Enigma by Eric Walters

Author:Eric Walters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tundra Book Group

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MY MOTHER WAS TRYING to give us the silent treatment—still angry about last night—but it wasn’t working very well. She was too excited. Maybe the only person more excited was Jack, but he was working very, very hard—and just as unsuccessfully—not to show it. I’d already caught him at the bathroom mirror first thing in the morning fussing with his hair.

Jack and I were dressed in our best brought-from-Bermuda clothes—starched white shirts, jackets and black dress pants, and ties borrowed from our father. My mother had carefully ironed out the wrinkles, made us polish our shoes till they shone, and personally scrubbed the last little bit of mud from behind our ears. She was wearing her pearls with her best “going to church” dress, topped off with white gloves and a hat and her newest handbag. My father had it the easiest. He was wearing his captain’s uniform, and he looked pretty sharp. I would have liked to have been in a uniform, too.

Now we were in the car that had been sent for us, with our own driver, and feeling pretty special as we sped along the roadway toward … well, they hadn’t actually said where we were going, exactly.

“The countryside is very beautiful,” my mother said. “It’s all so lush and green and peaceful.”

“It’s hard to believe there’s even a war going on,” my father said.

“I think that’s why members of the royal family stay out here, away from the city,” she replied.

“Or send their kids to Canada or Bermuda,” Jack added. “I know Louise is just glad to be home with her family.”

Louise had returned to England the night after the attempted kidnapping. Obviously the Nazis knew who she was, and where she was, so Bermuda wasn’t safe for her anymore. How ironic that she’d been sent from England to Bermuda to get away from danger, and it had followed her all the way across the Atlantic Ocean!

“You two have certainly been keeping the postman busy,” my mother said to Jack with a smile.

My mother seemed quite taken by the idea of her son having a “sweetheart.” Of course, comments like that only made Jack cringe with embarrassment. As for me, I thought the whole thing was stupid. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Louise, but what was the point in having a girlfriend who lived so far away, separated by an ocean filled with enemy U-boats? Besides, she was royalty, and Jack, well … wasn’t. I was only twelve but I was smart enough to know there was no future in this. No future and no present—just a past, and how long would that last?

We’d been in the car for over an hour already and the driver, friendly and open about everything else, had explained that he couldn’t tell us where we were going or how long it would take. And with all the signs taken off the roads, we didn’t have much of an idea where we were other than in the countryside somewhere.

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