LITMIR.BIZ

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his thoughts.

      Dark and heavy. Dark and hopeless.

      Here he’d been thinkin’ that Bertie would be better off without him, but wouldn’t that be the same for everybody else, as well? Nobody needed a lame soldier taking up space, Ma least of all, with all the work she needed done.

      The last of the passengers disembarked, and the crowd on the platform began to thin. Red looked on glumly as Ivan greeted his parents in the parking lot.

      Ivan’s father, Gerald, broad-shouldered and smiling—teeth gleaming so brightly Red could see them from where he sat—gave his son a bear hug. Both men towered over the fair Arielle Potts, whose Swedish coloring Ivan had inherited.

      Ivan gestured toward the train, and they all glanced toward where Red sat watching them from the shadows. He didn’t think they could see him, looking from the bright sunshine into the darkness of the railcar, but he waved back.

      The three of them climbed into a shiny black Chevrolet.

      After most others had left the train, Red hefted his duffle over one shoulder and reluctantly grabbed the cane, forcing away his brooding thoughts. He dreaded seeing the look on his mother’s face when she saw him with his cane for the first time.

      Sure, Ma knew about the injury, but to see her youngest hobbling on a cane like an old man? No mother should have to witness that.

      Finally, out of the window, he saw Lilly Meyer come riding up in a buggy pulled by the big bay gelding Seymour, and Red felt a rush of relief.

      Ma’s broad, sun-reddened face showed him she’d spent a lot of time outside in the vegetable garden—one of Red’s jobs when he was home. She guided Seymour carefully through the crowd in the parking area, waving to several acquaintances along the way.

      Even before the gasoline rationing of the war, Lilly Meyer had held with her horse. She wasn’t afraid of cars. She wasn’t afraid of anything. She just always loved her horses. Pa had tried to teach her how to drive when he was alive, but she would have nothing to do with it. She didn’t mind people thinking of her as a little backward.

      In fact, Ma was the envy of the town with a business that had thrived through the depression and kept going during the war.

      Hay and oats weren’t rationed here because the farmers raised their own. Neither were garden vegetables or milk from their own cows, or meat and eggs from their own stock. In his travels, Red saw what the rest of the country had had to do without. He couldn’t believe how blessed he’d been all those years.

      Red grabbed the metal soffit over the door and tried his hardest not to grimace. As he stepped down, he saw his mother look at his cane, then his leg. The pain in his leg was nothing compared to what he felt when he saw the look in her eyes.

      “Now, Ma, don’t you go worrying about me,” he greeted as he rushed to hug her. Ordinarily, he’d pick her up and twirl her around—well, maybe that would be called lumbering her around. Lilly Meyer was, after all, nigh on three-hundred pounds. He couldn’t lift her now, but he wrapped his arms around her bulky form and was grateful for her strength.

      She clung to him for a long few seconds, and this surprised Red. Their family’d not been much for shows of emotion.

      She drew back at last, and he saw tears on her cheeks. She patted the moistness on his uniform collar with alarm.

      “Now, look what I did,” she said.

      “It’ll dry, Ma.” His mother didn’t cry. Even at Pa’s funeral, she’d been as strong as a man, setting the example for Red and his older sister and brother, Agnes and Howard, not to show a trembling lip or damp eye. The Meyers wore brave faces for the rest of the world, no matter what.

      Her double chins wobbled as she looked up into his eyes and brushed her fingers across his cheek, like he was a little boy again. “It’s going to be okay now. My hero’s home.” She glanced around them. “And none too soon, either, from the looks of things,” she muttered.

      “What’re you talking about?” he asked. “The war’s half over.”

      “Germans aren’t exactly the best-liked people in Hideaway right now, especially since we’re hearing about all those death camps.”

      “But we’re not German, we’re American, Ma.”

      “We’re German enough for somebody to hate us.”

      “Who’s been snubbing you?”

      She sniffed once more, then composed herself. “That ol’ Drusilla Short says I’m a Nazi sympathizer. Thinks I oughta surrender and be locked up and my guesthouse shut down.”

      “Since when did anyone ever listen to that woman’s opinion?” Red patted Seymour on the nose and received a welcoming nudge that knocked him off his stride.

      “Since two nights ago when someone threw a brick through our window that nearly conked poor John Martin on the head when he was reading the paper,” Ma said.

      “John!” Red paused before he climbed in beside his mother. “He okay?”

      “Fightin’ mad, but other than that he’s just got a mark on his noggin from some flying glass. Tough young buck.”

      Red clenched his hands into fists as anger streaked through him. “Who do you think did it?” If he found out, he’d hobble out and bang some heads. They’d never try to hurt his mother again.

      “You know bullies are cowards,” she said. “They don’t show themselves. And our house ain’t the only target for mischief. It’s been going on a couple of months. Mildred went missing last month.”

      Red stared at his mother. The loss of one of Ma’s two milk cows would’ve been a huge blow to her. “You never told me that. You never found her?”

      “Nope, but Joseph Moennig loaned me one of his. Said he’s got his hands full with all the farm work now that Bertie’s in California.” She nodded. “That Joseph is a good man. But he paid for his goodness two weeks ago. Some of his own stock went missing.”

      “His cattle?”

      “A couple of cows and some pigs, and you can bet they were taken off to market and sold. He’ll never see them again, and they were the best of his stock.” She shook her head. “I’m tellin’ you, Red, this place is in for troubled times. Want to know why I was late gettin’ here?”

      “I figured you had a good reason.”

      “Somebody decided Seymour needed to be let out of his corral sometime last night. If he wasn’t such a homebody, no tellin’ where he’d be by now. As it was, I found him washing his feet down by the river. I saw a chalk mark on the side of the shed. It was that broken cross the Nazis use.”

      “A swastika?”

      “That’s the sign.”

      “Anything else?”

      “Nope. Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that ol’ Dru Short’s been hurling lies about us, and now we’ve got bricks through our window and Nazi signs on our stable?”

      “Is the sheriff doing anything about the thefts?”

      “Not that I’ve seen. Mayor Gerald says he’ll not let ’em get away with this, but he can’t stop it if he don’t catch nobody.” She patted Red’s arm. “Not to worry now. You’ll take care of it. You’ll find out who’s doing this, if anybody can.”

      Red climbed into the buggy, glad for the sturdy handles he grasped to pull himself up. He felt more helpless than ever. What was happening in Hideaway?

      Chapter Six

      On the short ride back to the plant with Connie, Bertie slid Red’s last letter out of her purse. She’d studied it over and over when she’d received no new letters, thinking maybe it held a hidden reason

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