by Kate Hewitt
“I doubt that.” Back in the kitchen, Abby reached for one of the dusty crystal vases kept in a high cabinet and rarely used. She gave it a quick wipe down before filling it with water. “So, what have you been up to over the last few days?”
“Not much, really. Recovering from jet lag, relaxing by the lake.”
Abby put the flowers in the middle of the table as Simon leaned back against the counter, folding his arms. He wore another button-down shirt, this one in pale blue, and a pair of faded jeans. Abby wondered if British men never wore shorts. Even though it was evening, the kitchen felt stuffy and hot, especially with the oven on.
“And what about your book?”
“Ah, yes. My book.” Simon made a comical grimace. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how much material I have. I’m afraid I might have gone on a bit of a wild goose chase with this, and I’m starting to wonder if it leads anywhere.” For a second, Abby saw something under his wry, laughing tone, something surprisingly bleak, but it was gone in an instant.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t help you more.”
“Not your fault. I simply hoped for more than there was, or at least was known, and I’m not sure there is.”
“What about the other couple, in Genoa City? You mentioned their kids wanted to talk to you?”
“Yes, there’s that, but, from all accounts, there’s not much mystery to it. A happily-ever-after, the end. Still, I’m going to see them on the weekend.”
Abby checked the lasagne, bubbling away, and then put the garlic bread in the oven. “Do you really think there’s some mystery to this medal?” she asked, glad her father was upstairs and couldn’t hear.
“I don’t know,” Simon said slowly. “I sort of think there is, especially because of your father’s reaction.”
She glanced at him, and saw he was looking straight and steadily at her, and she felt that same strange shivery sensation she’d felt before, like an invisible fingertip was trailing up her arm. Ridiculous.
“Why would my grandfather give Sophie his medal?” Abby wondered aloud. “As a keepsake, a way to remember him?”
“Perhaps.”
“That doesn’t seem too mysterious. If they had a wartime romance, it obviously didn’t last, but perhaps they parted on good terms.”
“Then why would my grandmother say she hoped he could forgive her?”
Abby paused, considering. “Maybe he asked her to come to America with him and she said no?”
“Perhaps, but it felt like something more than that. Like… a grievance.”
Abby cocked her head as she gave him a smile. It felt the tiniest bit like flirting. “Are you sure that’s just not wishful thinking on your part? Making more of a mystery than there was? More of a drama, so you can write a book about it?”
“Perhaps,” Simon acknowledged with a laugh. “I’m usually happy to have my imagination run away with me.”
“Well, it is interesting.”
“Your father hasn’t said anything more, I suppose?”
Abby raised her eyebrows. “What do you think?”
Simon laughed his acknowledgment. “Right. He does seem strangely reluctant.”
“He’s like that about everything. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
“You seem… used to dealing with him.”
Abby tensed at that, but then made herself relax as she shrugged and went to take the lasagne out of the oven. “We get along.”
They both fell silent as they heard David’s familiar, heavy tread on the stair.
“I think everything’s just about ready,” Abby murmured.
David came into the kitchen, giving Simon a nod before he sat down at the head of the table. Abby placed the lasagne in the middle, and gestured for Simon to take the opposite end.
“So how long have you had this place?” he asked as he put his napkin on his lap, and David gave him the briefest of rundowns on the orchard’s history—how Tom moved from Minnesota after the war and bought it in the fifties, starting from scratch as a going concern, changing it from dairy to apples.
“He didn’t want to stay in Minnesota? With his family?”
“Seems not.” David’s voice was flat.
Abby felt a slight tension tauten the air and decided a subject change was a good idea. “What about your grandmother?” she asked as she started serving the lasagne. “Did she live in London her whole life?”
“She lived there during the war, and then married my grandfather, William Elliot, in 1948. He was a pilot during the war, and a solicitor after. They moved to Surrey, just south of London, in the fifties, and then, after he died, she retired to Devon, on the coast.”
“And the first you ever heard of us was when your grandmother mentioned the medal a few months ago?”
“Yes. And my parents hadn’t heard of it either—as I said before, my mother died a few years ago, so I was never able to ask her, but my dad hadn’t the foggiest. Strange, isn’t it?” He gave David an easy smile that the older man grudgingly returned.
“Not so strange,” he said after a moment, his voice gruff. “Like you said, most people didn’t want to talk about the war. It was a hard time, best forgotten. People wanted to move on, look to the future.”
“That’s true.” Simon nodded his agreement. “My grandmother didn’t say much about the war at all, at least as far as I can remember. I know she worked in the War Office as a secretary, but she didn’t seem to rate it very highly. She always said she didn’t do much for the war other than type letters for fusty old men.”
A silence fell over the table as they started to eat. Abby wished she could think of something interesting or witty to say, but her mind felt as if it had been wiped clean, and her father seemed only interested in eating. Simon seemed game enough, his expression as alert as ever, but Abby suspected he would tire of them both soon. They had to seem like the most boring people on the planet.
Sure enough, her father excused himself before dessert, saying he had work to do, which was both a relief and a disappointment. Abby wished he’d try, just a little, even as she was glad he was gone. Maybe now she could talk to Simon properly.
SIMON
As soon as David Reese left the room, Simon felt as if he could breathe easier. The man was like a dark cloud hovering over everything. He wondered how Abby stood it. She seemed to relax as well, he noticed, as he rose to help her clear the table.
“So you’ve never left the orchard,” he said musingly as she rinsed plates and handed them to him to stack in the dishwasher. It felt companionable to work together, finding their rhythm. Rinse, pass over, stack. “But have you ever wanted to?”
A plate nearly slipped from Abby’s hands and Simon deftly caught it, giving her a quick smile. So that had touched a nerve. He’d thought it might.
“Not really,” she said as she turned back to the sink. “Otherwise I would have.”
“There are loads of reasons for staying in the same place.”
“Did you?”
Simon grinned to acknowledge the parry and thrust. “It seems like your father isn’t the only person in the Reese family who doesn’t like talking about themselves.”
“It’s just there’s not much to say.” Abby let out a little laugh, or tried to. “Honestly. I’m very dull. I’ve been thinking about that all evening, how very boring I must seem to you. I haven’t gone anywhere, or done anything, except live and work on this orchard, which is actually fine, if a bit dull to the outsider.”
“Not at all,” Simon assured her. “But have you wanted to go somewhere?” He chose to press. “Anywhere, ever? That’s the real question.”
“Maybe, a long time ago.” Abby’s voice had a faraway quality that Simon wondered at. “But I grew out of it.”
“Is it something you have to grow out of?”
“My life is here.” She spoke firmly. “And it always will be. I’m very happy with that.”
Was that a warning, Simon wondered, not to get too close? He
was just being friendly, but occasionally he felt himself veer into flirting, which was weird, since he hadn’t dated anyone in years, and he generally wasn’t a flirtatious kind of guy. Yet Abby intrigued him. He liked her—or at least he wanted to, if she would let him. Maybe it was her reserve that fascinated him; it felt safe. She wouldn’t blow up on him. She wouldn’t start shrieking about how something was all his fault. Yes, he had emotional baggage, just as she seemed to have hers.
Suppressing the inevitable sigh, Simon turned back to her. “Well, you don’t seem boring to me. Not boring at all.” He held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary, noticing her blush, liking it.
All right, yes, he was definitely flirting. So what? It felt good. It didn’t have to make him feel guilty, to think about home, about Maggie, and how she still hadn’t responded to his message. He was a free man. Unfortunately.
Abby turned back to the sink, shaking her head a little. He’d hardly done anything, yet Simon wondered if already he’d pushed her too far.
ABBY
Why couldn’t she handle this? Abby wondered as she continued to rinse plates. This was all so new, so different from her dependable days, her empty nights. Besides Shannon and Tina, she had few friends, and most of them were older, or married, or living somewhere far away. Her life was quiet—a deliberate choice she’d made at just seventeen, the only atonement she could offer, and the only thing from that time that she didn’t regret. But it left her woefully unprepared for moments like this one—a little light flirting over dirty dishes as a violet twilight settled softly over the fields outside, and the cicadas started up in a noisy hum.
“You didn’t actually say,” she said as she closed the dishwasher and then went to get the ice cream. “Whether you stayed put or not, I mean.”
“No, I didn’t stay.” For a second, Simon’s voice dropped its usual good humor and irrepressible energy. He sounded strangely bleak.
The gallon of ice cream in her hands, Abby turned to look at him. He seemed lost in thought, but as he caught her gaze he perked up, giving her a quick smile that for once didn’t reach his eyes.
“Childhood in Lincolnshire, university in Nottingham, and then on to Cambridge, where I teach sixth form. I’ve been around, although I’ve never gone anywhere too far.”
“Don’t forget your year in Philadelphia.”
“True.”
They took their bowls of ice cream out to the back porch, Bailey following them hopefully, although Abby regretted the decision when she realized the only place to sit was on the old bench swing, which seemed a little too cozy.
Simon solved the problem by plonking himself down on the back steps, and Abby did likewise, with Bailey planted between them. Dusk was settling on the fields and orchards in a purple blanket, the air still warm and drowsy from a day under the baking sun. An owl hooted in the distance, audible over the determined chirping of the cicadas. A perfect summer night.
Abby took a bite of ice cream, savoring the sweet, creamy coldness of it.
Simon gave a sigh of appreciation. “Delicious.”
“Straight out of the freezer.”
He glanced at her. “I can see why you’d stay here. It seems pretty perfect to me.”
It felt like an apology of sorts, for pushing her earlier. Not that he had all that much. It just felt that way to Abby, because she’d become so private.
She didn’t know what to say in response—there was so much that was both right and wrong with his statement—so she just popped another bite of ice cream into her mouth and savored the taste, along with the peaceful silence.
“So, will you work on your book?” she asked after she’d swallowed it down. “That’s why you came, right?”
“I’ll do my best.” He propped his elbows on his knees. “Did you know seventy thousand British women married GIs after the war? That’s quite a number.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Makes me wonder why it didn’t work out between Sophie and Tom.”
“You don’t even know if they had a romance,” Abby pointed out, even though she’d been the one to suggest it earlier.
“I think they did. Come on, don’t you? What else could it have been?”
Abby considered the point. “I suppose,” she said at last. “There must have been something there.”
“So why do you think your dad is so reluctant to know more?”
She shook her head. “He’s not,” she said as firmly as she could. The last thing she wanted was for Simon to start poking and prying into their lives, or trying to figure out what made them tick—she so quiet, her dad so grumpy. “Not in the way you mean. He’s just like that, about everything.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She turned to him, startled, her mouth dropping open. “What…”
“I don’t believe you,” Simon repeated, smiling, almost sounding flirtatious. Again. “It’s more than that. Yes, I get it, he’s reluctant. He’s your standard taciturn farmer, man of few words, salt of the earth, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Wow.” Abby shook her head, smiling a little. “How many clichés can you use?”
“I’m not trying to imply your father is a cliché—”
“Really?” she returned lightly. It felt good to challenge him, to tease, like stretching an old muscle she’d forgotten she had.
“All right, maybe I am.” Simon grinned, unabashed. “He seems a bit that way to me. But, at the same time, he seems more. Like he’s hiding something. I think he is.”
Abby’s stomach tightened at this assertion. “You mean about my grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“All right, Sherlock.” She shook her head, trying to laugh it off.
“Tell me you’re not curious.”
Abby hesitated, staring out at the darkening night. Was she curious? For a moment, her instinctive caution wavered. For a second, she truly wondered. What had happened, seventy-odd years ago? Could it possibly matter to anyone now? To her?
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Will knowing what happened make much difference, all these years later?”
“It could. You know the phrase—‘those who forget history are doomed to repeat it’?”
Abby rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that meant to apply to wars and genocides and things like that?”
“And failed romances, and personal regrets.” A touch of sorrowful whimsy colored his voice, like the tug of a thread, leading to an unraveling.
Abby bent down to stroke Bailey, sliding her fingers along her silky ears as the darkness settled softly over them.
“If your grandmother and my grandfather had stayed together, neither of us would be here,” she said slowly. “So I’m kind of glad they didn’t.”
“So am I.” The throb of sincerity in Simon’s voice made Abby keep her gaze on her dog.
Were they flirting again? Why couldn’t she tell?
Simon cleared his throat. “What was your grandmother like, anyway? The woman Tom Reese did marry?”
“I’m afraid I don’t really remember her. There’s a picture of them in the hall, though. Their wedding photo. I’ll show it to you, if you like.”
“All right.” That seemed like a signal for Simon to leave, which Abby hadn’t meant, but he’d finished his ice cream and so he stood up, and she started to do likewise, half-wishing the evening wasn’t coming to an end.
Simon reached down with one hand to help her up, and, after a second’s pause, Abby took it. His palm slid across hers, warm and dry, and she felt ridiculous for reacting to it. She really needed to get a social life. The next time Shannon wanted to set her up, she’d say yes. Even if it was to some bozo from Milwaukee whose laugh would be too loud, or who would bore her senseless talking about the stock exchange or fantasy football.
She dumped their bowls in the sink before leading Simon to the front hallway, and the photo of Tom and Susan Reese hanging by the stairs. It was black and white and they were both unsmiling, the way
people seemed to be for photos back then. Tom was in a dark suit, Susan in a relatively plain white dress, belted at the waist. Though they stood next to each other, they weren’t touching.
Simon leaned closer to study it intently, his hair flopping forward. He raked it back with one long-fingered hand as he squinted at the photo.
“Where was it taken?”
“Um… a registry office in Milwaukee, I think.”
He turned to look at her in surprise. “Not in Minnesota? Not in a church?”
Abby shrugged, startled by the question, one she’d never considered before. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She searched her memory. “I think it was a small wedding. No family. There’s only that one photo, and no one ever talked about Grandad’s family back in Minnesota, anyway.”
“How did they meet?”
Abby cast her mind over what little family history she knew. Life began and ended with Willow Tree Orchards; no one had ever really talked about anything before. Her mother’s family was from Chicago, and there was only her elderly grandmother left, in a nursing home with dementia. As for the Reeses…
“I don’t know,” Abby confessed. “I know my grandfather came from Minnesota, but I don’t know where my granny came from, and I never met either of their families.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”
“Is it?” She felt a little defensive. “How many people know their whole family tree? Besides, it’s not as if we’ve had lots of opportunity to go visiting. We live on a working orchard. It’s an around-the-clock job—”
“Surely it’s not like livestock, though,” Simon countered gently. “Where you have to milk the cows every morning, or whatever?” He let out a laugh. “Not that I know the first thing about any of it. I’m a city boy, through and through.”
Abby turned back to the photo. She tried to remember her grandmother, but she had only the vaguest wisp of a recollection—a woman in an apron, her hair in a bun. Or was she imagining even that? “I don’t know,” she said again. She stared at her grandfather’s face. Was she imagining the bleak set to his eyes, his jaw, the way he looked at the camera as if he were challenging it? Was there a mystery here, after all? And, if so, was it one she wanted to discover?