Take Me Home (9781455552078) Read Online Free PDF Page B

made her ashamed.
    â€œNow run on home,” John said. “Once I finish up with Dale I’ll be along so we can celebrate as a family.”
    This time, when he took his daughter in his arms, it was Olivia who held him close, her eyes shut tight to hold back tears. Maybe it was because she’d begun to understand what accepting Billy’s proposal meant. Or maybe it was because even though she didn’t love him, at least not in a romantic way, Olivia couldn’t imagine taking back what she’d done; it would kill him inside.
    She was going to become Billy Tate’s wife, and there was nothing that could change that fact now.
    So when a lone tear finally did fall, Olivia wiped it away quickly.

Chapter Three
    P ETER B ECKER ROCKED back and forth on his hardback seat as the train jostled its way down the tracks, the sound of its passing steady and rhythmic. Three dozen men shared the train car with him, yet it was oddly quiet; no one spoke, the silence occasionally broken by a cough or sneeze. Most heads were turned to stare out of the windows at the passing landscape. Brilliant sunlight shone down from a cloudless sky, bright on the endless fields as they rushed past, sparkling across the water of trickling rivers and streams, only to disappear when the train passed through a thick copse of trees. Once, a trio of deer had looked up from the tall grass they were eating. Peter would have liked to get up and move around, to take in all of these new yet strangely familiar sights, but that was impossible.
    He could be shot just for getting out of his seat.
    Heavy iron handcuffs shackled both of Peter’s wrists. A chain ran down through a bolt in the floor, connecting him to the man sitting to his right. An American soldier stood two seats in front, his back to the door that led between the train’s cars, his gun held at the ready, and his eyes vigilant for the first sign of trouble.
    Peter was a German soldier.
    He was the enemy.
    Nearly three months had passed since Peter’s infantry unit had accidentally stumbled onto an American patrol in the forests of western Germany. He still remembered the bitter cold of that day, the way the wind burned the bare skin of his face, but nothing could compare to the icy fear that filled him when the Americans revealed themselves, the morning filled with their shouts demanding surrender. Two of his fellow soldiers had refused and raised their guns, only to be shot full of bullets, dead before their bodies even hit the frozen, snow-covered ground. Wisely, Peter and the rest had done as they were ordered.
    After their capture, they had been treated well. For years, Peter and his fellow soldiers had been warned about what would happen to them if they were to fall into Allied hands; that the Americans would torture them mercilessly, shooting them like dogs when they’d had their fill. But that hadn’t happened. Far from it, they had been given warm clothes and food, far better than they’d been receiving from Germany’s beleaguered home front. Following weeks of endless questions aimed at determining what, if anything, they knew about German war plans, they had ridden trains to the Atlantic coast, boarded enormous transport ships, and then sailed west for the United States. After landing, it was more questions and more trains. Their final destination was to be a system of internment camps in Minnesota. For Peter, all sense of time had been lost; one day bled right into the next.
    For all of those on the train, the war was mercifully over.
    â€œWhen are we getting something to eat?!”
    Peter stiffened as the man beside him, the soldier on the other end of his handcuffs’ chain, shouted in German, his voice menacing; the suddenness of his voice in the silence of the train car made it sound much louder than it was.
    Otto Speer was the rare soldier who relished the violence of war. He was squat and thick-necked, and his hands were so large