned out of the lorry's cab. "Ready, Lieutenant?"

Thomas nodded. He turned to Maggie, his face suddenly serious in the grey light.

"The fuses on these new bombs are different," he said quietly. "They're designed to go off when you try to extract them. We've had some luck with freezing them, but it's slow work, and the clocks keep running."

"What are you saying?"

He looked at her for a long moment. "I'm saying there might be a day when the lorry comes back without me. And I want you to know that if that happens, if I don't come home to you, I'd still have done it all the same. Every moment of it."

"That's the letter talking," Maggie said, but her voice was thin.

"That's the truth talking." He kissed her once, hard, and then he was climbing into the lorry, and the engine was rumbling, and the vehicle was pulling away, and Maggie stood at the hospital gate watching until the green shape turned a corner and disappeared.

---

The shelters were quiet that afternoon. Maggie moved through the tunnels of the Underground station, checking the bunks, the water stores, the first aid kits. The work kept her hands busy and her mind from trailing after a green lorry heading toward the docks.

At four o'clock, she sat down on an upturned crate near the canteen and pulled the letter from her pocket. She had been saving it all day, saving it like a ration she didn't want to spend.

The paper unfolded to show Thomas's handwriting—sharp, angular lines pressed hard into the page. She read standing up at first, then sat down suddenly, the words hitting her like something physical.

*Maggie,*

*Last night I lay in that hospital bed and thought about all the places I would rather be. Not because the bed was hard, though it was, and not because the food was bad, though it was that as well. Because you were not there.*

*I've spent ten years learning how to take things apart. How to find the wire that connects one thing to another, how to cut it at exactly the right moment and still walk away. But I have never been afraid the way I am afraid now. Not of the bombs. Of the possibility of a future that doesn't have you in it.*

*I keep a picture of you in my head. The way you looked in the station that first night, with the dust in your hair and that steel helmet too big for you. I thought, there is a woman who knows what she is for. And I was right. I just didn't know then that I was part of it.*

*I don't know what the next weeks will bring. I don't know what this new fuse wants from me. But I know this, Margaret Hollis: I am going to build that house with you. The one with the tall windows and the garden wall. I am going to stand at the door and watch you come home to me every night for the rest of my life.*

*And if the war has other plans for me, then I am going to spend whatever time I have left being grateful that I got to love you.*

*Wait for me, Maggie. That's all I ask.*

*Yours,*

*Thomas*

Maggie folded the letter carefully and pressed it against her chest, feeling the paper crackle through the fabric of her uniform. She had folded her apron of truths and secrets inside herself, and she knew the day was coming when she would have to lay them out for him—the age she had let him believe, the mother's savings, the departure that was now four days from the solicitor's desk.

But not today. Today he was somewhere in the docklands, kneeling over a bomb with a fuse that wanted to kill him, and she would carry his letter and his handkerchief and his blueprints in her heart and go back to the work of keeping people alive until he came home to her.

A distant boom echoed through the tunnel, and Maggie felt the ground shift slightly beneath her feet. She stood, her hand finding the envelope in her pocket, and walked toward the platform where the families were already beginning to gather.

The letter would not let her go. It stayed with her, a warm pressure against her ribs, while the evening raids began to mourn over London and the first bombs fell somewhere near the docks.