Only a Paper Moon [ Band of Brothers ] 3

Chapter Three

The room around her was mostly dark, lit by a single lap on the side table by a pristine couch. No one ever used the front room. The one in the back of the house, across from the kitchen, that was their space. It had a piano, and a fireplace, and a couch for sitting in, not gazing at. The one in the back of the house had blankets, quilts from Mrs. Nixon and her friends. It felt like home.

Alice padded down the hall, past the staircase until she stood in the junction between the kitchen and the family room. She placed her lukewarm mug of tea on the counter. It didn't take long for her to move into her favorite room. A sharp meow interrupted her thoughts as Spot looked up from his nest of blankets on the far corner of the couch.

"Comfy?" she asked. "I bet you are. You've got all the best blankets, buddy."

She took up the other corner, the one she usually used, closest to the doorway. Even as she grabbed the one blanket Spot hadn't stolen, the small orange tabby stretched his back and joined her. Alice smiled again. 

"You know, Bernadette would've really loved you," she whispered. Alice scratched between his ears. When the kitten headbutted her hand, she just laughed through her tears. "Yeah, I think you know that."

As tears filled her eyes, Alice had to slam them shut. Bernadette. At the time, when she'd found out about what had happened to her parents and sister, Alice hadn't had time to process the fact that she'd been alive and fighting while Bernadette had been withering away in a death camp. She had never quite been able to figure out if that was good, or made her feel worse.

While she'd slammed her face into the frozen dirt of the Ardennes out of self-preservation, Bernadette had slaved away in Auschwitz. She'd not done much research into the camps; her heart couldn't take it. Nothing would be the same with the knowledge that her beautiful, kind, good sister had suffered, believing Alice to be dead, or worse, off saving herself.

She had, of course. That's exactly what had happened. She'd fled Paris. She'd fled her problems and she'd fled her responsibilities. And Bernadette had died alone because of it.

Spot's meow cut through the silent family room. The noise jerked Alice from her thoughts. Her hand had paused. Spot wanted pets. She obliged.

In her mind, Alice knew it wasn't true. Her own actions had been unrelated to Bernadette's death, unlike Marc. In fact, her own actions had in some small, tiny way helped the Allies end the Nazi tyranny. She hadn't been hiding in Bastogne. She hadn't been hiding when she'd slogged her way across Normandy, through rain and mud so thick it sucked off the soldiers' boots. She'd been fighting.

Nix reminded her that every time her thoughts strayed. But Nix wasn't there. Alice looked down at Spot again. The steady vibration of his purr oddly contrasted her memories of the roar of machine gun fire. It hummed instead of screamed. As she used the sleeve of her pajamas to wipe her tears away, Alice shook her head. Nix wasn't there, but Spot was. 

Alice glanced at the clock on the wall. Nearly 8:00 pm. With a deep breath, Alice stood from the couch and left her whining kitten behind. The phone in their house rarely rang. If it rang, it tended to be a work emergency for Nixon, some sort of problem he needed to fix or an argument with Stanhope Nixon that the company needed smoothed over. 

For her part, Alice rarely used it to call out. Nix had called Dick a few times, Harry once. But Alice hadn't had the courage to dial anyone. Letters had sufficed for her, physical pieces of paper she could store forever. She couldn't hold a telephone call in her hands.

But she could hold a telephone, and she could hear a voice on the other end. It didn't take long for her to dial the operator number she'd memorized, though never used. When she got through, Alice felt her throat clench.