A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [82]
Innes laughed, and they turned a corner.
“Did you think it was the Germans?” she asked.
“I did for a moment. Until I got outside and saw the devastation. No bomb could have produced that.”
“You were not in the wreckage of the house?” she asked.
“I think I landed in a textile factory.”
Hazel thought a moment. “The Looms. You’d have landed there. It was behind our street and one building over. Not a textile factory. More of a crafts organization.”
“Would you like to stop for something to eat?” Innes asked.
Hazel shook her head. “I will have a meal waiting for me at my aunt’s house. Really, I am just enjoying the fresh air.”
The air smelled clean for the first time in days. The scent of death seemed to have vanished.
Hazel stopped short and faced Innes. “My sister,” Hazel said. “I don’t see how I can visit her again in the near future.”
“It would seem unwise at the moment,” Innes said, surprised by the abruptness of Hazel’s pronouncement. “I do believe that she will calm down. I have seen many other patients accidentally blinded. Few can maintain the fever pitch of terror that seems to grip her now.”
Hazel was standing so close to Innes that he could feel her breath.
“I wish to go away,” she said. “I wish to leave all this.”
Innes wasn’t sure of her meaning. “Leave Halifax?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t want to be here. It’s heartless, I know, when so many have suffered. When my sister is suffering.”
“But where would you go?” Innes asked, aware of a pressure building in his chest.
Hazel tore off her hat. She shook her head, and her hair fell loose. “Perhaps to America,” she said. “I don’t know. When the war is over, I could go to Europe. I know only that I can’t tolerate this city. I felt this way before the blast.”
“Yes, I sensed it,” Innes said.
“And now there’s nothing for me here.”
Innes was stung by the remark. “You don’t feel the need to be near your sister?” he asked.
“Of course, I shall take care of her,” Hazel said. “There is money. And I will visit her—when she will have me. But, no, I don’t feel the need to be near her every minute. I think both of us would do better to be apart for a while.”
Innes was not surprised by Hazel’s admission. Nor even the heartlessness of it.
“But what about your fiancé?” he asked. “Will he not shortly return from France?”
Hazel played with the hat in her hands. “I have written to him,” she said.
“You have written to him,” Innes repeated, not at all sure what was meant by the statement.
“I won’t marry him.” She glanced up at Innes. “A calamity, a catastrophe—it changes everything, doesn’t it? It makes you aware that you cannot be indifferent toward your life. You cannot simply give away your life. I didn’t want to marry before the blast. This only makes it easier.”
“Not for him, I should think,” Innes said.
“He must remain in Halifax when he returns. All of his companies are here.”
“Some destroyed, I imagine.”
“Yes. But all the more reason. They will have to be rebuilt.”
“Hazel,” Innes said, and her eyes flickered away from him. “It would make me sad to see you go.”
“You don’t know me,” she said.
“I don’t think you believe that,” Innes said, aware that he had to choose his words carefully. An unwelcome urgency had made it necessary.
“I flirted with you that night,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I had no right to do that.”
“But you must have felt something,” Innes said.
“I imagined,” Hazel said simply.
“Would you not then give your imagination free rein?” he asked. “Hazel. Look at me.”
Hazel turned her face to him. “I have to leave this city,” she said evenly.
If she would leave her sister, surely she would leave a man she hardly knew.
“We only had an evening,” Hazel said. “Not really even that. What can be learned in an evening?”
“I think time is of little consequence in and of itself,” Innes said and heard the vaguely pedantic note in his voice. “In an instant, an entire city was leveled. Who’d have thought that possible? Might not love be possible in an instant as well?”
Innes was glad for the darkness.