The year of the invasion, Evette discovered an unopened box wedged between tidal pools on the north side of the island. Spring blew the storms to St. Lucien and the refuse of the continents washed up on its rocky shores. Berchten ships and their new toys of war, the submarines, were hunting supply routes from Antica to its remaining allies across the sea.
The box was medium sized and tightly sealed against the surf. Struggling to break it open with her house key, her hopes soared that it would be a month's worth of Antican K-rations. In his letters, Justus had written about how rich the Antican meals were compared with their own. Evette's brain sizzled with the promise of bacon, beef, bullion seasoning and sugar.
However, all she found inside were two neat stacks of notebooks. Office supplies were necessary in fighting a war as well as food. Still it was a blow. Evette sighed, sitting down hard on the boulder opposite the box. Once the disappointment faded, she thought of her students and their meager school supplies.
Securing it to the back of her bicycle, she covered it with her coat. The grey drizzle soaked through her navy cardigan. Yet it wasn't worth the risk of having the box taken by a passing Berchten patrol or even having to answer uncomfortable questions as to why she was walking the beaches. Colonel Dryfel seemed convinced that the island population was rife with spies, taking photographs and writing down reconnaissance. His officers were ordered to be harsher at the homes where they were billeted.
Lieutenant Vachel's car wasn't parked in the circular drive outside the two story villa. After leaving the bicycle in the barn, Evette managed to get the box inside. Marta was in the kitchen, whistling along to the gramophone record playing in the parlor. Hoisting the damp package on her hip, Evette craned her neck around the doorframe. Her mother had fallen asleep by the fire, her thin legs wrapped in a knitted throw and tea growing cold on the table beside her arm chair.
Tip toeing in her soggy shoes up the stairs, Evette secreted her discovery in her room. She peeled her sweater from her blouse and swiftly struck a fire in the small hearth facing her bed. With her laundering rack used for stockings and lingerie, she hung the notebooks on the rods and placed them a safe distance from the fire.
Clearing a couple anatomy texts from her desk chair, she retrieved her journal secreted in a stack of exams. Evette chewed the end of a pencil and considered her entry for the day. It had become a habit of hers to jot down her thoughts since the war had been declared. At one point the previous year, she had once hoped she could give the diary to Justus when he returned from combat.
Evette wasn't a romantic personality and her journal notes reflected her mechanical mind. They were brief lists, bare boned descriptions of the initial invasion, and her experiences with Vachel that held no judgement. It all read like indifferent newspaper articles. She didn't believe there was anything that could give rise to suspicion. However, she knew how it looked those days to keep a diary. Her own father would have frowned on her practice.
A sharp knock at the door made her hand jerk, ruining the word she had been penning. Snapping shut the leather bound journal, she jolted to her feet. She grabbed her discarded sweater and tossed it over the drying notebooks.
"Y-yes?" She stuttered.
She knew it was Vachel. Her mother wouldn't have knocked and her father would have announced himself first. Evette's theory was confirmed as the young Berchten Lieutenant opened the door. Evette gripped the book at her side and hoped he'd overlook the discarded box on the bed.
Vachel's heels clapped the floor as he stepped inside the room. The wavering glow of the fragrant fire washed over the wolfish angles of his hard face. In the faint glow, lines of premature aging were stenciled across his high forehead. Once again, as many times before, Evette wondered his age.
"Miss Wardly, your mother was indisposed and I didn't want to disturb her." He explained, grasping his hands at his back, "If I may have the key to the green house, I'd be much obliged."
Evette paused. His requests were to be obeyed without question. As the invader, he was being cordial turning his demand into an appeal. However, the green house had ever been her and her mother's sanctuary.
Months of Evette's childhood had been spent drawing various beetles or moths found in the conservatory, recording her observations on the development of seedlings. It was where her love of science had been birthed. Where her mother had nursed countless blooms until her illness kept her from the damp outdoors. Allowing him into their world of the greenhouse was an affront to Evette's soul.
"Miss Wardly?"
Wetting her lower lip, Evette wordlessly approached the hutch by the door. The skeleton key was in the china bowl on the inside shelf.
"Is that all you need, Lieutenant?" She asked coldly, holding it out to him.
Vachel's gaze trailed to the journal she held at her hip. Evette brought it behind her back with a sniff, her heartbeat picking up speed.
"Thank you. That will be all, Miss Wardly." He quipped with a curt nod.
She shut the door after him and pressed her back to it, trying to ignore the wafting scent of oranges that followed the man wherever he walked.
Her mother complained of a headache and went to bed early. Father was in town at a formal dinner with the Colonel, his superior officers and the other magistrates. They didn't expect him home until late. Evette was thankful to hear from Marta that the Colonel had insisted on chauffeuring him home after the ordeal. She wouldn't have put it past the Berchtens to make the old man walk home in the dark and chill.
The evening sky was clear following the grey afternoon. From the parlor window, Evette spied the cold structures of constellations like naked frames of unfinished airplanes. She closed her book. Shifting in the wing backed chair, her elbow rested on the arm as she perched her chin against her knuckles. Marta had stoked the fire and gone up to her bedchamber for her evening prayers, leaving Evette alone in the hushed room.
Evette's honey brown gaze drew past the open doors to the hallway. A man's heavy tread sounded down the stairwell, hobnailed boots scraping against the hardwood floors. The sound grated her nerves and Evette wished he would wear slippers indoors like a gentleman. She observed silently as Lieutenant Vachel emerged into the yellow light of the single lamp.
"Miss Wardly," He jutted out his sharp chin, "Might I have a word with you?"
Evette had skillfully maintained her distance from the man for days since her accident on the road from the school. The Lieutenant had remained polite but cool when in her presence. He had never sought any of them out socially, speaking with the family only when necessary. However, she begrudgingly recalled, he had managed to get back the graduating class their social when he brought the request to the Colonel. Perhaps she owed him a touch of civility. Evette had never been good at talking to strangers, much less enemy soldiers.
"Of course, Lieutenant." She folded her hands in her lap, her expression bland.
Vachel marched into the room. His robust movements suggested authority and ownership, as if the deed to the villa had his name on it. He stopped at the fireside, posture ram rod straight and feet planted to the flagstones. At his back, he held a small book. Evette abruptly recognized it. He held up her journal, his mouth drawing tight.
"Who is Justus?"
The invasion had entered every angle of her life now. She couldn't even keep her private tragedies to herself anymore. It all had to be taken out and examined from every position by their conquerors to prove she wasn't a threat.
"Why were you in my bedroom?" She breathed, alarm throbbing in her veins.
"I was returning your key and this was left in the cabinet."
"So you believed you had the right to go through it?"
"As an officer, I have the right to investigate what I find questionable," Vachel lifted his icy gaze towards the window, "You have written nearly half of this book to a man named Justus. There are lists and descriptions of troop movement. Other men in my position would have brought it straight their superior."
"Why didn't you?" Evette couldn't help asking.
Vachel blinked, "I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt."
She wanted to ask why he would do such a thing for her but kept her tongue. Part of her was scared of the answer. She sighed, rubbing the back of her stiff neck.
"Justus Hale was my fiancé," Evette stated as though it were a fact on the migratory patterns of birds, "I missed him while he was gone and wrote it for him to read upon his return. It helped me feel a little less alone."
Vachel's heavy eyebrows puckered. He was silent as he paced towards the davenport directly across from her and sank onto the velvet cushion. Undoing the top button on his jacket, he crossed his ankle over his knee.
"Was?" He murmured, "I'm sorry for your loss."
"It's not how you think, Lieutenant," She scoffed, "He sent me a letter soon before the arrival of your people. He had found a mainland Reganian girl that better suited his liking and was cutting me loose. I was jilted, you see. He's still very much alive, merely wasting away in one of your POW camps."
The lines around Vachel's mouth softened. Despite the steely curves of his face, his hunter green eyes warmed. They made her deeply uncomfortable as he studied her with what could only be called pity.
Breaking eye-contact, her hand went to her neck. Pulling a delicate silver chain from under her collar, she broke it and drew her engagement ring out from her shirt. The white gold band with the simple round diamond had lain over her heart since Justus had broken off their plans.
"Here is proof if you need any more of it, especially should you bring the diary to the Colonel," She rose from her chair and wearily held it out to him, defeat weighing on her shoulders, "I have no use for it anymore."
"Please, Miss Wardly," He shook his dark head as he stood, "I apologize for having caused you any pain. There will be no need for that."
He held out the journal to her where she stood an arm's length away. She dared meet his eyes once more and found them beseeching. She wondered if he had his mother's eyes or perhaps his father's nose, if he had any siblings that looked like him. Perhaps he was an only child like her. Vachel no longer seemed like a single cell in the larger parasitic organism of the Berchten Empire. His humanity was peeking through his thick hide and it scared her worse than seeing him as the invader.
Grabbing the journal from his outstretched hand, she impulsively threw it into the fire behind her. Vachel stared in silence as the flames ate into the pages. Evette ripped her eyes away from the hearth, grasping the ring tightly in her palm.
"It was a foolish endeavor. My father never would have approved," Evette swiveled towards the door, "Good night, Lieutenant."
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