The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

past being ridden, but that still left a lot of work to do. The best pastures had
been taken over for crops. The government sent Land Girls to take the place
of the enlisted male farm workers. They moved into the old stable boys’
apartments, but they only helped with the farming on the estate, not the
horses. “Horses aren’t important these days,” said Fred.
Jamie was finally permanently and completely banned from the airfield.
They were too busy to have him around. Planes took off in bunches all day
and all night. We could see them high in the sky, tiny specks patrolling the
channel. Watching, waiting, for the invasion that would come.
I struggled to fall asleep in the long, bright summer nights. Jamie and
Bovril snored in unison, loudly. One night, when the noise grew too much to
bear, I crept downstairs to the slightly darker living room. Susan sat on the
sofa, her legs curled beneath her, staring into nothing. It was not the deep sad
staring from the year before. “Can’t sleep?” she asked when she saw me.
I shook my head. Susan patted the sofa beside her. I walked across the
room and stood in front of her, my good foot and the crutch tips deep in the
plush rug, the toes of my bad foot barely brushing the ground.
“Everyone still thinks I should send you away,” Susan said.
I nodded. Lady Thorton said so often. I went to Susan’s WVS meetings
sometimes, to help sew, and Lady Thorton made a noise in the back of her
throat every time she saw me.
“Part of me does agree,” Susan continued. “I know they mean well. But I
also understand now why some of the mothers from London took their
evacuated children back so soon. Some things you’ve got to face as a family.”
Hitler was in Paris. He could be in London next week.
“For the longest time,” Susan went on, “I thought I was neglecting you. I
didn’t take care of you the way my mother took care of my brothers and me.
My mother watched me all the time. She always kept me neatly dressed. She
ironed my shoelaces. She would never have let you run wild the way I have.
“But now, when I look at you, I think I didn’t do so badly. I think you
wouldn’t have liked being raised the way my mother raised me. What do you
think, Ada?”
I sat down on the sofa. “I never know,” I said. “When I’m not thinking,
everything’s clear in my head, but as soon as I try to look at it I get confused.”
I leaned against the back of the sofa.
“I understand,” Susan said. “Sometimes I feel like that too.”
I leaned my head against her, the tiniest bit. She didn’t move. I leaned a