The Secret of Raven Point (24 page)

He was watching her, his gaze shifting between the tweezers and the tray.

“How are you feeling, Christopher?”

His eye blinked several times, but his mouth remained firmly closed.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard the good news,” she said. “Dr. Willard managed to stall your court-martial proceedings.” The intensity of his stare unsettled her; she removed the last stitch and hastily lathered petroleum jelly over his cheeks. “There—all done. You’ve got enough Vaseline on you to catch flies.”

She lifted her tray and stood to leave, turning back. “Look, I know you hear me, and I believe you understand everything I’m saying. I’m Tuck’s sister.” Nerves gripped Juliet’s stomach, but she pushed breathlessly on. “I just want to know what happened to my brother. I want to know why you said ‘Tuck, forgive me.’ I want to know why you have his white glove.”

Barnaby slowly shook his head, and Juliet knelt.

“No,
what
?” she whispered. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

He laid his cheek, thick with Vaseline, against his pillow, and gazed dreamily at the far wall of the tent. “Please, wake up,” she said. “Just come back to the world and talk. We’ll take care of you.” But Barnaby’s face remained limp, his stare vacant, and Juliet had the same feeling as when she’d ranted at the sky after Mother Hen’s death—forsaken.

The next morning, a letter arrived for Juliet:

Dear Nurse Dufresne,

Many thanks for taking the time to write, and I appreciate your good intentions, but I must confess, when I first opened your letter, it seemed the worst of insults.

“Your husband has been injured, by his own hand, it is said. But we are investigating his actions fully, and his physical recovery has been nothing short of miraculous.”

Nurse, please understand, my husband died almost six months ago here in the States working for the army at a munitions depot. I already suffered the trauma of the official army notification, two months pregnant, no less, and have had all the bad news about my husband that I can take for a lifetime.

I can only assume that you are writing to me about my brother, Christopher Barnaby. Your mistake was an innocent one. No doubt I’m the only girl writing to Christopher! And you were quick to assume . . . I’ve always believed in truth telling, and I want to reciprocate for your honesty in writing. What I’d like to say is that Christopher isn’t the marrying kind and never will be. Whether this helps your understanding of him, I can’t be certain, but I offer the information just in case, and trust you have his care as your top priority. If he suffered some kind of mental break, please know that it must have been an extremely difficult place for him. Christopher is an idealist, but also a very sensitive soul. He always was. Guns and firefights aren’t for him. He’s a talker, a thinker. I wish he’d never gotten it in his head to enlist. I was worried he wouldn’t belong, but there’s no stopping a man with duty in his heart.

As for the name Tucker Dufresne—Christopher never mentioned him, though he didn’t much write about anyone in his squad. I didn’t get the sense he liked them much, though that’s not too unusual. He liked to write about justice and liberty; principles usually made him happier than people.

Sorry I can’t be of more help.

I’ll pray for him daily, but in the meantime, please give him my love and write if anything changes. Christopher is amazingly strong, in his own way. I don’t know what I’d do without him. Send him home as soon as you can.

Tina Barnaby Emmons

JULIET DIPPED THE
comb in the metal bowl of water and parted Dr. Willard’s hair. Unfolding the cloth, she found surgical scissors.

“Will these do?”

“I just hope no one’s performing a celiotomy with the barber shears,” he said. “You’re kind to do this. I only asked out of desperation. Patients expect me to look generally clean-cut.”

The day was hot and bright, and Willard was seated outside his tent; a threadbare towel lay across his shoulders over his khaki shirt, and Juliet stood behind him. She began trimming the back of his hair just above his neck, blowing the cuttings.

“Dr. Willard, I want to ask you something . . . well, and tell you something. It’s personal, and I know you don’t like that sort of thing, but it bears on our professional work. With Barnaby. I think you should know. It’s sort of about my brother.”

“Tucker Dufresne?”

“Yes.”

“And this relates to our patient?”

“It does.”

“Proceed”

She let the scissors dangle. “Tuck was reported missing in action almost a year ago now, here in Italy. And the thing is, just before he went missing, he sent a letter to me that sounded somewhat strange; well, it sounded almost delirious, and he mentioned a woman named Ms. Van Effing, which was a name we used to signal each other that something was wrong. So I decided
to enlist. . . .”

“Please don’t tell me you decided to ship here to Italy to see if you could find him.”

Juliet was silent.

“Nurse Dufresne, I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t tell you you’re on a wild-goose chase.”

“That’s what I thought at first.” She stepped in front of him. “Private Barnaby
knew
Tuck.”

“I’m sure dozens of soldiers in the division knew your brother.”

“Dr. Willard, that white glove. The one you thought belonged to his wife?” She crouched, reaching for his hands. “It belonged to
Tuck
. Our stepmother gave it to him before he shipped over.”

“I’m not sure that means anything for our patient or for your quest.”

Juliet herself was uncertain what it meant, but it couldn’t be ignored. What if Barnaby’s breakdown and Tuck’s disappearance were connected?

“You don’t think it’s strange,” she said, “that they served in the same squad but Tuck never mentioned Barnaby? He mentioned all the others.”

“On the long list of things I find strange about this war? Come on, Juliet. That doesn’t even graze the bottom.” He must have seen her eyes widen in anger: “I see where your mind is leading you and I’m trying to spare you: it’s a dark and endless passage.”

Juliet stood impatiently. Having finally decided after months of secrecy to share the entire truth with someone else, she’d expected, if not practical support, at least some compassion, something more than Willard’s cold circumspection. She turned away from him and in a rush of frustration confessed what she had meant to withhold, what she did not yet fully understand: “I think there’s something with Barnaby we didn’t realize. That I didn’t realize. I got a letter from Tina.” She looked back.

Dr. Willard immediately stiffened, shifting in his chair.
“And how, exactly, did that come about?”

“I wrote to her.”

“Nurse Dufresne.”

“Dr. Willard, she’s not his wife; she’s his
sister
.”

“Cousin, aunt, next-door neighbor—it doesn’t concern you. You shouldn’t have written.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you’re sorry. People who do things they shouldn’t are always sorry afterward. But they keep doing them! I need you to respect the work I’m doing here”—he pulled the towel from his shoulders and let it fall to the ground—“and if you can, try to maintain, challenging as it might be for a girl, some slight semblance of professionalism. We need boundaries in this work, or it simply doesn’t work. And we need it to work; the stakes are very high. So we must have clear lines—lines that do not, under any circumstances, get crossed.”

“I understand.”

“Then please stop using my patient for your own ends. And make no mistake, that’s what you’re doing. Your job is to take care of him: to help him recover from his physical injury, and to assist me in trying to help him regain some shred of mental and emotional stability. He is not a clue in your investigation or a piece in your personal puzzle. He is a human being, one who needs a great deal of help right now or he may be put to death—by our own army. Are you registering the severity of the situation?”

Willard’s anger was frightening, his disapproval unsettling—she realized now how much his closeness, his respect, meant to her.

“But I thought they postponed the court-martial until you had spent more time with him and given a full report. Until he was at least speaking.”

“In a sane and rational and just universe, certainly. Not in this one. Because they count on me to get hundreds of soldiers back to the front lines, they occasionally grant me a wish. I bought Barnaby a week, two more at best. They are essentially humoring me.”

“I had no idea.”

“I didn’t burden you with these details because, as I said, boundaries matter. These are
my
professional worries, not yours.”

Juliet lifted the towel from the ground and folded it several times. She could not bring herself to look at him. “I’m embarrassed.”

“Oh, come now, people do reckless and impulsive things in the name of love, and I can see that you love your brother. I truly hope you find him. But I can’t help you. My plate is overflowing here; you know that. For the past week I’ve been struggling to make sure Private Wilkowski doesn’t starve himself to death out of fear. I am Barnaby’s only advocate and his only ally. My obligation is to him. And that far supersedes any personal fondness I may have for you. Now, if we can agree we’ve come to a peaceful understanding on this matter, and you trust my anger has passed, and I trust you with surgical shears pointed at my head, would you be so kind as to finish my haircut?”

He straightened his glasses, sunlight glinting off the lenses, and looked toward the green hills beyond the encampment. She saw now that he would never allow her to question Barnaby about Tuck. He had closed that door, and she couldn’t blame him. She’d been taking advantage of her role as Barnaby’s nurse, rifling through his belongings, interrogating his sister. What was wrong with her? She had no other options; that’s what was wrong. No other leads. And her brother had asked for her help.

Juliet draped the towel around Willard’s shoulders. She moved behind him and clipped carefully at the hair on the top of his head.

“In your entirely inappropriate and unprofessional correspondence with Private Barnaby’s sister,” Willard said, gazing at the hills, “did you learn anything that might be of use to us?”

“She said Christopher wasn’t the marrying kind. And she wrote
it, well, as if she thought it was absurd I had mistaken her for his wife. Said she’d be the only girl writing him.”

“I see. Anything else?”

“Not really.”

“So, this
suggestion
as to Barnaby’s lack of interest in women . . . do you think it has any bearing on our work with Barnaby? Or on what happened to him at the front, or why he turned his gun on himself?”

Juliet considered the question. “It sounded like Captain Brilling hated him, and like the men in his unit had strange feelings about him, so maybe it’s related.”

Willard nodded slowly, a cautious gesture acknowledging the scissors above him. “A respectable speculation.”

Juliet continued working, the noon sun bright in her eyes. Sweat gathered on her forehead, and she paused to wipe it with the back of her hand. She heard a surge of voices and saw people spilling out of the mess tent, pausing, as they plunged their dirty bowls in the water barrels, to take in Juliet and Willard. She was the only nurse he ever spent time with, the only member of the hospital he socialized with, and she wondered what they thought was going on.
She
wondered what was going on.

Eventually she lifted the towel from his shoulders and shook free the clippings. “Much more civilized,” she said, stepping to the front of him. “I’m sure they’ll finally all stop calling you Tarzan.”

Willard grinned. “I should be so lucky.”

She wiped clean the surgical shears, rewrapped them in the cloth, and set them back in the bag. She zipped the bag closed, debating her next words.

“Dr. Willard, please don’t get angry or think this is personally motivated. But I’m just wondering. . . . This semicoma, where he sometimes speaks and sometimes seems to listen, then stops for a
week: it’s so
strange
. And it seems to go on and on. Don’t you ever wonder if, well, it’s possible he’s faking?”

“Every minute.”