Letters Across the Sea by Genevieve Graham (best short novels of all time txt) 📗

I could hardly breathe. Bracing myself against the arms of my chair, I got to my feet, feeling off-balance.

“The brick?” I glared at Dad. “Let’s finally be honest about this. Nobody knows who threw the stupid brick. Even if it was Mr. Dreyfus, can you blame him? You attacked Max. You were in a rage. You even scared me. If Mr. Dreyfus did throw it, he did it to protect his son. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing to protect Richie, or any of us?”

They were watching me with a sort of horror, like children who’d been caught out on something. I wanted to feel bad for them, but all I felt was rage. How could they?

I took a shaky breath. “Dad, I’m sorry you were hurt that night. I’m sorry any of it happened. For so long I blamed myself. I kept thinking that if you hadn’t felt you needed to rescue me, if I’d listened and never gone to that game, none of this would have happened.”

I wished I had a thousand more things to say, to get my anguish out in the open and let my parents experience every tormented heartbeat I felt whenever I’d thought of Max over the last eight years. I shook his letter in the air.

“But now this. For years, he thought that I— Oh, God. Do you know what you did to him? To me? You broke our hearts.” Bile burned in my throat as I tried to understand. How could they have done this, then kept it from me for so many years? “You, with your ‘knowing better’! I don’t care ‘what’ he was. He was Max.”

“Molly,” Dad said quietly. “It could never have worked out, and you know it. He’s Jewish. You’re not. It isn’t allowed on either side.”

“No, Dad. You don’t understand. You never did. It was never about sides.” I hugged Max’s letter to my chest and looked into their eyes. “It was never about a Jew and a Protestant. It was about Max and me.”

fifteen MAX

Max! Get over here! You gotta hear this!” Arnie shouted, a note of panic in his voice.

Max was just walking into the barracks when he heard Arnie shouting at him. He, David, and others were gathered around the radio by their bunks, and Max heard the announcer’s voice chopping urgently through the static.

“What’s going on?” Max asked, ducking through the bunks toward them.

David waved him over. “Japan just attacked Pearl Harbour. They’re blowing up all those beautiful battleships we saw. They bombed Honolulu, too.”

“What are the Japanese doing in America?” Max asked, stunned.

“Shhh! It’s still going on,” David said, leaning in to the radio.

“Hello NBC. Hello NBC. This is KGU in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am speaking from the roof of the Advertiser Publishing Company building. We have witnessed this morning the distant view of a brief, full battle of Pearl Harbour and the severe bombing of Pearl Harbour by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese.”

“Listen to that,” Arnie said, his face pale. “It sounds like total ruin.”

Word of the attack spread through the barracks, and the crowd jostled behind Max, trying to hear. He and the others stayed by the radio all morning, listening to updates.

“The city of Honolulu has also been attacked and considerable damage done. This battle has been going on for nearly three hours.”

“Why would they do that?” Arnie asked. “America wasn’t even in the war.”

“It was only a matter of time,” Richie said, his hands tucked tight under his armpits.

Max nodded, thinking it through. “They would have probably joined the war soon, and the only way anyone could get ahead of them would be with a surprise attack. They’re in it now. They have no choice.”

“But what does this mean to us?” Richie asked.

“Means the Japs are busy over there,” someone replied. “Means we’re safe.”

But over the next few hours, the radio crackled with updates, and Max felt tension snapping through the room like a live wire. Japan had gone on to attack the Philippines, then they’d invaded Malaysia. Six hours after Pearl Harbour, the Japanese bombed Hong Kong’s airfield, which was being defended by the British forces.

“They’ve destroyed five RAF planes,” one of the men reported, returning to the barracks with updates.

“The Brits will fight them off,” Richie said. “Right? They told us it would never come to anything.”

Max wished he could reassure him. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t say that,” Richie said, holding his gaze. “You never say that.”

Arnie let out a slow breath. “I used to think my brother was the one in a scary position, whenever he heads to Europe. Now I wish I was Samuel. This place is in trouble.”

Max was positive he wasn’t the only one who didn’t sleep that night. Try as he might to calm his mind, he could sense the danger drawing closer by the hour. The next day, word got out that the Japanese were in sight of the main British defences and had set up artillery. Max went to Sergeant Cox and asked what was going to happen, but the sergeant said the Canadians hadn’t been issued any orders. While the Brits battled the invaders, Max and the rest of C Force paced the barracks, and thousands of Chinese refugees loaded what they had onto wagons. When he asked one of them where they’d go, they waved their busy hands and vaguely said north, then west, toward the New Territories. They’d fled the Japanese before. They’d witnessed what the enemy was capable of doing, and they weren’t sticking around to see it again.

On December 10, three days after the Japanese sank most of the American battleships, they torpedoed the British Royal Navy’s HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in the South China Sea.

“We have to get moving,” Max muttered, bracing himself against Arnie’s bunk. He felt like a trapped animal. “We have to either fight or retreat. They’ve sunk all the ships. No one’s coming to help us.”

But the sense