The Sky Above Us Read online

  But even when our sins are forgiven by God and man, consequences remain.

  It goes without saying that Clay broke up with Ellen. We didn’t see her for four months. Then in October, she showed up on our doorstep. Her parents had kicked her out and moved out of state.

  Ellen was carrying your child.

  Not a wrenched shoulder. Not a stab in the heart. A millstone crushing his chest, grinding down, forbidding all breath.

  His . . . child? The little boy. The picture burned against his chest.

  The crushing spread to his head and ground his future to dust.

  His plans. Violet.

  Her head bowed, her voice murmuring in prayer, her heart unaware that one sentence had changed her life as well.

  He ripped his gaze from the woman he loved to the words he hated.

  Of course we took her in. For the sake of the baby, we urged Clay and Ellen to marry. But Clay refused to marry the girl who’d betrayed and humiliated him, and Ellen insisted on waiting for you to return. Turns out she never loved Clay. She said she’d always loved you and had used Clay to get close to you.

  Nausea swept through his belly. Adler had to marry her. For the baby. The boy. He had to marry a woman who took advantage of Clay’s sweet nature. A woman who took advantage of Adler’s grief and anger and taste for whiskey.

  This was the kind of wife Adler was going to get. The only kind of wife he deserved.

  “Adler?” Concern lifted Violet’s voice.

  He couldn’t bear to look her in the face.

  Your son, Timothy, was born March 8, 1942, healthy and strong and kicking.

  He had a son. A son. A two-year-old son. For two years, he’d had a son and he’d never even known.

  Violet’s voice drifted around, soft and anxious as if in another room.

  Adler scooted away, freeing his knees from her touch. Never again would she touch him, talk to him, love him. It had to be that way. For the boy. For Timothy.

  I’m sad to report that Ellen was killed late that spring in a car accident, driving too fast in the rain. At least the baby was home with us at the time.

  That millstone ground harder. Adler didn’t want to marry her, but he didn’t want her dead! He’d killed her. As good as killed her. Just like his own mother. Just like Oralee.

  Why wouldn’t this letter end? He couldn’t take any more.

  Ice crystals prickled in his veins, lining up to build a protective shell.

  We’re raising little Timmy, and we’re happy to do so. He’s a blessing in the middle of the darkest years of our lives. He’s bright and mischievous and cute as the dickens. Just like you at that age.

  Adler skimmed the rest. “We forgive you . . . We love you . . . Please come home . . . You’re always welcome . . .” But it didn’t—none of it penetrated.

  He fought off the ice, shook off the crystals. He’d earned this pain. He needed to feel it.

  “Adler?” Violet’s voice quivered. “Please, sweetheart. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  His gaze swam to meet hers. So trusting, so innocent, so pure. She could never . . . She shouldn’t have to . . . He refused to make her.

  Somehow his crushed-up, ground-up heart managed to shatter.

  Adler pushed himself to standing, dizzier and more nauseated than if he were knee-walking drunk. As he’d been that night he destroyed all those lives. Oralee. Wyatt. Clay. Ellen.

  “Adler?” Tears distorted Violet’s eyes.

  Adler wouldn’t let himself destroy her life as well.

  “Once—” His voice rasped out. “Once you told me nothing I did could change how you feel about me.”

  “Well, yes, of—”

  “I won’t hold you to that. I release you from that promise.”

  “What? I—I don’t—”

  Adler dropped the letter on the desk. “Read it. Good-bye.”

  And he fled. For good this time. For her good.

  35

  “Adler!” Violet swiped her eyes clear. Yes, he was fleeing.

  The news must have been awful to cause him to break that promise to her.

  Panic swelled, and she snatched up the letter. No time to read. She had to catch him.

  She grabbed Adler’s flight jacket and cap from the coatrack—he’d need those—and burst out of the office.

  There he was, striding out the main door in his khaki trousers and shirt. She followed, not caring that she ought to be wearing her cap and jacket.

  Adler ran down the road and fast.

  But she was fast too. She sprinted after him, past curious men on their way to dinner. It didn’t matter. Adler was in pain, and she needed to be with him.

  “Lord, what happened?” Had one of his parents died? What could cause such dismay?

  The answers were in the letter, but she couldn’t stop to read.

  Adler turned between two huts. She followed him out onto the baseball diamond and toward a row of trees.

  Her breath came hard, and her lungs burned. She might be fast, but she couldn’t keep this pace for long.

  In the outfield, grasses scratched her ankles and she stumbled a few times. But she didn’t stop. He needed her. He needed her. Lord, he needs you most of all.

  When she reached the trees, she slowed down and picked her way through the undergrowth, her chest heaving and her underarms sticky.

  A khaki lump in the green—Adler folded over his knees, his head in his hands.

  “Oh, Adler, sweet—”

  His head jerked up, he glared at her, then he hunched over again and swatted in her direction. “Go away!” And he cussed.

  She gasped from the swear words, but then her heart ached for him, for whatever he was enduring. “Adler—”

  “Read it! I told you to read it. Get out of here.”

  She only intended to obey the first half of his command. Violet sank to her knees in the moss and leaves, laid Adler’s jacket and cap beside him, and skimmed the letter.

  His father was glad to hear from him, had forgiven him, was glad of his salvation. News of Wyatt—nothing distressing. News of Clay—sad, but nothing that should have Adler facedown on the ground, moaning.

  He covered his bowed head with his hands. “Forgive me, Lord. Oh God, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.”

  Fear gripped her. Never had she heard such an agonized prayer. She reached for him but stopped. He’d only swat her away. Lord, help him. Help him.

  She returned to the letter. Some cryptic comments about sin having consequences and Clay breaking up with Ellen. And—“Ellen was carrying your child.”

  Mr. Paxton was addressing . . . Adler?

  Cold seeped into her bones, and leaves prickled her shins. That didn’t—it didn’t make sense.

  Her eyes strained for more, for an explanation, for proof that she’d misread that sentence. This Ellen had refused to marry Clay? She loved . . . Adler?

  The next words slashed through her eyes. “Your son, Timothy, was born . . .”

  The little boy in the picture. The cutie-pie. He wasn’t Wyatt’s son. He was Adler’s.

  A cry welled up deep in her stomach and flowed out her mouth.

  Adler echoed the cry, but she didn’t care. Didn’t care.

  The rest of the words flew into her brain in random order. This Ellen . . . dead. His parents . . . raising the baby. Forgiven. Love you. Come home.

  Not one word changed the truth. The awful truth.

  “Who—who is Ellen?” Violet didn’t recognize her own voice.

  Adler groaned, his hands fisted in his hair. “She was Clay’s girlfriend.”

  Another cry gushed out. “And you . . . with her?”

  “Yes! I slept with her. I slept with my brother’s girlfriend.”

  Grief and fury and revulsion whirled into a disgusting mess in her stomach. “How could you?”

  “I wanted to tell you. I meant to. You told me not to, but I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have told you.” He pounded his fist into t
he ground.

  “That day? In my office? This?” If he’d told her then, she never would have gotten involved with him. Never.

  “When Oralee died. That night. I was so angry. Angry at Wyatt. Angry at Clay for stopping me.”

  “And you . . . ?” Her stomach curled up on itself.

  “I should have told you.” Adler clenched grass in his fists. “Dr. Hill—Ellen’s father—he gave me a pill to calm me down. I refused it. I wanted to chase down Wyatt. Daddy locked the truck, wouldn’t give me the key, so I went to the garage to pick the lock. Only I failed. Then Ellen showed up with a bottle of whiskey. She said her daddy said I needed it.”

  “I—I don’t want to hear this.” Violet tried to fold the letter, but her fingers wouldn’t cooperate and her vision clouded.

  “Listen! All of it.” Grass ripped away from the earth. “I got drunk. I got falling-down drunk, and—”

  “I know what you did.” She flung the letter at him, and the pages fluttered down over his crumpled body.

  “Mama must have sent Clay to check on me. He found us, tried to kill me. I don’t blame him. He should have. He could have. I was too drunk to fight back.”

  Violet struggled to her feet, desperate to escape.

  “My parents must have heard the ruckus. It’s all a blur, but next thing Mama’s holding Clay off with a shotgun and Daddy’s telling me to get out of his sight. I drove all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”

  Violet stared down at the man huddled on the ground, a man she thought she knew. “Who—who are you?”

  Adler just moaned, transforming before her eyes.

  From protector to destroyer.

  From chivalrous gentleman to heartless rogue.

  From saint to the worst imaginable sinner.

  Violet clutched her writhing belly. “I thought—I thought you were a good man.”

  “I’m not!” He glared at her, his face twisted into something monstrous and unrecognizable. “I’m a sinner. I’m a stinking, rotten, wretched sinner.”

  Once again, a man had dashed her dreams.

  Her mind flew back to the conversation they’d had on the Queen Elizabeth, to something Adler had said. She repeated it. “Boys destroy.”

  “Yes. Yes.” He slashed his arm in her direction. “Now go away. For your own good. Get out of here!”

  Violet backed away, stumbling out of the woods. This time, it was her turn to flee.

  36

  Over Northern Germany

  Sunday, May 21, 1944

  Skimming the deck, Adler kept the silver waters of the Baltic to his right as he zigged and zagged over the railroad.

  His flight had already strafed one German locomotive and was now bearing down on the city of Stralsund to the north.

  The intense, repetitive work of flying a challenging mission helped numb him. He needed the numbness today. For the mission. Then he’d let the pain back in.

  Last night the pain had done its work as Adler beat the ground and cried out for forgiveness. Until a voice silenced him. Not out loud, but not in his head either.

  You already asked for forgiveness. I already gave it.

  Way back in February, God had forgiven his sins, long before Adler knew the full consequences. Already forgiven. All forgiven.

  Peace and fatigue had settled down in equal measure, and Adler had brushed himself off and collapsed into his cot long past midnight.

  Green fields and slate-roofed buildings raced beneath him, and he scanned for the Luftwaffe and enemy trains.

  Thank goodness Nick had let him fly. Adler’s sweet-talking ways had bypassed Nick’s scrutinizing ways. A smiling “My parents forgave me” had done the trick. After the mission, he’d tell Nick every last detail and show him the photograph hidden in his breast pocket.

  Numb. He shook himself and guided his flight in a sweeping right turn over the tracks.

  Today was the first coordinated “Chattanooga” mission against Nazi rail, named after the popular song “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” Six hundred fighters of the Ninth Air Force were hitting tracks in France while six hundred fighters of the Eighth Air Force concentrated on Germany. Each group had been assigned a square fifty miles by fifty miles, and at eleven o’clock sharp they struck as one.

  The biggest preinvasion mission yet, and Adler had to fly. All the anger he felt at himself, he planned to unleash on trains that could transport troops and weapons to the front. Adler refused to let them reach his brothers.

  Wyatt and Clay would never forgive him. Adler had driven Wyatt into hiding for three years. Three years! And Clay? Adler couldn’t imagine what Clay had been through—the broken dreams, humiliation, and fury. Their parents had taken Ellen in. That meant Clay had to live in the same house as his former girlfriend, who was carrying his rotten brother’s baby.

  Pain convulsed his chest. The numbness wasn’t working, but he had to make it work, had to concentrate on his duties. Lord, numb me. Please.

  He curved to the left over the tracks. To the north, gray smoke trailed along the rails in orderly puffs.

  A locomotive coming their way. “Yellow flight, spread out.”

  The men knew what to do. Theo and his new wingman climbed to the right, while Adler led Floyd up to the left. The four P-51s would work the locomotive from opposite directions until the boiler blew, then strafe the train cars.

  Floyd was too close on his tail. “Yellow two, spread out.”

  “No, sir. I’m your wingman.”

  The train sped closer and closer. This was just like the Westerns when young Floyd Milligan followed the hero into danger and got himself hurt or captured. “Don’t chase me to the shootout, yellow two. Back off.”

  No sign of antiaircraft guns on the train, but they’d have to watch out for flak cars.

  Adler lowered flaps and throttled back to lower his speed and lengthen the attack, then he dove in at a twenty-degree angle to the tracks. At three hundred yards, he squeezed the trigger.

  The first shots passed in front of the locomotive, and Adler guided the bullets along the length of the engine, stitching a neat line.

  Then he pulled up and away to the left.

  Shock waves buffeted Texas Eagle. Adler fought for control, obtained it. In his rearview mirror, a tower of black smoke and debris shot into the sky.

  “Hoo-ey!” He’d hit the boiler on the first run.

  “I’m hit!” Floyd called on the radio.

  “What?” Adler wheeled his plane around. Ahead of him, a Mustang flew with half its right wing gone.

  Floyd! He must have followed Adler too closely and gotten hit by debris.

  No time to chastise the kid. Too late anyway. “Yellow two, you’re too low to bail. Belly her in. Yellow three, strafe the train. I’ll stay with two.”

  “Roger,” Theo said.

  “Okay, Floyd, head southwest, away from the tracks. We’ll find a field.”

  “Roger.” His voice sounded steady. Good, he’d keep his head on his shoulders.

  Adler circled above him, talking him through the procedure. Lower speed, lower flaps, jettison the canopy, keep the nose up.

  A broad field opened before them. Lord, let this be the one.

  Floyd let his Mustang down. The plane plowed a furrow, uprooting some crop or other.

  Adler held his breath.

  The plane stopped, and Floyd hopped out and sprinted away from the wreckage.

  “Thank you, God.” Adler took a picture with his gun camera, tipped a salute to Floyd, and aimed Eagle back toward the flaming locomotive. “Lord, keep the kid safe.”

  His rib cage hardened into place. Once again, someone he cared about had gotten hurt. Anyone who got close to him ended up destroyed in some way.

  Good thing Violet had escaped when she had.

  Still, the memory of the shock and disgust and misery on her face slapped his bruised soul.

  Fury at himself simmered to the top. It was wrong of him to have enjoyed her love for as long as he had. He should hav
e told her about Ellen before it all started.

  He was selfish. Arrogant. So intent on his own pleasure that he ignored the good of the woman he claimed to love.

  Adler raced down the tracks. Brilliant arcs of light sprang from the train cars through a whirling torrent of black smoke and yellow flame. Ammunition on board.

  Dozens of figures in the field gray uniforms of the German army skittered away from the tracks.

  Adler cried out, long and loud, and he dove for the train, riddling the cars with bullets.

  As if that train were his own stinking, sinful old body. Laughing at him. Alive. “Die! Die! Why won’t you die?”

  Leiston Army Airfield

  Monday, May 22, 1944

  Violet stirred her potato soup, trying to tune out the lunchtime clamor of officers. If the pilots hadn’t been flying a mission, she would have eaten a sandwich at the Aeroclub again.

  Kitty leaned forward over the table. “You have to eat something.”

  Violet took a spoonful and swallowed. “There.” But her stomach recoiled.

  “Please tell me what he did to you.” Kitty’s eyebrows peaked in concern.

  “It isn’t like that. He just—he isn’t the man for me.” She jabbed at the soup as if it were solid. To think she’d planned a life with him. To think she’d almost tossed aside her lifelong dream for a first-rate heel.

  She hadn’t minded that his lips had kissed Oralee. That love had a purity about it. But they’d also kissed his brother’s girlfriend—the night his fiancée died. He’d slept with her. How many other women had there been?

  Kitty directed her gaze over Violet’s head. “Violet?”

  She tensed. Please don’t let it be Adler. She never wanted to see him again.

  “In case you’re wondering, Adler isn’t here.” Not Adler’s voice.

  Violet relaxed and turned on the bench. “Hi, Nick.”

  He didn’t smile. “This morning Doc Barker sent him to a rest home for a week. If I’d known what was in that letter, I never would have let him fly yesterday. He put himself in danger.”

  Violet forced a nod, not sure how to respond. Despite what she felt about Adler, she didn’t want him to get hurt.