Three Fates

lists change so quick. I can’t think what terror of heart families are living with, waiting to know. Or what grief those who know their loved ones are lost in this horrible way are feeling. You said there was no one waiting for word of you.”
    “No. No one.”
    She went to him. She’d tended his hurts, suffered with him during the horrors of his delirium. It had been only three days since he’d been brought into her care, but for both of them, it was a lifetime.
    “There’s no shame in staying here,” she said quietly. “No shame in not going to the funeral today. You’re far from well yet.”
    “I need to go.” He looked down at his borrowed clothes. In them he felt scrawny and fragile. And alive.
     
     
    THE QUIET WAS almost unearthly. Every shop and store in Queenstown was closed for the day. No children raced along the streets, no neighbors stopped to chat or gossip. Over the silence came the hollow sound of church bells from St. Colman’s on the hill, and the mournful notes of the funeral dirge.
    Felix knew if he lived another hundred years he’d never forget the sounds of that grieving music, the soft and steady beat of drums. He watched the sun strike the brass of the instruments, and remembered how that same sun had struck the brass of the propellers as the stern of the Lusitania had reared up in her final plunge into the sea.
    He was alive, he thought again. Instead of relief and gratitude, he felt only guilt and despair.
    He kept his head down as he trudged along behind the priests, the mourners, the dead, through the reverently silent streets. It took more than an hour to reach the graveyard, and left him light-headed. By the time he saw the three mass graves beneath tall elms where choirboys stood with incense burners, he was forced to lean heavily on Meg.
    Tears stung the backs of his eyes as he looked at the tiny coffins that held dead children.
    He listened to the quiet weeping, to the words of both the Catholic and the Church of Ireland services. None of it reached him. He could still hear, thought he would forever hear, the way people had called to God as they’d drowned. But God hadn’t listened, and had let them die horribly.
    Then he lifted his head and, across those obscene holes, saw the face of the woman and young boy from the ship.
    The tears came now, fell down his cheeks like rain as he lurched through the crowd. He reached her as the first notes of “Abide with Me” lifted into the air. Then he fell to his knees in front of her wheelchair.
    “I feared you were dead.” She reached up, touched his face with one hand. The other peeked out of a cast. “I never got your name, so couldn’t check the lists.”
    “You’re alive.” Her face had been cut, he could see that now, and her color was too bright, as if she were feverish. Her leg had been cast as well as her arm. “And the boy.”
    The child slept in the arms of another woman. Like an angel, Felix thought again. Peaceful and unmarked.
    The fist of despair that gripped him loosened. One prayer, at least one prayer, had been answered.
    “He never let go.” She began to weep then, soundlessly. “He’s such a good boy. He never let go. I broke my arm in the fall. If you hadn’t given me your life jacket, we would have drowned. My husband . . .” Her voice frayed as she looked over at the graves. “They never found him.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “He would have thanked you.” She reached up to touch a hand to her boy’s leg. “He loved his son, very much.” She took a deep breath. “In his stead, I thank you, for my son’s life and my own. Please tell me your name.”
    “Felix Greenfield, ma’am.”
    “Mr. Greenfield.” She leaned over, brushed a kiss on Felix’s cheek. “I’ll never forget you. Nor will my son.”
    When they wheeled her chair away, she kept her shoulders straight with a quiet dignity that brought a wash of shame over Felix’s face.
    “You’re a hero,” Meg told him.
    Shaking his head, he moved as quickly as he could away from the crowds, away from the graves. “No. She is. I’m nothing.”
    “How can you say that? I heard what she said. You saved her life, and the little boy’s.” Concerned, she hurried up to him, took his arm to steady him.
    He’d have shaken her off if he’d had the strength. Instead, he simply sat in the high, wild grass of the graveyard and buried his face in his hands.
    “Ah, there now.” Pity for him had her sitting beside him, taking him into