Page 143 of Blood Game

“And you will come back when this is over,” young Albert had replied. Then they parted, and he took the secret of that last meeting with him.

It had been cold, snowing hard, he said, the weather much the same as now. And it had grown dark. He learned later that she had she stayed the night, waiting for morning, and the weather to clear.

Had she slept one last time in that same bed that she had once shared with her sister? What were her thoughts? What were her dreams? Were they filled with things that haunted her, things she'd seen and done? Or was there someone special who filled those dreams? Did she sense that she would never see her mother and sister again?

“There are times, when I am up here, it's almost as if...” Valentine softly smiled.

“You will think it is foolish.” She hesitated again. “But there are times it's as if she is still here. That if I turned around suddenly, I would see her standing there. Foolish, yes?”

Not foolish, Kris thought. It was part of who Valentine was.

“There are extra blankets in the chest,” the girl said as she plugged in the oil heater on the wall.

“It gets cold up here during the winter.”

“I didn't mean to take your room,” Kris replied, when it suddenly occurred to her that was probably what she had done.

Valentine shook her head. “My room is downstairs at the back of the house, if my grandfather should need me in the middle of the night. He sleeps in his chair most nights, but usually not more than a couple of hours at a time. He is restless, and has dreams. But tonight, your friend will keep him company.”

Ghosts of the past, something else James Morgan had in common with Albert Marchand. He hadn't spoken when she left with Valentine, but had instead retrieved the chess board Albert had pointed to on that long table.

“Do you play?” the wily old man had asked. “We will see,” he added with a smile as James set the board on the table between them.

“There is more room here,” Valentine pointed out. That smile again. “Private for you and your friend.”

Kris almost laughed. She doubted James considered her a friend at the moment. And when they left the room downstairs there wasn't even a glance away from that board and the game, another glimpse of James Morgan.

Where, she thought, had a young man who grew up with no father, then went off to war and saw too much, lost too much,learned to play chess? In some remote corner of the world with friends who were gone? Their memory in a tattoo on his wrist?

“The bathroom is downstairs,” Valentine went on to explain, pulling her back from her thoughts.

“You have to turn the heat on the boiler for the shower. It is electric but takes a little while to warm up. There are towels on the shelf.” She hesitated at the door, a thoughtful expression at her face.

“Thank you,” Valentine said, surprising her.

“We should be thanking you,” Kris replied. “It isn't everyday two strangers show up on your doorstep with a story most people wouldn't believe.”

Valentine shook her head. “You don't understand.” She was thoughtful again, trying to find the words to explain.

“There are times when I see a look on my grandfather's face as if he has gone far away. It is a sadness for things I cannot understand. But tonight, these past hours, I have seen a change in him. It is because you are here, and James Morgan who has seen some of the same things and understands what my grandfather has carried with him all these years.” She took a deep breath.

“He is the only family I have left. It is the reason I came back. I know that he will be gone one day. So, I say thank you. Please understand that meeting you both has meant a great deal to both of us. Even if the tapestry is not there.”

Things that mattered, Kris thought when she had gone, and she pulled the blankets over herself.

CHAPTER

FORTY-TWO

DECEMBER 24, 1944

Micheleine knew every turn in the path, the place where the three large rocks sat at the edge of the stream, the water slowing as it pushed past, then gathered speed as it tumbled over the spillway that had been built centuries earlier, falling into the pool below.

Even beneath the mantle of snow that blanketed everything, she knew it.

She had grown up here, chasing imaginary creatures through the forest that stood at the edge of the orchard, like giants gathering at the edge of the apple and pear trees in their neat, perfect rows.

Now, in the gray shadows from the moon, they were like skeletons, their limbs stripped bare of the last of summer leaves, the crop of apples and pears withered on the ground with no one to gather them. Food for the crows, a bitter thought. There had been no one to harvest the apples.