“Right,” I say, trying not to hear my family talking inside.
Theo brightens, like everything’s all right, when it so obviously isn’t. He’s doing this to help Paul, and I feel a wave of unexpected tenderness for him. “Okay,” he says. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to get you to San Francisco.”
We pitch it as a romantic getaway, claiming Theo has leave. (Hopefully he can get it.) Until I’m assigned new war work, the destruction of the munitions factory means I’ve got some free time. So—why not San Francisco?
Before we talked to my parents, Theo had said, “Are you sure they’re going to say yes instead of taking a shotgun to my head?”
“Dad’s not the shotgun type. Mom—maybe, but probably not.” Besides, I remember how they reacted when I told them Paul and I had fallen in love. Maybe Mom and Dad aren’t cozy with Theo in this universe, but they like him. They’re not prudes. They’re . . . realistic. “Anyway, if she were going to shoot you, she would’ve done it this morning.”
“That isn’t half as comforting as you think it is.”
But asking your parents to let you go away for the weekend with the guy who’s been sneaking in and out of your room—no matter what universe you’re in, that does not go over well.
“I can’t believe you’d ask us this,” Dad says as he paces the front room. “Not knowing what you know. Traveling down to San Francisco! It’s outrageous.”
Theo and I dare a glance at each other. His expression says what I’m thinking: We screwed up.
Mom speaks for the first time since I asked her about the trip. “Henry, we’ve had no problems with the train lines this far north.”
Dad is not appeased. “Not yet. But at any moment—Didn’t today’s raid teach us anything? We don’t know when the next attack will be. We don’t get to know.”
Wait. He’s not freaked out by the thought of my staying in a hotel with Theo. Dad’s upset because I want to travel away from home, period.
I venture, “Dad, the raid last night—we came this close to being blown away.”
Mom’s voice is sharp. “Don’t remind us.”
“Don’t you see? We’re in danger everywhere. All the time. It’s not like I’m safer if I stay here.”
After a moment, my mother nods, but Dad keeps pacing. “You remember what happened to your aunt Susannah. Everyone said the passenger ships were safe as long as they sailed under a neutral flag, but still—” His words choke off, and Mom takes his hand.
Aunt Susannah is dead.
I can’t wrap my head around it at first. She’s my giddy, spoiled London aunt, who never seemed to care about much besides fashion and high society—but she loved all of us, and welcomed us whenever we visited Great Britain. One time when I was little, she took me to tea at some fancy hotel, and I felt so grown up. So special.
The last time I saw Aunt Susannah was in another dimension, the futuristic London where my parents had died during my childhood, and she had raised me. It was clear that she hadn’t done the best job at mothering; maternal instincts and Aunt Susannah don’t mix. But still, she took me in. She did her best.
Now I have to imagine her on a ship on the ocean hit with torpedoes, sinking fast. She would have been so scared, and there would have been no hope of rescue. No escape.
Mom strokes Dad’s hand. “Marguerite is right. Safety is a luxury none of us have had in a long time, and may never have again.”
He doesn’t argue, exactly, just changes strategy. “She’s eighteen, and we’re sending her off with her boyfriend?”
“We should live life to the fullest,” Mom says. We all hear the unspoken while we can.
Dad shrugs, and I know then that we’re more than halfway to a yes. My mother always wins in the end.
Theo had been willing to lie about accompanying me to San Francisco, but it turns out he didn’t have to. He was up for leave, and his superior officers gave him three whole days off. As glad as I am not to have to do this alone, Theo’s presence complicates things in ways neither of us has to speak aloud.
It’s one thing to pretend to be a couple when we’re sitting on my parents’ sofa. Another to carry that pretense all the way to a hotel for the weekend.
“I can’t believe they’re letting you do this,” Josie fumes as she drives me to the train station Friday morning. “Mom and Dad practically handed you condoms for the trip.”
“It wasn’t that easy,” I protest. My small suitcase sits in my lap; it feels like it’s made of something not much sturdier than cardboard.
Josie shrugs. “Well, there’s a war on.”
Which is pretty much what she said last night, when she let me borrow her one good dress—dark red, and made out of fabric soft enough to almost feel silky. For your romantic getaway, she’d said, and of course I couldn’t contradict her.
The train station buzzes with activity, but I glimpse Theo right away. When I wave to him, he jogs to us and—fulfilling his role—gives me a hug. “Hey. Was starting to think you’d ditched me.”
“Never,” I say. I hope that sounds flirty enough.
“Have a good time, you two,” Josie says. Already she’s turning to go. “Bang those hotel walls even louder than mine.”
Oh, my God. My cheeks feel like they’re on fire.
Theo waves goodbye to her, then crooks his elbow. I slip my arm through it. Like a man and woman would if they wanted to touch each other every moment. Like we were in love.
9
FROM THE TRAIN WINDOWS, I FINALLY GET MY FIRST REAL look at the damage done to this battered world. The bombed-out neighborhoods I drove through the other day—the one I walked out of on shaking legs—that seemed like one terrible thing that happened in one devastated place. Even though I’d learned about the war, I still couldn’t envision what that truly meant.
Now I don’t have to. The evidence spreads out on either side of the train.
We must live farther than I’d thought from the Berkeley I know, because our train ride lasts awhile. Then again, we’re moving very slowly, which gives me a chance to look around. Instead of the urban sprawl of my world’s Bay Area, we pass through only a few small towns, each one of which looks sadder and more broken-down than the last. Paint peels from buildings; litter lines the potholed streets; and nobody seems to be driving, or walking around, or doing much of anything. Mostly, though, the train travels through fields that look almost too abundant. Clover and weeds have grown as high as the train itself, sometimes higher. Vines have reclaimed what remains of old fences. Nobody has farmed or built or even mowed grass around here for a very long time.
Often, in a new universe, I try to decide which artist would have been most likely to create a world like the one before me. This time, I can’t think of a single painter who would have created a world so gray and hopeless. Though maybe Andrew Wyeth could have captured this if he’d wanted to—nature and the countryside, but strangely haunted.
“How long do you think this war has been going on?” Theo says, quietly enough not to attract attention from the other passengers in the train car.
“Years. A decade? Maybe more.” Looking at the utter deadness around us—in what used to be some of the most expensive property in the entire country—I could believe the war has lasted an entire generation.