A Hope Remembered Read Free

nose dropping lower and lower. Colin closed his mind to the guilt, to the flicker of thought about who this other man might be. If he didn’t, he’d freeze up, and that meant certain death.
    When the enemy aircraft plummeted toward the earth, he jerked his gaze away, unable to watch the crippled plane strike the ground, the pilot still inside.
    At a hand signal from his squad leader, Colin banked his plane around and followed the lead Camel back toward the airfield. He looked for Christian on his left and right, but he wasn’t concerned when he didn’t see him. His brother was most likely behind him.
    Colin landed his aeroplane and quickly did an assessment of the damage. More holes, but nothing to keep him from flying again. Goggles in hand, he strode toward the others, looking for Christian.
    Another pilot and his good friend, Andrew Lyle, climbed off the wing of his Camel. When he removed his goggles, his face appeared unusually white.
    “One get a little too close that time, Lyle?” Colin joked as he approached.
    Lyle flinched and shook his head.
    “Where’s Christian? He’s flying slow today, the old man.”
    “You didn’t see…” Lyle rubbed a hand over his ashen face, his next words barely a whisper. “I’m so sorry, Colin.”
    “Sorry?” Shards of fear sliced through Colin, cold and ominous. “What are you talking about?”
    “It’s Christian. He…he was shot down.”
    Colin fell back a step. “No. He’s only slow. I was right there, Lyle. I didn’t see him fall.”
    “I barely saw him.” Lyle’s voice was too calm, too devoid of emotion now.
    Fury ripped through Colin’s denial. He fisted Lyle’s coat and glared at his friend. “Are you joking with me? What happened to my brother?”
    Lyle hardly blinked, his gaze full of pity. “Gunfire ate up his plane. He was dead before he hit the ground.”
    Christian dead?
    Colin scanned the nearby planes, hoping, praying, Lyle was wrong. He’d see his older brother striding toward him, that disgruntled frown on his face before he reprimanded Colin for his risky flying. But no one appeared except the other members of their squadron. Colin read the truth of Lyle’s words in the way none of them would meet his eye, the way their heads hung low with suppressed grief. Slowly he released his hold on Lyle.
    “Can we get another picture, chaps?” Mr. Rushford said, hurrying toward them. “Group you up around one of the planes there?” He stopped his frenzied steps and frowned. “Where’s your brother, Mr. Ashby? We need him in the picture, too.”
    “He’s dead.”
    The voice sounded so unlike his that Colin wondered for a moment who’d spoken. But the searing pain in his throat and the horrified look on Mr. Rushford’s face as the man stared openmouthed were proof enough that Colin had said the words himself. Words that sank deep like a knife wound through his chest, cutting and tearing his world into irreparable pieces.
    “If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Rushford, I’ll sit this photograph out.” He didn’t wait for the journalist’s reply. Instead Colin marched away from the group as fast as he could walk, his goggles strangled between his hands, his heart and mind wrapped in shock.
    His brother was gone and nothing would ever be the same again.

Chapter 1
    Iowa, May 1920
    N ora led the strangers into the parlor, their footsteps sounding unusually loud against the polished wood floor. Her gaze swept the tidy room with theirs and settled on the upright piano. How forlorn it looked stripped of its usual sheet music and family photos. The latter she could take with her, but her courage fractured a bit at the thought of someone else playing the instrument that had soothed her loneliness more times than she could count. The piano would be too costly to cart to England, though, and so like many other things, it would have to be left behind.
    “What a spacious room,” the woman said, her hand resting on her protruding belly. Her husband