Into the Darkest Day: An emotional and totally gripping WW2 historical novel

by Kate Hewitt

  “I was following you. I heard you—”

  “Why didn’t you make yourself known?”

  “Because there was a damned German right there!” Tom stooped to pick up his knife.

  Matthew stared at him coldly.

  “Let’s walk.” He turned and started striding through the woods, conscious that if his grenade hadn’t met the intended target, the Germans were not far behind him. Were they still looking for him? Had the sea assault started?

  The sky was lightening to pale gray, streaked with pink. The whole world might have changed forever, and he was stuck in a pine forest with Tom Reese.

  “Who are you?” Tom demanded hoarsely.

  “You know who I am.”

  “But you spoke German—”

  “I am German.”

  Tom made a choking sound.

  “I’m a Jew,” Matthew explained shortly. “I emigrated to the US in ’38. I was trained and brought here to interrogate German soldiers for military intelligence.”

  “What? But…” Tom sputtered as he shook his head. “Why did you never tell me? Or anyone?”

  “Because of the reaction you just had.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Tom asked, sounding belligerent, and Matthew sighed. Another reason he had kept his identity unknown. Those born in Germany had been advised to by their instructing officers. People were suspicious, and stupid.

  “Because I was just shot at by three German soldiers,” he answered. “And I threw a grenade at them.”

  “Even so—”

  “Don’t believe me, then,” Matthew cut across him. “But we’re going to be gutted like two fish out here if we don’t keep moving and find the rest of our platoon. Let’s keep walking, Lieutenant.”

  Silently, looking aggrieved and still suspicious, Tom fell into step beside him. It was one of those absurd twists of fate that Tom Reese, of all people, should be the first man he found here. Despite the time they’d spent together in London, Matthew didn’t think Tom would call him his friend, and nor would he call him his.

  When he’d first encountered him on the ship over, Matthew had seen the advantages of aligning himself with Tom’s obvious Americanness. He was an utterly open book, simple, really, in his brash way. To Matthew, Tom Reese seemed entirely American—blond, brawny, with his loud laugh and wide smile, and an “aw shucks” manner that charmed some and annoyed others. If Matthew stayed in his shadow, his own otherness might be noticed but not questioned.

  But he and Tom had never been natural allies. Tom didn’t understand him and had, on some level, always distrusted him, while Matthew had struggled with a weary disdain for Tom’s easy shallowness, sometimes swallowed by a shameful envy for the simplicity of his life—a farm in Minnesota, parents who were a bit taciturn and stern, an older brother who had outshone Tom on too many occasions. Such little problems; to Matthew, worrying about such things felt like a luxury, but he knew that wasn’t fair.

  Still, he and Tom had never truly been close, no matter their relationship with Sophie and Lily, who were as different from each other as they were. Yet now they were here, and at least for the immediate future they had to work together. Their very lives were at risk.

  “Is West like you?” Tom asked after about fifteen minutes of walking in silence, the only sound the rustle of their footsteps on the fallen pine needles.

  “Yes.” Guy West was another Ritchie’s boy, as they were known, having gone through the training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland to become interrogators of prisoners of war.

  “Are there any more?”

  “Not in our unit, not that I know, but across the whole army? Thousands.”

  “Why do you keep yourselves so secretive?” Tom demanded. “Make everyone suspicious? You both seemed pretty off to me, you know. I told Sophie so, and she agreed.”

  “We don’t mean to.” Matthew felt suddenly incredibly weary. It was early morning, and he hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. His muscles ached, his jaw pulsed with pain from clenching it, and they were no nearer finding the rest of their platoon. They might be miles away. They might never make it there.

  “It’s damned strange,” Tom said in the tone of someone making a pronouncement, and Matthew simply shrugged. He had no answers to satisfy him. They kept walking.

  An hour later, both of them becoming hot and sweaty under a rising, boiling sun, they heard voices and ducked into a hedge before they realized it was women—two tired-looking women with kerchiefs over their white hair. Matthew decided to take a risk, and stepped out into the road, his hands in the air, explaining in clumsy, schoolboy French who they were.

  The women exclaimed over them, throwing up their hands and then kissing their cheeks, before they told them what the next village was, and consulting his map, Matthew realized they’d been dropped nearly twenty miles off course. Who knew where all the others were?

  They walked all day, seeing no one, not a German, not a French villager, and not an American paratrooper. It started to feel as if they were the only soldiers who had been dropped into France, the only people left alive. Maybe all the Germans had packed up and gone away. Maybe all the Allies had been killed.

  All day neither of them spoke; Matthew was too tired and Tom had lapsed into a sullen silence, shooting him darkly suspicious looks that Matthew supposed he was meant to take note of. Did Tom still not believe him? The idea was ludicrous—and pointless, because they were alone.

  That night, they slept in a barn, taking turns to keep watch until, from sheer exhaustion, they both fell asleep against a bale of hay.

  They woke to another pinkish dawn, the only sound the lowing of cows, as peaceful a morning as one could possibly wish. The sea assault must have happened by now. Had it been a success? Were their troops pouring into France even in this very moment? In the still silence of a summer’s morning, golden sunlight filtering through the cracks in the wooden planks of the barn, it was impossible to imagine.

  As they were making to leave, a farmer came into the barn, seeming remarkably unsurprised at the sight of them. He gave them a craggy smile, along with a slice of bread with fresh butter and a cup of warm milk, before sending them on their way.

  They walked for two more days, sheltering the next night in another barn, another farmer granting them food and kindness, before they finally heard the strangely welcome sound of shelling in the distance. Both of them came to a halt, the whistle and thud of bombs both familiar and strange. This was finally real.

  “They did it,” Tom said, his voice somehow managing to sound both wondering and flat. “They came.”

  “We need to be careful,” Matthew replied. They’d been walking along a narrow, dirt road, the isolation they’d experienced over the last forty-eight hours lulling them into a certainly false sense of safety that was now obliterated by the sounds in the distance, the reality of war.

  “They’re miles away,” Tom scoffed, taking a cigarette out of a pack in his breast pocket.

  “Don’t,” Matthew said, but Tom just raised his eyebrows and stuck the cigarette between his lips.

  Matthew wasn’t sure what happened next—a flash of something in his peripheral vision, a prickling on the back of his neck—but before he even knew what he was doing, he grabbed Tom hard by the shoulder and hurled him flat onto the ground. A crack sounded and a bullet lodged into the pine tree Tom had been leaning against, right where his head would have been.

  “Halt!” The German voice was distinct and far too close.

  Flat on his stomach, Tom stared at Matthew with wide, terrified eyes. Matthew stared back, that cold sense of clarity taking over him once more.

  Slowly, as silently as possible, he reached for his pistol. He heard someone walking through the long grass towards them and he propped himself up on one elbow, saw the German soldier frowning as he continued towards them. He was alone, God only knew why, his pistol drawn as he scanned the field in front of him. Matthew took aim and shot.

  The soldier staggered
and fell; Matthew had aimed for his chest. Next to him, Tom swore quietly. Matthew rose and checked the man was dead; he stared down at his sightless eyes and wondered, only for a second, who he was. Did he have a wife? A sister? Would they receive a letter like the ones Lily typed?

  He turned away, only to see Tom standing there, staring.

  “You saved my life,” he said, but his voice was full of fear.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ABBY

  “Why are you looking so down in the dumps?” Shannon gave Abby a smiling glance as she poured them both glasses of wine.

  “I’m not,” Abby said automatically, simply because she was so used to saying she was fine. And she was fine. Mostly. It wasn’t as if she and Simon had actually been dating, or anything even close to that. But she hadn’t heard from him in three days, since she’d walked away from him in the orchard after what had definitely been an argument, and the whole thing made her feel anxious and unhappy.

  She’d watched from the living room window, Bailey at her side, as he’d climbed into his car and headed back down the drive. It had felt weirdly anticlimactic, a simple driving away, when part of her had wanted to howl with rage and sorrow in a way she never had before. How had they come to this?

  “Something’s going on,” Shannon said as she tucked her feet up under her legs and took a long swallow of wine. Abby had come over for one of their every-so-often get-togethers at Shannon’s little rowhouse in town, for wine and Netflix and a general catch-up on life. It was pretty much the extent of Abby’s social life, and she hadn’t minded that until now. Until Simon Elliot had walked into her life and stirred everything up, made a turbulent mess of her calm emotions. “Is it about your Brit?”

  “He’s not mine.”

  “Oh?” Shannon raised her eyebrows. “That sounds ominous. What’s happened?”

  Abby hesitated, and then, with a sigh, she decided to come clean. Shannon would ferret it out of her, anyway, and it might feel good to tell her at least a little bit of what had happened.

  Abby didn’t go into too many details, although Shannon wanted them; she just gave the basics—the picnic by Lake Geneva, the kiss, his visit a couple of days later, their argument.

  “He’s insisting on digging all this stuff up, even though I asked him not to,” she finished, shaking her head before she downed the last of her wine. “And he claims he’s doing it for my sake—I mean, how patronizing is that?” Shannon didn’t answer, and Abby stared at her, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me you agree with him.”

  “No, not exactly,” Shannon said slowly. “But come on, Abby. Don’t you think he has something of a point?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Shannon sighed. “I know your relationship with your dad is off limits—”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You don’t like to talk about it—”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Shannon.” Abby knew how prickly she sounded. How prickly she felt. Why on earth was her best friend coming over all sanctimonious, acting all I-know-better-than-you now? That was not the response she’d wanted at all.

  “Okay, I’m sorry.” Shannon rested her elbows on her knees as she gave Abby an earnest look. “I know this is upsetting you, but I do feel as if I’ve got to say something.”

  “Of course you do,” Abby muttered. She’d always taken Shannon’s gentle nudges to have more of a social life in her stride. Yes, she probably should get out more. Date more. Live a little. But whatever her friend intended to say next felt like something else entirely.

  “Look, Abby, I know your mom and brother’s deaths… that was hard.”

  Hard? Hard was a math test, or a tricky work situation, or maybe a chronic health problem. Her mother and brother’s death, her family’s death, had not been hard. Abby bit her lip to keep from saying something she’d regret.

  “Sorry, maybe that didn’t come out right,” Shannon said, seeming to read Abby’s thoughts, as she always did. “It was more than hard. Way more. I do get that.”

  Abby forced a nod, even though she knew her friend couldn’t, not completely.

  “It’s just, it’s been fifteen years, Abby. And I’m not saying you should be over it by now or something. I’m really not. But sometimes it feels like you’re living like a—like a hostage.”

  “A hostage?” Abby managed a dry huff of laughter. “You’re sounding a bit melodramatic. Anyway, that’s not how it is at all.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Shannon met Abby’s scoffing gaze with a steady, sympathetic challenge she couldn’t stand. She’d wanted an easy night of wine and Gilmore Girls. Why did her friend have to nail her like this? She felt exposed, and she hated that. She shouldn’t even feel that way, because Shannon didn’t understand at all, even if she thought she did.

  “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean,” Abby dismissed with a shrug.

  Shannon took a deep breath and Abby knew to brace herself. She had a horrible feeling that fifteen years of papering over the cracks wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Not that she would have considered it that, all this time. She’d been fine. Really, she’d been fine. And their friendship had been fine. They didn’t need this kind of heart-to-heart, no soul-searching required.

  When she’d decided not to go to college, Shannon had been understanding. Abby needed to be there for her dad. Of course she did. They’d got together on Shannon’s breaks, and, for the most part, it had been fine. Abby was accepting that Shannon had made new friends, went to Fort Lauderdale or Vail with them, started living her own life. Meanwhile, Abby had gotten on with the orchard, the shop, finding a way to live her life, too, even if it wasn’t quite as exciting as Shannon’s.

  A distance had opened between them then—natural, understandable, but still a little sad. But when Shannon’s job in Chicago had gone bust and she’d returned to Ashford to set up as a private, small-town accountant, Abby had felt like she was getting her best friend back.

  The years that had already happened had served as a bridge from the past to the present, so there had been no need to discuss all the water under it—the car accident, Abby’s choice to stay home, Shannon’s life that had flamed out, the serious boyfriend she’d left behind. And as the years in Ashford had passed with nothing more than Netflix, wine, and the occasional blind date, Abby had been perfectly satisfied with that. But now, looking at Shannon’s resolute expression, she had a horrible feeling everything was about to change, or that maybe it already had.

  “Okay,” Shannon said. “I’m just going to say this—”

  Abby let out a sigh, knowing better than to tell her not to. She reached for the open bottle on the coffee table between them and sloshed more wine into her glass.

  “The thing is, Abby,” Shannon said, speaking hesitantly but with determination, “I understood why you chose not to go to college. I really did. You needed to be there for your dad, and while I was sad for you, I supported your decision.”

  “I know you did.” Abby lowered her gaze as she took a sip of wine.

  “But you know, at some point, I thought you’d do something else. Take some night classes, or think about moving to a city.”

  “I like working at the orchard, Shannon,” Abby cut across her. “Even if you don’t think I do.”

  “I know that,” Shannon insisted. “I might have had my doubts at first, but I get that now.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Not that she really wanted to know.

  “It’s just…” Shannon looked uncharacteristically uncertain. “There’s a part of you that seems as if you don’t want to be happy,” she said in a rush. “Almost as if you don’t think you deserve to be happy. And I get that you may have survivor’s guilt. I understand that—”

  “You get a lot,” Abby said with acid in her voice that made Shannon blink. “Really, you’ve missed your calling. You should be a therapist.”

  “Sorry,” Shannon said after a moment. “I’m probably coming a
cross as patronizing—”

  “You think?” Abby couldn’t keep the bitterness from spilling out. She didn’t need Shannon as well as Simon coming over all analytical, treating her like some sad specimen to be examined, understood, helped. “Look, I don’t tell you what I think is wrong with your life,” she continued, hurt fueling words she knew she’d regret later. “I don’t question why you came running back to Ashford when you could have got another job in the city. I don’t ask you if you’re being held hostage because you’re living in a small town and you date about as much as I do. Why can my life go under the microscope, but yours can’t?”

  Shannon was silent for a moment, absorbing everything Abby had said, until guilt, her usual companion, rushed in.

  “I’m sorry,” Abby muttered. “I shouldn’t have said all that.”

  “No,” Shannon cut across her, using a diffident tone that meant she was hurt but trying not to be. “We’re best friends. You have every right.”

  That made Abby feel even worse. “I don’t want to fight with you,” she pleaded. “Can we just turn on Gilmore Girls and forget all of this?”

  Shannon looked tempted, but Abby knew her friend well enough to know she wouldn’t back down. “No, we can’t. Not if we’re really best friends. Let’s have this out, Abby.”

  “There’s nothing to have out—”

  “I came running back to Ashford because my confidence was knocked,” Shannon cut across her. “Really knocked, more than I ever let on, because I was too proud. I was the one who had my life together, right?” She gave a twisted smile. “I really thought I was all that, up and coming, high flyer, you name it, and then when the redundancies started coming, I was the first name on the list, before the most recent hires even, the college grads who had barely started. I couldn’t believe it. I realized I must have been crap at my job.” She took a quick breath, continuing on before Abby could interject with another groveling apology. “You’re right, I could have got a job in Chicago, I could have sent my resumé out to umpteen firms, but I realized something about myself—I realized I’d rather be a big fish in a small pond than the other way around. And so I came home.”