Chapter 37Beulah looked at me with her large, brown eyes. Tears squeezed out. Seeing them, I turned away. The memory had stayed raw, the pain real.
“I'm sorry about what happened to your friend, Mr. Gold.”
“Thank you.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
I nodded. “Yes. Yes it was. But there was the rest of the war to fight and I was determined to do my duty and fight as hard as I could.”
“I don't think I could do that,” she said.
“You're wrong,” I replied. “If you had no choice, you would do it. Anyone would.”
I became Mordecai the machine, moving through my duties routinely with as little conscious thought as possible. I stepped back from my feelings so they wouldn't interfere with soldiering. There was a mission to see through and I would do it to the best of my ability. Kill or
