Tess’s eyes widened, then she started running toward the front door, afraid they were going to stampede her.
“The basket!” Jocelyn yelled. “Leave it!”
Tess bent as she kept running, put the basket on the floor, then went out the front door, slamming it behind her.
Joce and Luke attacked the basket with both hands. Packets of cheese, a slim loaf of French bread, containers of salad, and a thermos were hurriedly put on the floor. In the bottom, wrapped protectively in a plastic bag, were the yellowed pages that Joce had seen at Dr. Dave’s house.
She and Luke grabbed them at the same time, lifted them, then looked at each other.
“We have to be sane about this,” Luke said.
“I agree,” Joce said, nodding, but not releasing the pages.
“Food. Outside. Y
ou read. I dig.”
“Perfect,” she said as she kept one hand on the pages, the other putting the food back in the basket.
When everything was back in place, Luke narrowed his eyes at her. “You have to let go.”
“No, you have to let go.”
“So when will your book be finished?” Luke asked, sounding as though he were just making conversation and meant to stay there all day, never releasing his side of the manuscript.
“As soon as you let me go so we can read this!”
Luke couldn’t repress his smile as he let go of his end of the manuscript. “Okay, but you don’t get out of my sight.”
“I think I can handle that,” she said suggestively, and Luke’s smile grew broader. He took the basket in one hand, and as they went through the kitchen he got the plate of his mother’s pot roast, which he hadn’t finished.
Ten minutes later, they were outside and the food was spread around them. Luke sat on one side of the red and white cloth his grandfather had included in the picnic and ate while Joce reverently opened the old pages.
“Ready?” she asked Luke.
He nodded. “Stop talking and read!”
She looked down at the pages and began.
17
LONDON
1944
SIR, I RESPECTIVELY decline this assignment,” Edi said, her eyes straight ahead, her spine rigid as she stood in front of General Austin’s desk.
“Harcourt,” he said in a voice of patient intolerance, “this is a war and you’ll do what you’re told to do—as we all have to. If I send two soldiers to Dr. Jellicoe’s house, people will see them and suspect him. His cover will be blown. Therefore, I want you, a woman, to go with my driver and deliver this magazine to Dr. Jellie. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly clear,” Edi said. “But I disagree with your decision about who to send. One of the other women, Delores perhaps, would be better at this job than I would be.”
“Delores is an idiot. A flat tire would send her into hysterics. I need someone who can be cool under stress.”
“Perhaps you could mail the magazine to him.”
General Austin leaned back in his chair, his hands together. “Exactly what is it that you object to about this particular assignment? Are you afraid? Are you too cowardly to do something that our American boys do every day?”
Edi didn’t answer him. She’d proven her lack of fear at every bombing raid. She was always the last one to go to the shelter, as she made sure that all the other women in the office were safe.