“That sounds like Danny,” he said. “He would pull those one-liners out of nowhere, and they’d just sink right into us. He was the morale of our entire division. I saw him one time, kneeling in the chapel on base, before we were shipped out. I didn’t mean to intrude, and I turned to leave, but he told me to stay. We just sat there a long time, him praying and me wondering, until finally he said it was okay to ask questions. That God was big enough for questions, and how would I ever know Him if I didn’t ask? So I did. I started asking questions. To Danny, and then reading that Bible he gave me, and something strange happened. The more I asked, the more I felt—at home. I had never known a home, not really. But I found a home in the Psalms and in the stories of a man who gave of himself beyond reason.”
“I believe it,” Hannah said. “Danny lived and breathed that sort of love.”
She took a shaky breath and looked to the sky as crickets began their evening song. “Methuselah misses him.” She glanced back toward the old barn. “Just hasn’t been the same since he went away.” She sighed and spoke more quietly. “Nothing has. I miss him.” She swiped another tear. “And that!” She held out her freshly tear-kissed fingertips to him accusingly. “That’s all thanks to you.”
“I’m so sorry . . .”
“No, it’s a good thing. Something’s been wrong with me since we lost Danny. The loss—it was so deep, I couldn’t even cry, somehow. The tears were there, I could feel ’em welling way down in there, with no way out. And then you and your—your thistles.” She waved the bouquet in between them for emphasis. “It’s a gift, is all. And I thank you.”
He beheld her. Tried to find the right words in his ever-failing vocabulary. I’m sorry. I wish he was here with you. I hope time heals your wound. None of it sounded . . . enough. “I miss him, too,” he said at last.
She sniffed and nodded, giving silence to the thought. Then she reached a hand to touch the etched bark of the oak. “I come here sometimes to look at these letters,” she said. In the moonlight, the initials scattered among the leaves and branches took on a lofty and magical feel, as if touching any one of them would cause the couple’s story to play out in the light of the fireflies darting among the leaves.
“What are you looking for in them?” Luke touched one, too, wondering what it would be like to be carved here, with someone, for all time.
“It’s silly,” Hannah said. “You’ll laugh.”
“Try me.” He smiled.
She watched him suspiciously a moment, then nodded. “A name. Something for the cottage. I want it to be called something that’ll honor what you’ve done, sending me these pictures of places that are lost in their original homes, but will always be remembered in this house’s very bones.”
Luke stared, feeling as if someone had just seen straight into him. “Not silly at all,” he said, his voice strangely thick. “Have you struck on any names?”
She smiled. “Well, there’s Hal,” she said, pointing at a place where Hal had proclaimed his love for Sally once upon a time. “But that doesn’t seem the right fit somehow.”
Their laughter mingled, the tree’s leaves trembling in a night breeze as if joining in.
She shook her head, growing more serious. “I’ve tried spelling out names from initials scattered all over this tree. But nothing is quite right. I keep thinking something like . . . the keeping place. Or the gathering. Or—I don’t know, something that speaks of safety, and holding. New life.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Luke said. “Your name.”
She blinked, summoned from deep thought. “But my name’s Hannah,” she said.
He grinned. “The name of your house, I mean.”
She laughed, showing she’d known just what he’d been getting at.
He continued. “Life house, or . . .” he looked to the side, thinking.
“I keep thinking something like—maybe haven.” Her voice grew quiet.
The word struck something in his memory, summoning it across the frozen fields of Belgium and over a raging ocean into this very moment. Leven, the woman had said in Dutch, the pronunciation rhyming exactly with haven. Life.
“Did I say something wrong?” Hannah’s face was concerned. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He shook his head. “No. That word—haven. It sounds so much like another I heard, once.” He told her the whole story of that long cold night. Of the bent weathervane singing its melody in the morning, of the couple come to rescue him. He told all but the part about the letter.
Hannah stood up straight from where she’d been leaning against the trunk, soaking in his every word. “Luke.” She shook her head. “You went through all that—and here you are, standing right in front of me, all the while keeping a story like this? What other tales are you holding in that big quiet of yours?” She said it like a badge of honor—big quiet. He’d always thought of his reticent ways as a shortcoming. But here she was looking at him like he was a treasure trove of cherished things.
“Leven.” She tried the word out, and he loved it in her voice, on her lips. “Leven. Lay-ven. Lay-ven. Haven.”
Their eyes met, and they burst into laughter at the way the rhyme rather undid the tender meaning of it all.
“Alright, so maybe not Leven Haven. But that word.” She shook her head in wonder. “You’ve hit on something, Luke Hampstead. Let’s hang on to that.”
Hannah stroked the soft tops of the thistles with her fingertips, then ever so softly slipped her hand into his. And without a thought, for it was the most natural thing in the world, he closed his hand around hers, wishing he could hold her close and safe always. They began the walk home to her farmhouse, crickets singing and fireflies dancing in the dark.
“This watermelon festival,” he said at length. “They have it every year?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Coming up next month, as a matter of fact.”
“You . . . uh . . .” No, that was all wrong. Burl Taggart had jilted her at this festival. She did not deserve a bumbling You, uh, tongue-tied invitation. The girl before him—the one smiling at the dance of fireflies skimming over cotton—she deserved on-purpose, all-heart words.
He cleared his throat. “Hannah. Would you do me the honor of accompanying me to the Oak Springs Watermelon Festival?”
She whirled to face him, and he worried she’d given herself whiplash. Her eyes were wide as saucers. “Me? With you. Me?”
“I know where I can procure an authentic purple thistle corsage,” he said. “If that puts a shine on the invitation at all.”
She smiled, and his muscles eased at the sight. “Well, I’d be honored, Mr. Hampstead.”
seven
JULY 1945
The twenty-first annual Watermelon Festival of Oak Springs was a sight to behold for anyone. But Hannah was especially enjoying seeing it through Luke’s eyes, which were huge as dinner plates at the moment.
It was a bit of a spectacle, she realized. With Main Street bedecked in bunting that remained up for the whole month of July, the road blocked off with barrels, and people milling about in their Sunday best, it seemed to make Luke stand a bit straighter.
“Penny for your thoughts?” she said, tilting her head.
Luke shrugged a shoulder. “It’s nothing,” he said.
“Well, nothing sure looks like a whole lot of something on you, pilot. Tell you what, I’ll make it a slice of pie for your thoughts, and you can pick any kind you want from the pie jubilee.”
He coughed. “Did you say pie jubilee?”
“Oak Springs does nothing halfway, sir. See for yourself.” She led him beneath the covered walkway to a long table spread with blue-and-white gingham, where plump pies of every kind awaited in varying states of having been devoured. Blueberry, pecan, peach, sour cream apple, and the ongoing joke of the town: Mr. Jones’s mincemeat pie, which was rumored to be the same returning relic, year after year, always going untouched.
Luke’s stomach growled, an
d Hannah was swift to take note of which pie had captured his attention. “Ah, I pegged you for a pecan pie man. I see I was . . . correct?”
He gave a sheepish nod. “But please,” he said, “let me. What’ll it be?” He was becoming easier in her presence, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on the feeling, but she felt . . . honored, somehow, by that. That this man with the treasure trove inside him would choose her to be comfortable around.
She opted for her favorite, sour cream apple pie. He paid discreetly, though she couldn’t help but notice it was twice what he owed. The pie was served up on the diner’s mixed china, and they strolled a bit while eating. Their wanderings took them past the Chili Parlor and its robust, tantalizing aromas, through a clutch of children gathered around a box of free kittens, around a crowd gathered to measure competing watermelons, and to a booth serving up ice cold glasses of watermelon sweet tea, of which they heartily partook.
“So . . . watermelon festival,” Luke said. “Don’t most towns just have a county fair?”
“Yes, sir. But Oak Springs isn’t most towns. Or rather—our fair was like most towns, until the great storm of ’24.” She told of the tornado that had torn through the town that year, destroying all crops but the watermelons. “No one had any warning, you see.”
Luke’s face showed sheer befuddlement, as well it should. “You don’t have warning sirens?”
“No, sir. Most places around here still use church bells to warn, and that’s if they are allowed to.”
“Allowed?”
She leaned in and lowered her voice as if to impart a great scandalous secret. “We couldn’t even say the word tornado around here till 1938, when the last real bad one ripped through here. Mayor thought it caused too much panic. And certainly no warning bells. But that’s all changed now. Church bells ring for three reasons: the watermelon festival kickoff, Sunday services, and tornado warning.”
“So now you have both warning bells and a watermelon festival, all because of those storms,” Luke said.
Hannah nodded. “The town had two choices after that: shrivel up on the vine and be defeated, or turn lemons into lemonade.”
“Or watermelon sweet tea.” Luke raised his glass. She clinked his cheerfully, and they meandered away from the crowd to a grove of trees, where a creek babbled happily on by, swallowing up great green islands in its gentle currents.
“Are those more watermelons?”
“Indeed they are,” she said. “And it’ll be just about time for the tastin’, too. Folks stick them in the creek to chill, and then everyone has a bite of everyone else’s ripest melon. Of course there’s a blue ribbon to be awarded, too. Tell you what, I’ll take our dishes back if you get started hauling these up. We all help out. Be back quicker than lightning.”
And she meant to, except that Marybeth Taggart intercepted her, her brood of four children gawking at the kittens.
“Hannah Garland,” Marybeth said. “Who is this handsome airman of yours that everyone’s been talking about?”
Hannah nearly dropped her dishes, sputtering. She set them in the appropriate collection basket before she had a chance to shatter them, and in time to shatter this rumor that had apparently sprung up like so much buckwheat.
“He’s not,” she said quickly.
Marybeth tipped her head quizzically.
“I mean—not to the handsome part. To the mine part. He’s not mine.”
“So he is handsome.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you just said—”
Marybeth was direct. It was one of her best qualities, and once Hannah had gotten over Burl Taggart being swept away in her presence enough to forget his date with Hannah, she’d once again counted Marybeth as one of her dearest friends. But right now, she was nothing short of maddening.
Or maybe it was Hannah herself who was maddening.
“He’s—he was a friend of Danny’s,” she said, and Marybeth’s entire stance softened immediately. “He’s just staying a few weeks to help Gran and me put the last touches on the cottage. Then he’s off again to take to the skies. So no, he’s not mine.”
“But he is handsome.” Marybeth’s smile dimpled, and Hannah swatted her on the shoulder.
“Maybe.”
“And full of grit, that one is.” Gran’s voice popped in as she sidled up from her walk down the boards. “Judging by the way that man saws through your biscuits each morning, he’s got teeth of steel, and courage even stronger.”
“Gran!”
“Hannah, I love you, darlin’, but you know it’s true. And that’s a good thing. The man is brave.” And just like that, Gran popped back out of the conversation, leaving a gobsmacked wake for Marybeth to revel in.
Which she did, entirely. “So he came to finish the cottage?”
“Well, no, not as such, but once he saw it, he offered to stay.”
“So—why did he come?”
Marybeth’s question was simple. So simple it irked Hannah something awful that it hadn’t struck her in all this time. Irked her so much she spun in a blur of frustrated thought and made a beeline for the creek to get to the bottom of it, posthaste.
But Luke was nowhere to be seen, and neither were the chilled watermelons. By the time she tracked him down, slicing melons with the Watkins twins, who had taken to him like a third brother, he was swallowed up whole by the town. It seemed they’d all noticed him in his weeks on their outskirts and had decided to make the festival one giant welcome to a serviceman, channeling all their patriotism and gratitude and the missing of their own sons and husbands into a great and mighty welcome.
He served up melon. Was ushered up to be the honorary awarder of blue ribbons. Acquiesced to the crowd’s prodding for him to kick off the apple bobbing, and all without a single complaint. Hannah knew enough of Luke Hampstead to know that being in the spotlight was not his cup of sweet tea, but he took it with true grit and kindness. And before she knew it, the sun had set, the torches were lit, and the town was funneling into the town hall for the evening’s culminating activity—the dance.
Somewhere in the hubbub, Luke was swept into the current of incoming dancers, and though he kept looking back, his eyes earnest and searching, his gaze never quite landed on Hannah. An old dread crept up in her. She had been here before, here at the doors of this dance, all alone. And while then it got her ire up, this time something worse began to grow. The opposite of a feeling. Cold, hollow resignation. This was getting to be a pattern in her life—being left behind. Unseen, overlooked. And she didn’t mind, not most of the time. There was so much to be busy doing that, honestly, who cared if anyone was thinking of little old Hannah Garland? She had enough humility to know the world did not always need to be thinking of her.
Still, this hollowness—it dug deep tonight, for some reason. This feeling of being forgotten.
A quick scan around the room saw Luke had been cornered by the three Drexler sisters—Peony, Rose, and Freesia, each of them fanning her fan and batting her eyelashes and putting on all the feminine charm that Hannah knew nothing of. Watching, she narrowed her eyes in an attempt to mimic them. How did they do that with their eyelashes? Winking one eye closed, then another, then rolling her eyes up at the ceiling, she determined that no amount of eyeball acrobatics could turn her into an eyelash batter, and perhaps that sealed her fate as a spinster. Well, so be it. She could swing a hammer, and there was work to do, and that would be enough for her.
Burl and Marybeth Taggart danced on by, a vision from the past. Marybeth caught her eye, giving a not-so-subtle jerk of her pretty head over toward Luke. “Go,” she mouthed.
But Marybeth did not know that Hannah could not compete with the eyelash batters. So Hannah did the only sensible thing and headed for the punch table, over near the string quartet.
Armed with a cut glass cup of pink liquid that at least provided some small buffer between her and this whirling room, she filled her lungs and smoothed out th
e pale blue taffeta dress that made her feel like she was walking on a cloud. She rolled back her shoulders, lifted her chin, turned to face the world—and nearly collided with Luke Hampstead.
“Great gumdrops, you scared me,” she said. Flustered, she held out the cup. “Here,” she said.
“For me?” He was pulling up that grin, the one that seemed mined from the very depths of the man.
“Why, sure,” she said, as if she’d meant to do that all along. When she had no earthly idea why she’d gone and shoved a cup of pink punch in the man’s hands.
He took a sip politely and nodded in approval, then set the cup down. “Mighty kind of you, Miss Garland, but I confess I was hoping for something a little different when I came this way.”
She scanned the far side of the room, spotting the Drexler girls fanning their fans and looking none too pleased toward them. He had—left them? To seek her out? She ran her hand along the table behind her, nonchalantly. As if it wasn’t keeping her from falling over like a featherbrained idiot. She was not sixteen anymore. So why was she acting like it? “O-oh?”
He held out his hand. Looked pointedly at Burl Taggart, who, along with the rest of the room, was completely oblivious to the crisis going on inside of her. “Miss Garland, would you do me the honor of granting me this dance?”
Hannah’s eyes grew wide. She swallowed. Gripped the table harder. This was entirely out of her element—and yet she could not refuse the earnest and open gaze of the man before her. The way he stood, hand outstretched, in his dark uniform.
“If you can swing a hammer, you can dance around a room for four minutes,” she muttered to herself, not believing a word of it. Then clapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Luke leaned forward ever so slightly. “True, Hannah. You can. You can do anything.”
And with that, she unlocked her grip from the table, rested her hand in his, and let herself be swept onto the dance floor for the first time since the Burl Taggart incident, when Danny had come to her rescue.
Couples around them bobbed gently to the plucky tune of the band. Hannah couldn’t imagine how they were keeping time, with her heartbeat pounding out its own rogue tempo so loud it was likely to trip them all.
The Kissing Tree Page 21