Manhattan, January, 1946
The hallways of a newspaper office were always busy and noisy, but Jack didn't hear any of it. The clacking of typewriters; the shrill peal of the telephones; the shouts as somebody received a tip-off and jammed their hat on their head and their notebook and pencil in their pocket before charging out into the streets, a news hound on the trail of a story; it was all muted compared to the battlefield. Here, the sounds were steady, unpunctuated by mortar explosions or screams or white phosphorus. Nobody dropped down dead beside him or lost their legs or spilled their intestines onto the ground. Everyone was alive and unhurt at the end of each day.
Jack kept the radio in his office turned up so loud that everyone who came in to see him complained about it. But he couldn't tell them why he was afraid of silence. He couldn't tell them how in the moments of silence, screams of the dying filled his ears, explosions, the whistle of German shells, the battery of submachine guns. Jenny would know. She would understand. He could tell her. Except he hadn't a damn clue where she was.
He had gone to see her editor, Vivian, at the Vogue offices, but she was equally mystified.
"I haven't seen Jenny for months," Vivian had said. "Do you want to offer her a job? I'm afraid you'll have to duel it out with me. I'm still hoping she'll return to adorning my pages with her face and figure." Vivian gave Jack her most brilliant, winning smile.
But Jack flinched, knowing how Jenny would feel about being asked to model again after everything she'd done over in Europe.
"She was looking for something more serious," Vivian added, taking off her glasses, her face turning more sober now. "The kind of job I imagine a newspaper like yours would be able to provide."
He knew Vivian was fishing, wanting to know why he'd come looking for Jenny, but he had no intention of telling her. "Can I leave my card? Please ask her to call me if you speak to her."
His card. His fucking card. Like Jenny was a business acquaintance. God, it almost destroyed him handing over that piece of paper to Vivian. At least he knew she'd been in New York, which was something. He also tried to speak to Martha, but she was doing a very good job of avoiding him. Too good. She knew something, and she obviously had no intention of telling him.
So he'd heard nothing more. It was, he supposed, unsurprising, but also as painful as having gas in your lungs, a kind of searing agony that left invisible scars, scars that burned in the middle of the night, that ached in the cold, that stung every time he had to leave the office and return to his home.
"Mr. Delaney?" His secretary, Alice, a sensible woman whose instincts he had grown to trust over the past few months, open the door after a quick tap.
Jack turned from his usual place by the window, staring out at skyscraper spires, bayonets of steel tearing into the sky.
"Yes," he said, pulling his mind into the present, to his role as editor-in-chief of one of New York's biggest daily newspapers, a role his grandfather had gladly handed to him the moment Jack stepped back onto American soil. Yet sometimes he was still out in the field. Some nights it was impossible not to be on alert and he would wake in the dark, thinking for a split second that he had to lead his men out on a raid, before he remembered. Then, inevitably, thoughts of Jenny would intrude and he ached for her with a physical pain that was almost unbearable. He needed her in a primal, visceral way.
He had traded in his army khakis for a well-tailored three-piece suit, yet he knew that part of his life would never be over.
"Sorry to bother you, sir, but this just came in over the wire," Alice was saying. "Addressed to you. I don't recognize the sender's name. Have we put in a new stringer to cover the Nuremberg trials? Apparently, there are pictures too."
Jack held out his hand, frowning. "As far as I know, Gene Atkinson is still our stringer. But he doesn't send pictures." He glanced down at the sheet of paper in front of him, expecting it was a mistake, that the cable operator had entered the wrong number and he was about to read a dispatch meant for the New York Post or the New York Times. But the page clearly stated both his name and the name of his newspaper. His frown deepened as he read the piece.
"This is good," he said to Alice. "Gene is always too concerned with everyone's name, rank and serial number to get with a story is all about. Who did you say it's from?"
Alice consulted her notepad. "Someone named Victor de Rêve. Do you know him?"
Jack shook his head. "Never heard of him."
Jack reread the page in front of him. Monsieur de Rêve was well informed and had thought to speak to the spectators, the people who filed into the courts at Nuremberg to watch the trials, had thought to ask them why they were there, for whom they mourned, and whether any kind of retribution would be enough. There was even a direct quote from one of the Nazis on trial. He was a lesser personage than Goering or Hess for sure, but still. A quote from one of those monsters to be tried was gold.
"Can you get Gene on the line?" he said to Alice. "I need to find out what the hell's going on."
"Sure thing." Alice disappeared and, by some miracle, it only took her half an hour to locate their stringer.
She put him through, and Jack didn't waste words. "Gene. Why the hell am I getting high quality stories from a Monsieur de Rêve with quotes from former Nazi officials, when I haven't seen a damn thing from you all day?"
Jack listened without sympathy to his stringer's tale of a broken leg from a drunken jeep accident which would put him out of action for at least a month. "I survived an entire war without a drunken jeep accident," he said curtly to Gene. "Someone who can't survive a couple of months in a hotel room covering a trial isn't someone I need on my service. You can make it up to me by finding out who this Monsieur de Rêve is, and I'll give you a solid reference that'll get you another job."
After he'd hung up the phone, Alice knocked again. "The pictures just came in on the wire. You'll want to take a look at these."
She was right. The pictures hadn't been taken by a hack; they were the work of an artist. An artist who hadn't wanted to send film, but prints. The photographer had caught American Judge Francis Biddle with his head turned toward a man before him, one Otto Ohlendorf, who was admitting to having presided over the murder of 90,000 Jewish people. But the judge's eyes were not fixed on the man. Instead, they were turned unknowingly toward the camera, and they shone with staunched tears as Ohlendorf spoke dispassionately about his concern for the welfare of those who had administered the killings.
Where is your concern for all those who died? the image seemed to say, through the suddenly unshielded, sorrowful face of the judge.
The next photograph was of Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, a member of the French Resistance, who had somehow survived both Auschwitz and Ravensbrück and was the first survivor to tell her story to the court. Again, the photographer had caught the judge with the same damp eyes, but this time they were fixed on the woman before him, honoring her by refusing to look away no matter how affecting her words were.
Jack let out a breath. "Get everybody into the conference room right now, Alice, to finalize the news budget. This is going on the front page tomorrow."
***
"That's some Pulitzer-grade reporting you've got on your front cover this morning," Edward Delaney said to his grandson as they drank their coffee and ate their breakfast with all of the morning newspapers spread out before them.
The elder Mr. Delaney was tall and broad shouldered like his grandson, his hair thick and wavy, once a raven black, now a snowy white, and he carried himself with a proud bearing that belied his age of seventy-five years.
There had been no time for Jack to look for a home of his own; he returned from the war one day and started work at the newspaper the next so the old family home on the Upper East Side was where he now resided. The arrangement perfectly suited his grandfather; Edward Delaney might have retired but he still liked to know what was happening in the world of journalists and he still liked to have breakfast with his grandson, no matter that Jack was out the door by six, ready for the day ahead.
"Where'd you find your stringer?" his grandfather asked now.
"He found me," Jack said, and proceeded to tell his grandfather as much as he was able to. Gene had been next to useless, unable to find out anything, except that someone had told him that Monsieur de Rêve was American, but maybe had a French father, had reported sporadically throughout the war, and lived in France.
The bio note that had come with the image said much the same thing. Short of going to Nuremberg, Jack was at a loss, so he had sent a message to the hotel de Rêve was staying in, arranging to pay him and to make him their official correspondent. No more drunken stringers fucking things up.
"Gene was a good man," Edward protested mildly. "Always up for a whiskey."
"Exactly," Jack said. "He's a dinosaur. Does everything drunk and hopes we'll be too busy with national news to read his sloppy reports properly." He stood up, putting his napkin down on the table, stopping at the running sound of tiny feet.
"Papa!" Natalia called.
She ran into Jack's arms and Jack hoisted her up, kissing her cheeks, soft and warm from her bed. No matter how early he left in the morning, Natalia had a sixth sense about it and would always wake up to kiss him and hug him before he was gone.
"Come here, princess," Edward ordered.
Natalia walked dutifully over and placed a delicate kiss on each of her grandfather's cheeks, still reserved, Jack noted, even after all this time. Not that she saved her reserve for Edward; she regarded everyone with a graveness and a reticence that was completely out of place on someone not quite six years old, never relaxing into friendliness the way she'd done with Jenny.
Jenny. Jack winced as he did every time he so much as caught himself about to think of her.
"Can I come with you today?" Natalia wheedled.
"You'll be bored," Jack said automatically, then relented as he always did. "But you can come and have lunch with me."
Natalia clapped her tiny hands and then sat herself at the table to start her breakfast with her grandfather, who would always try to clear the newspapers away, deeming them unfit for children. Nobody ever said that everything Natalia had seen up to that point in her life had been unfit for children.
***
That night, when Jack returned home, he stopped in at Natalia's bedroom. As always, she lay awake waiting for him and he tried to remind himself to be home by nine so she would get more sleep, except that he had strong reasons for staying out late. The light in the hallway wasn't on, as it should be, and he reached around for the switch, snapping it on, and crossing to Natalia's side when he saw her face. It bore the red and unmistakable mark of a hand slap and there were tears swimming in the little girl's ocean blue eyes.
"What happened?" he asked, his voice soft with concern. He lifted her out of the bed and tucked her into his lap, burying her head against his shoulder, stroking her long, blonde hair.
"I was naughty," Natalia sniffed.
He didn't ask her anything else. "Never say that you're naughty," he whispered, kissing her forehead and holding her tightly to him until her limbs relaxed and her breath evened out into sleep. He tucked her back into bed and then made himself walk to the room at the other end of the hallway. He opened the door.
From where he stood, it was impossible to tell that anything was wrong. Lamps, carefully chosen for the quality of their shades and the low, soft light that pooled at the floor without casting more than a faint glow into the room, made it seem as if she was simply a wife, and a beautiful one at that, waiting for her husband. Her face was carefully painted with powder and color and all manner of creams and lotions, the dress selected to draw attention to her legs and her cleavage. Even the pinned-up, empty left sleeve was easy to miss unless you already knew...
It was only when she turned to his voice, asking, "What did you do?" that she revealed a tumescent ridge of scar tissue, crawling like a worm over her face, and the empty sleeve swung from her shoulder.
"What did I do?" Ashton replied. "What do you mean?"
"I think you know. To Natalia."
Ashton's face changed, becoming suddenly as unlovely as the scar. "She's a brat, Jack. She hates me. All she does is talk about Jenny. Her mama." She spat the word at Jack as if it were the filthiest thing she could say.
"She needs time." Jack gave a compressed smile because what was at stake was Natalia and he would do whatever he had to do for her. "It's strange for her, what's happened. It's strange for me too. As it must be for you."
"What's strange about getting married?" Ashton asked, thoroughly exasperated and annoyed. "I believe it's something that men and women all over the world do. Especially now that the war is over. It's actually rather ordinary."
Jack sat down in a chair opposite his wife, his body sinking into the plushness. Everything in the room was soft and sumptuous and so very plush: brocades and swags and dark wood and velvets and shades of pink and red that Ashton insisted he must call rose. He pressed down the nausea that clogged his throat every time he set foot into her bedroom and reminded himself that rose was simply a color and had nothing whatsoever to do with blood.
He shifted, trying to get comfortable, and eventually stood and sat on the edge of the bed, which was still cushioning and lush but at least it didn't envelop him, draw him down the way the chair did with its upholstered arms and back.
"You know that nothing about this is ordinary," he said quietly, trying not to provoke a fight.
"It could be if you made a little more effort. Or are you so repulsed by me?" Ashton stared daggers at Jack with her emerald green eyes. "You won't even touch me the way a husband is supposed to touch his wife. My compensation for being deformed, I suppose, through no fault of my own. A cold, sexless marriage."
She flung the accusing words out quickly, as if to get it over with, her face flushing with embarrassment as she said them.
"Don't," he warned her sharply. "You know it's not your face or your arm that repulses me, Ashton."
"But you are repulsed by what I did to get myself here." Ashton filled in the subtext he wouldn't say. "It's been months, Jack. Don't you think it's time to forgive me for that and make the most of the situation we've landed ourselves in? Surely it's better for Natalia if we get along."
Jack used all his strength to keep his face neutral. How could he ever forgive her for what she done? He studied her, her red hair still as lustrous ever, her green eyes, large and soft and pleading now, eyes that she was so good at having enhanced with her dressing table of tools and makeup. Eyes that she was so good at turning on people, who would be immediately charmed by her limpid and innocent gaze and her pitiful scars and her heartbreakingly missing arm. Her dress, he was sure, had cost him a fortune and it certainly flattered her figure. He wished he could see all the effort, all the polish, as a simple attempt to make the most of the features that were still undamaged, to assuage the pain of remembering what she'd once looked like.
But all of it felt like calculated, strategic moves to advance her position, or perhaps everything he saw about her was sabotaged by what she had done to get here so yes, she was right. He hadn't forgiven her.
He realized that his lack of forgiveness was there in everything he did and said, the tone of his voice, the rigid stance of his body whenever Ashton appeared in the room, the way he tried never to really look at her as if that might make her disappear. How must it make Natalia feel to witness his barely masked hatred? And what kind of man did it make him that he couldn't find even a grain of compassion in him for a woman he had damaged? Couldn't even, as she had rightly said, touch her the way a husband touches his wife?
He couldn't stop the sigh escaping and Ashton's face twisted. Even though he knew that, given her temper, he shouldn't ask this now, he did. "What happened with Natalia?"
Ashton stared at him for a long moment, and he waited, braced, for the lie. For the accusations that would be leveled on Natalia about her naughtiness, her willfulness. For the demand that she be sent to boarding school in Europe. Instead, Ashton's face rearranged itself and, for the briefest instant, Jack thought he saw a trace of honest emotion, a sadness in her eyes.
"What happened is that Natalia would like me to be Jenny," Ashton stated flatly. "And I'm not. I never can be. Not for her, not for you. So, I became angry, and I hit her. It was not, obviously, my finest moment." She turned away from her husband's piercing gaze to pick up her diamond-encrusted gold cigarette case. "I'm sorry, Jack."
Her candidness made his words come out honestly too. "I'm sorry too, Ashton. Which is useless, but I am."
"I know you are," Ashton said, blowing a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "And I know that if saying you're sorry a million times would fix my face and my arm, you would do it." She paused and they sat, he perched on the edge of the bed, legs braced for escape, and she in the armchair by the fireplace, her fiery red hair and red dress blending into the rose fabric of the chair as if she belonged there.
She drew on her cigarette again, tapped the ash into a tray. He watched her, still waiting for the conversation to escalate into the inevitable argument.
"So. What will we do?" she asked instead.
"What will we do?" he repeated, surprised. It was the first time she had asked for his opinion. Until now, she had pushed and demanded, and he had resisted and ignored, and all the quarrels loud and hostile, all the accusations, all the shame, all the sorrow of the past few months with Ashton filled his mind. "What would you like to do?"
"I would like for Natalia and me to get along. Every day that we don't, you hate me a little more."
"Ashton, I don't..."
Ashton put up her hand. "All right," she conceded, "you're not capable of hatred. You're too fine a man for that. But you hate the situation a little more. Am I right?"
Jack nodded.
"So, I'm going to retreat," Ashton said. "I won't ask you to take me to parties and hold my hand and wrap your arm around me. I won't take dinner with you. I'll stop insisting that we find somewhere to live that's far away from your grandfather. I'll leave you alone, Jack. I will try not to hate myself because you can't bear to touch me..." Her voice faltered and she ground out her cigarette.
Jack imagined her sitting in this room every night while he worked late or went out without her and he realized she was wrong; he was capable of hatred, and he hated himself right now. "The most important thing is that Natalia be happy," he reiterated. "Her life, up till now, has been a shambles. She's had nothing that could be called stability or consistency and she's seen things that children shouldn't know anything about."
"And you'll still do anything for her, won't you?" Ashton spoke to her hands folded in her lap and he knew she understood perfectly well that yes, he would do anything for Natalia, but he would certainly not do anything for his wife.
"I will," he answered.
"Well then." Ashton looked up and met his gaze and he realized she had flung the incendiary right back at him. It was up to him, what happened now.
He had been blaming everything on her and sure, some of it was her fault but he was an adult and he had made a decision and he had to accept the consequences of that decision. Right now, the consequences were hurting Natalia.
And Jenny had vanished. It seemed she had no intention, ever, of coming back. So should he blow up everything, continue arguing and turning away from Ashton, keep exposing Natalia to a household empty of love, keep loathing himself for what he had done to Ashton and what he had done to himself? Or should he do what he could to diffuse the grenade before the precious remnants of Natalia's childhood shattered forever?
He slowly stood up from the bed and went over to where Ashton sat. Her green eyes followed his approach, her chin tilting up as he drew close to retain eye contact with him. Jack slowly lowered himself down to her level and, after only a moments hesitation, kissed her softly, gently. The way he would have kissed Jenny.
Ashton's reaction was swift and predictable. The moment their lips met, her arm reached up and encircled his neck, drawing him closer to her and kissing him back with a passion he knew she had to summon from deep within herself. Jack sensed the desperation in her kiss, not desire, not love, just pure desperation and manipulation. He could taste in his mouth the cosmetics she used to cover up the worst of the damage to her face and he hated himself for the way it made his gut twist with nausea.
His mind shut down and his body took over as he picked Ashton up from the god-awful dark red chair and carried her over to the god-awful red bed where he deposited her gently before turning out the bedside lamp, banishing that hellish red-rose glow, confining what they were about to do to the darkness. He forced himself to tenderly caress her scarred cheek, tried not to look into her eyes illuminated by the streetlights filtering in through the sheer curtains on the window; tried not to look at her any more than he had to, and was as achingly gentle with her as he could be. Ashton, on the other hand lay limp and passive, as if this was all his idea, her long lashes shielding her eyes, unable or unwilling to respond even the slightest to his efforts.
Afterwards, Jack tried to brush Ashton's hair from her face, tried to be tender with her, but she pushed his hand away.
"I don't need to be held and caressed after sex, Jack. I never have. You've done your duty," she said in a voice cold as ice, turning on her side and presenting him with her back. "You can go now. I want to sleep."
Jack left her, ashamed of the rush of relief that he wouldn't have to lie next to her in the dark, that she wasn't asking him to pretend.