Read Chapter 6: Stolen Moments

The step at Bethnal Green was still gritty with dust when Maggie reached the platform edge, but the tunnel had returned to its strange rhythm—families settling onto blankets, children playing cards by hurricane lamp, old men pretending to sleep through the drone above. She found her usual spot near the far wall, where the brick curved into shadow, and sat with her back against the cold surface.

She'd been coming earlier each evening. Not because the raids were worse—they were, slightly, a fact of September—but because Thomas's shift at the unit often ended before the worst of it, and he'd taken to finding her in the ten minutes between his last defusal and the first whistle of falling bombs.

He appeared at the platform mouth at half past eight, still in his heavy wool coat, his face smudged with soot along one cheekbone. He spotted her and crossed the crowded floor with the careful step of a man who'd learned to read ground for tremors.

"You look tired," she said as he lowered himself beside her.

"Three this afternoon." He pulled off his gloves, flexing his fingers. "Two in Stepney, one in Whitechapel—a big one, wedged under a bakery. Forty minutes on my knees in a crawl space."

"Is there cream in your tea tonight?" she asked, reaching into her bag.

"I'd settle for the tea."

She handed him the flask she'd started carrying, wrapped in a strip of her mother's old tea towel. He drank, and something in his shoulders unknotted.

"You didn't have to come," he said.

"I know." She smiled. "But the shelter's dull without you, and Mrs. Albright's been telling me about her son's ingrown toenail for three nights running."

Thomas laughed—a short, surprising sound that made a woman across the platform glance over. He lowered his voice. "The unit's lost two men this month. One transferred to Liverpool, one down with pneumonia. We're running four-hour rotations, sometimes longer."

Maggie studied the hollow beneath his cheekbones. "That's not sustainable."

"No." He looked at the flask in his hands. "But the bombs don't consult my rota."

She'd been thinking about it since their tea in Camden—the way his unit worked through the night while the city slept above them. The coffee at the station was terrible; she knew, because she'd tasted it once when Pemberton had offered it as a joke. But there was a difference between terrible coffee and coffee that arrived because someone had carried it through the dark.

"What if I brought it to you?" she said.

"Brought what?"

"Coffee. In the evenings, before the raids start, if you're still at it." She watched his face. "I know where your unit is. Warden Pemberton told me."

Thomas was quiet for a long moment. A child ran past them, chased by his sister, and the dust swirled in the lamplight.

"That's a long walk for coffee," he said.

"It's a longer night when I wonder if you've eaten."

He turned to look at her fully, and she felt the weight of his attention like a physical thing. His eyes were the color of the Thames in winter—grey, with something darker moving underneath.

"People will talk," he said.

"Let them."

"Maggie." He said her name like he was testing its architecture. "I'm not—the kind of man who has much to offer right now. I work until I can't see straight, I sleep in a boarding house with three other men, and I carry blueprints for houses I can't build because the war won't let me."

"I know what you carry." She touched the pocket of her coat, where the torn page of his blueprint sat folded against her heart. "I've seen them."

The all-clear hadn't sounded yet, but the raid above had quieted to a distant rumble, like thunder moving east. A few people began to gather their things, testing the night.

Thomas stood and offered her his hand. She took it, and he pulled her up with a gentleness that belied his strength. They walked toward the exit, emerging into a street that smelled of smoke and rain. The lamppost on the corner was still intact, its light pooling on the wet pavement in a circle of gold.

He stopped beneath it.

"Maggie." His voice was rough. "I don't know what happens after this—after any of this. My brother, your family, the war, the next bomb with my name on it. I can't promise you a future because I can't see one."

"I can," she said. "I can see it fine."

"How?"

She stepped closer, into the circle of light, until she could see the flecks of dust in his hair and the tired lines around his mouth. "Because I've decided to. That's how it works, isn't it? You look at a blueprint and you see a house that isn't there yet. You look at a bomb and you see the wires that will make it harmless. Someone has to see the thing before it exists, or it never will."

Thomas stared at her. The lamp buzzed overhead, and somewhere in the distance a fire engine wailed.

"You're terrifying," he said.

"Is that a problem?"

"No." His hand came up, hesitant, and touched her cheek. His palm was calloused, warm. "It's the first thing that's made sense to me since Arthur's ship went down."

He leaned in, and she met him halfway. The kiss was brief—a brush of lips, a held breath—but it landed in her chest like a stone in still water, sending rings outward.

When they pulled apart, his forehead rested against hers. "I'm on duty at eleven."

"Then I'll see you at the unit before that." She stepped back, tucking her hands in her pockets. "With coffee."

"Maggie."

She turned.

"If the raids are bad tomorrow, don't come." His voice was serious now. "Promise me."

"I'll make no such promise." She smiled. "But I'll bring sugar, if you behave."

She walked away down the empty street, feeling his gaze on her back until she turned the corner. When she reached her door, she pressed her fingers to her lips and held the kiss there for three seconds longer.

Her mother was still awake when Maggie slipped inside, knitting by the gaslight. She looked up, needles pausing.

"You're late tonight."

"Mrs. Albright needed help sorting the donations." Maggie hung her coat on its hook, careful to keep the blueprint page in the pocket. "The shaking knocked half the shelves down."

Her mother's eyes searched her face, and Maggie felt the familiar squeeze of a lie forming around the truth. She was getting too good at this—too practiced at the way her voice flattened, the way her hands stayed still.

"Your father's written again," her mother said, returning to her knitting. "He heard from his brother in Toronto. There's a house available near the lake, small but sound. He says the paperwork could be done by Christmas."

Maggie's heart tightened. "Mother—"

"I'm not saying we're going." Her mother's needles clicked. "I'm saying he's trying. You could at least acknowledge that."

Maggie stood in the doorway, the taste of Thomas still on her lips, the weight of the blueprint over her heart. And for the first time, she understood what the next months would cost her.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I acknowledge it."

She went to her room and closed the door, then sat on her bed in the dark, listening to her mother's knitting needles resume their rhythm in the next room. From her coat pocket, she pulled the torn blueprint page and smoothed it on her knee. In the faint light, she traced the lines of a house that didn't exist yet—a kitchen, a garden, a wall of windows facing south.

Tomorrow she would bring him coffee. And the day after that, she would figure out how to tell one of them the truth.