A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd Page A

the head of a beloved child. Then he was offering his arm to Mrs. Ellis, and I thought that she took it gratefully. Mr. Smyth was helping Gran, while Roger held out a hand to Lydia. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it.
    I looked back as the gate was closing behind us and saw the last of the light touch the stone we’d just dedicated. It picked out Alan’s last name for an instant and then was gone.
    Janet Smyth took my arm and said, “You’re a friend of Lydia’s. I’m glad. She needs to have friends around her when Roger goes back to France. I hope you’ll be able to stay until Christmas.”
    “My own family is expecting me next week,” I said. “And then I must return to France.”
    She said, “Oh, you’re a nursing sister, then.”
    “Yes.”
    “I do admire your courage! When the war began, I considered nursing, but my brother dissuaded me. He felt that I didn’t have the constitution for it.”
    She was sturdily built, and I thought to myself that she could have made a very useful nurse, strong enough to deal with delirious men and those too ill to shift for themselves. But perhaps she meant the mental stamina. I knew all too well the cost of that.
    We walked on together, arm in arm, and she was saying about the heath, “It’s a dreary place, but I’ve come to love it.”
    Surprised, I said, “You weren’t born here?”
    “Oh, no, only the Ellises. And of course George Hughes. His family lived not far from Vixen Hill. They moved to London a few years after little Juliana died. Such a tragedy. But you must know all about that.”
    As we crossed the grassy dell together, Janet Smyth added, “I’ll see you this evening.”
    I nodded and went to accompany Mrs. Ellis on the drive back to Vixen Hill. Mrs. Ellis sighed. “I think Alan would have been pleased.”
    “Yes,” I agreed. “It was a very lovely service.”
    “I wasn’t prepared,” she said. “For the end. He seemed to be stronger. I let myself believe. And then he was gone, and there was so much I’d left unsaid. That’s a terrible feeling.”
    “Sometimes things don’t actually need to be said,” I suggested.
    In the front seat, Margaret said under her breath to her husband, “I don’t see why he had to die.”
    Her husband replied, “Frostbite, and then gangrene, my love. The sea is very cold and very cruel in winter.”
    I saw her shake her head, but she didn’t say anything more.
    For dinner I wore the pale green gown that my father particularly liked, with the rope of pearls that had been given to me when I was twelve by the maharani who was a friend of my mother’s. After weeks in uniforms with stiff collars and starched aprons, I felt rather underdressed.
    In the hall, George Hughes sat in the shadows cast by the lamps, his face unreadable. But I thought as I watched that he was drinking more than was wise. Roger cast several glances in his direction but said nothing. Janet Smyth tried to talk to him, but his answers were terse. I heard her quietly telling her brother that he was still grieving for Alan, but somehow I thought not. I saw him look at his knuckles a time or two, as if to reassure himself that what had happened on the road wasn’t merely his imagination.
    I wondered if the tree he’d seen was actually just one of the logs that the Lanyon family had been delivering to Vixen Hill. And they’d come back to reclaim it.
    After a lovely dinner, we took our tea in the drawing room in front of the fire, gathering under Juliana’s smiling portrait. I thought, George will be pleased .
    When the men had finished their port and come to join us, George sat down across from me. His eyes were heavy, and I thought perhaps he was half asleep. Then he turned to me and asked, “You’re a nursing sister?”
    “Yes.”
    “God bless,” he said fervently. “You have no idea how much good you do.”
    Gran looked up at that. “What did your father have to say about your decision to go into nursing?”
    I knew she’d