Free The Heart's War by Lucy Lambert

there are U-boats outside St. John's harbor," she said.
    Then she shook her head, and her sight returned to the here and now. She offered me her hands and I accepted them. Her skin was warm and calloused, dry without a hint of moisture. How could she stand the worry so well? I wondered.
    "Eleanor, you're going to stay with me."
    "Marie! I can't," I began.
    She shushed me. "No, I won't hear any answer but 'yes.' You've nowhere else to go, and I won't have my future daughter-in-law sleeping in the streets. You'll stay here until your mother finds the good sense to realize her mistake."
    Some of the tension went out of my shoulders as she squeezed my fingers reassuringly. My throat wouldn't let any words out, so I smiled and nodded at her.
    "We won't let Jeff hear of this. It will just worry him."
    "I wish I were going with him!" I said.
    I blurted the words, not really considering them. I knew that I couldn't go with him; women were not allowed anywhere near those trenches. And besides, I hadn't the money for the train ticket out to Halifax. And there were few to no ocean liners willing to take civilians over. Most of them had been requisitioned by the government for troop transport in any case. It was an impossibility. I was stuck in Kitchener.
    "I know, dear, I know," Marie said.
    She withdrew one of her hands and gently stroked my cheek.
    After supper, I explained to Marie about how I'd left so hastily that I'd brought almost nothing with me. No clothes, no money. I told her that I'd contribute all I could from my meager salary to the added expense of having me around. She replied that it wasn't necessary.
    The guest bedroom was mine for the duration of my stay. I also helped her pull down a dusty old chest from the attic. The old padlock set in it wasn't locked. Inside were her old dresses. Marie was a few inches shorter than I; nothing that making sure I kept my stockings pulled up wouldn't fix. And they were decades out of style, but I said nothing as she pulled out dress after dress, holding them up against me and saying how pretty I'd be in them, how pretty she'd felt wearing them.
    It was a side of Marie I'd never seen. She came from a Mennonite family, and I'd always thought her somewhat severe and disciplined, if kind. I'd never pictured her as a young woman who wanted to feel pretty. It must have positively scandalized her family.
    She enjoyed it so much, and I realized then that she must have desperately wanted a daughter to play with. But she'd had two sons. Jeff's brother had died as an infant in his crib many years ago. Jeff was the younger of the two, and thus had no memory of the other boy.
    Marie's sudden and unexpected girlishness pulled me from my foul mood, and I found myself smiling and laughing with her. For the first time that day, I felt as though things might turn out all right after all.
     
    Chapter 8
     
    Marie rose with the sun the next morning. The guest bed was hard beneath my back, the mattress worn and sagging slightly in the middle. I hadn't slept well during the night, spending most of it rolling from one side to the other, fluffing the pillow, alternating between pulling the cover up all the way and kicking it down to the foot.
    I didn't even want to think about how my hair looked after all this commotion. I'd tied in into a ponytail, but from the way it splayed about my shoulders in tangles and knots, I didn't hold out much hope.
    Over the course of a life, you become used to the sounds a building makes. As the air cools, I knew, a house settles, creaking and groaning like an old man lowering himself into a chair.
    The groans and creaks of my house were as familiar a sound to me as my own name, and therefore didn't frighten me. But every pop, every shifting board, of Marie's townhouse sent my eyes fluttering open.
    So, when she finally got up, I too was quick to rise. The bits of sleep I'd managed to snap up had been filled with more of those terrible battlefield dreams.
    A hot run of