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comfort, but rarely, and only in the art shed, which no one could enter without permission.
    Standing at the threshold once when he was small, Simon had been shocked to find his father, paintbrush clamped in his teeth, hunched over on the stool, head in his hands. Simon had summoned all his courage and whispered, “Whirligigs?” The silence in the room was so deep, his father’s acknowledgment so profound, that Simon had been unable to breathe until, without looking up, his father had thrust his arm out, and together they thrashed away at the whirligigs on the canvas, their mighty efforts securing the notion that terrors, even of monstrous proportion, could be gotten through—though perhaps only in shared company.
    But Simon had outgrown whirligigs, and now he was alone.
    On the day his father left for England, Simon had sat on the bed, watching him pack. Ida Corkum, his grandfather’s housekeeper since before Simon was born, had knit far too many socks, every pair in cream wool with a red and brown stripe at the top. His father plucked at them, rolling them into pairs and setting them back down. They were useless.
    “Too short, aren’t they,” Simon said.
    “Yep, but you can wear them in your boots and tuck the long hose over when it’s freezing.”
    “But how do you keep your legs warm under a skirt?”
    “Kilt, Simon. You know better. Ah, I see—making light of the uniform, eh?”
    Simon smiled. “Yeah. But still, how do you?”
    “A kilt is twice as thick as trousers and your legs harden from exposure, so you don’t feel the cold any more than on your hands and face. Just ask old Athol McLaren—ever see him in trousers? Besides, I’ll be indoors most of the time.”
    “So . . . you’ll be in the army, but you won’t be fighting the Germans?” Simon had asked this many times, the answer never quite resolving his simultaneous disappointment and relief.
    His father rolled his eyes.
    “I know. Cartography.”
    “Exactly. I’ll be detached from my unit and assigned to cartography in London. But the maps I make will be used at the Front. So I’ll be supporting the war.”
    Simon then asked the question he hadn’t yet dared to ask. “Will Grandpa still be against the war with you in it?”
    His father was quick to respond. “Of that I have no doubt. He has a right to his views. Just remember, moral certainty is a luxury of the very young and the very old.”
    “Define moral certainty.” Simon had been trying this out instead of “What’s that mean?” But it struck a tone he hadn’t intended.
    “Alright,” his father said slowly. “Seeing the world in black and white. How’s that?” He raked his hand through his hair and tossed three pairs of socks into the duffel bag. “Look, I know this won’t be easy on you,” he said.
    He was right. There was no escaping his grandfather nor his anger over the war. He lived right up the hill, owned the land they lived on, the house they lived in—was in it as often as not, and knew everything that went on even when he wasn’t. Lately, when his grandfather chastised Simon for some minor infraction, he was Captain Bligh to Simon’s Fletcher Christian, secretly plotting a mutiny. The story of the H.M.S. Bounty was one he’d been told many times by his grandfather, who had no use for an officer defying his captain and setting him adrift, and by his father, who had a more sympathetic take on Mr. Christian. Simon sided with his father, but his grandfather made more of an event of the telling, filling it in with a good deal more drama and colorful detail.
    His father was speaking again. “It’s fine to be against war—admirable,” he said. “But we’ve got to play the hand we’re dealt. We’re not pacifists, and neither is your grandfather, not in a formal sense anyway. I was raised to respect life, not take it, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to stand by and . . .” He whipped the bag off the bed and jerked the drawstring tight. “I have to