Page 41

40

Briar

1942

O nce Cadence had gone up to Peaked Hill to check out Major Gil, I made one last sweep of the cottage for the shortwave. Maybe Gram moved it? I stepped to the mantel and took down the tugboat model Mr. Schmidt and I had made. I turned it in my hands. Why did Tyson want it so badly? He’d relegated it to the back of a bookshelf, after all. It was a powerful symbol, though, of the bond I had with his grandfather, which Tyson never had. I considered bringing him the little model as an olive branch of sorts. Would that inspire him to open up to me?

No. It might only fan the flames of his envy.

I started to set the model back on the mantel, caught the bottom of it on the edge, and it dropped to the floor and cracked open, the whole hull releasing from the deck. From the interior sprang short lengths of brown photo negatives, which landed on the kitchen floor between the two halves of the ruined boat.

Everything slowed as I crouched and picked up the negatives, my heart beating out of my chest. I held them to the kitchen lamp. They were pictures of someone’s vacation. Tyson’s? One of Mount Rushmore. One of a massive waterfall—Niagara Falls? And several shots of an Army base, cacti in the background. Had Tyson hidden them in the model? Mr. Schmidt? Tyson had been so intent on getting the model back.

I snapped the model together, set it back on the mantel, and hurried through the woods to the camp for answers, hoping Tyson was there. It was going to rain; the air was heavy and the undersides of the leaves on the trees upturned. The Burbanks could use the extra help.

I approached the house in the distance. I was close to the answer, I could feel it. There is always a point in any pursuit when all factors seem to coalesce. “The quickening,” Mr. Schmidt called it. Perhaps Tyson had grown up with German-sympathizing parents, steeped in Nazi culture. In Yaphank, Long Island? He’d never mentioned where he lived before going to boarding school. But, being of German descent, people mistrusted him. And there was the incident at the ice cream parlor. A new thought struck me. Maybe Tyson and Gil were working together. Shelby, too?

I carefully opened the side door and crept into the darkening living room. I followed the glow of a light in one of the back bedrooms and found him sitting on the bed, his back to the door. As I drew closer, I saw he was turning something in his fingers, examining it beneath the bedside table lamp. The ring . My breath caught in my throat: I saw the shortwave radio, as well, on the bed next to him.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He looked at me, startled. “I was just coming to find you, Briar. You’re not going to believe it. You were right about the spy. It’s Shelby.”

I stepped into the room. “How do you know?”

“This. She had the shortwave in her bag.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you see ? She’s been playing me all along. I should have known—her father works for Henry Ford, for heaven’s sake. They’re sympathizers. She’s probably been communicating with the U-boat for a while now.”

She had been oddly interested in the radio on that day she and Tyson went swimming.

He looked so defeated, there in his uniform, slumped over, elbows on his knees. “I really thought she was the one. Feels rotten, you know? Gonna have to ship out without a girl back home.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Is she smart enough to do something like this?”

“ Yes, Briar. She’s actually very smart. Not everyone gets into Miss Porter’s.”

That was debatable, especially when it came to parents with money, but Tyson didn’t seem open to that conversation right now.

I turned toward the doorway. “If you’re sure, we should confront her. Call Chief Leo, maybe.”

“Okay. But I ran out of gas on State Road. Gotta go back.” Tyson took the radio, shoved it into his knapsack, slid one strap over his shoulder, and went down the basement steps. He came back up with a can of gasoline. “Let’s go.”

He hurried outside, lugging the can of gasoline, and I rushed after him, past the concrete steps to the beach. He continued on and I stopped there, a little dizzy at the height of them, and suddenly it was all so clear.

I looked around, the mourning doves cooing in the pines, waves lapping the shore. The colors sharpened, the spruce green of the trees and the white of the concrete stairs. Finally. The quickening.