Kiss River by Diane Chamberlain

Author:Diane Chamberlain
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780778312857
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2003-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

Tuesday, April 14, 1942

I am so mad and embarrassed and just plain aggravated that I can hardly write this.

First, let me explain about what happened last night. I was on the beach with Sandy when we heard these BOOMS. By now, we surely know what that sound means. Another one of our ships had been attacked. But we couldn’t see any light from a fire or anything, so we figured it had happened pretty far away. It wasn’t until this morning that I learned what it was: one of our ships called the Roper sunk a U-boat! The U-85. Daddy was hip-hooraying over that news. Finally, we’re fighting back. I don’t feel nearly so scared now, because I’m sure this is just the start of the turning tide.

So I was by the lighthouse after school, raking up the twigs and leaves left over from winter, when Dennis Kittering came limping along. The school in High Point where he teaches is on a spring vacation, so he will be camping on the beach all week. He was whistling that “Perfidia” song.

“What’s that song mean?” I asked him.

“What song?” He looked confused.

“That one you’re whistling. ‘Perfidia.’”

“I don’t really know the words,” he told me. “Just the tune.”

“But what does Perfidia mean?” I asked him. “Is it a girl’s name?”

“Ah.” He smiled at me then, this smile he uses sometimes when I know he’s feeling like he’s better than me. “You have a dictionary, Bess. You look it up.”

That annoyed me right there. We were off to our usual bad start. (I did look it up when I got in the house, though. It means “deliberate breach of faith or trust.” I still don’t know what that has to do with the song, though.)

Anyhow, then Dennis said, “It’s such a beautiful day. How about we go up to the top of the lighthouse and look at the view?”

I’d taken him up last year when I first met him and he hadn’t been up since, and while I felt sorry for him about that, I didn’t want to take him up today. The truth is, I don’t feel all that trusting of men these days, and I was not about to climb through that closed-up lighthouse with him. I said if he wanted to go up, he could go alone. He had my permission. But that obviously wasn’t what he wanted. He said what he really wanted was to talk to me, that he was concerned about me. I immediately felt embarrassed, as I do anytime I think someone knows what happened to me in my bedroom with the German. People are always telling me they’re sorry my family had to go through that ordeal, and I can’t look them in the eye, wondering exactly how much they know. I said I didn’t really have time to talk, but he somehow talked me into sitting on the bench near the lighthouse with him, and I got ready to accept his sympathy or whatever it was he was going to offer me.

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