The Way to LA
Jame Rada, Jr.
3: A Different Courage
Celine Marcon…Winfrey… she had to remind herself that she was now Celine Winfrey and married…awoke in the morning with a cooler head. The dawn’s pale light filtered through the thin curtains. She watched as the bright rays slowly reached across the bed until they reached her face.
“Celine Winfrey,” she whispered. It still sounded awkward on her tongue. It would have been easier to get used to if Nathan were with her. Then she would have felt like a bride and not a criminal using a fake name.
Bill had been right about that. Hers had been a rushed marriage, not arranged, but done out of desperation because she needed protection against the Huns who were killing members of the Resistance when they caught them, even her sister.
She should still have been in France, fighting the soldiers who had invaded. It had grown too dangerous, though. Her little group had been effective, but they had been noticed. Now, she was the only one left, and only because she wasn’t still in France.
Nathan Winfrey was nothing like those brutal soldiers. On their wedding night, he’d been gentle, his touch respectful—a far cry from the German men who had followed her into the woods, ripping at her dress before she’d turned the tables on them. She had not mourned their deaths when her friends in the Resistance emerged from the darkness, rifles at the ready. Meanwhile, the soldiers usually had their pants around their ankles as they pleaded for mercy. A quick slice across the throat ended that without an alarm being raised.
Nathan had never inspired that fury in her. He was polite, kind, and perhaps—in another life—she might have fallen in love with him first, before necessity forced their union. She could feel hope stirring that, even under these strange beginnings, their years together might blossom into genuine affection.
Still, she puzzled over her own defensiveness yesterday when Bill had voiced concern about her hurried marriage.
Bill Freeze was polite, too, though not a soldier. His days in Thurmont had been far safer than hers. On the train platform, when he’d first found her—terrified, exhausted—he could have turned away to tend to his own worries. Yet he had sheltered her, guided her to his family’s rooms above their small restaurant, and extended nothing but kindness. And, inevitably, she’d dragged him deeper into danger.
For those kindnesses, Celine had brought him more trouble.
Shaking off the memory, Celine rose from the narrow featherbed, the linens cool against her calves. She pulled on her woolen shift, cold wood floors creaking beneath her feet. She carried a chipped pitcher of water to the washstand in the corner of the room, its porcelain cracked where someone had dropped it last winter. She let the cool stream fill the basin and scrubbed the night’s sweat from her skin.
The hum of the household stirring drifted up from below—pots clinking, feathery steps on the stairs. She brushed her dark hair until it gleamed, caught her reflection in a smudged mirror, and straightened her shoulders.
She brushed her long, brunette hair, and each brushstroke down on her dark hair felt like shedding the nightmares of war. She pinned her hair back with the pearl combs her mother had given her and paused to re-examine her reflection: reddened eyes beneath arched brows, lips firm with resolve.
She couldn’t do anything about her eyes. At night, her resolve slipped, and she cried in her sleep as the horrors of the war replayed in her nightmares.
Downstairs, the kitchen brimmed with warmth and the scent of rising dough. Helen Freeze stood at the old wooden counter, patting biscuit rounds with a practiced hand. “Bonjour, Celine,” she sang in tentative French, her accent soft. Helen had insisted on learning a few phrases to ease Celine’s loneliness. Helen’s patient effort to learn her language touched Celine more than she cared to admit.
“Bonjour, Helen,” Celine replied, smiling at the flour-dusted aproned woman.
Celine pulled chipped china from the cabinet: plates rimmed in blue, polished spoons, and forks that gleamed even in the dim morning light. Only four people ate here each breakfast: Joshua and Helen Freeze, their son Bill, and Celine herself. The rest of the Freeze family had scattered: Phillip off in the Navy, two older daughters gone to their own homes.
Bill and Joshua descended the stairs together. Joshua paused to kiss
