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

by Kate Hewitt

  Which sounded both depressing and ominous. Abby didn’t reply, just waited, as Simon once had for her to organize her thoughts, explain her regret.

  “It happened gradually,” he had resumed quietly. “So gradually I almost didn’t realize, except I think at least part of me did.” He’d looked down, seeming unable to meet her eye. “I just didn’t want to acknowledge it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I spent less time with Maggie. I—I wasn’t a proper father to her.” He’d swallowed audibly, his throat working. “Not that I would have seen it like that. But I didn’t like having her in my flat—she didn’t like it. It wasn’t familiar, I didn’t have the right toys or food even if I tried to… basically, it wasn’t home. I wasn’t Mummy. So I started taking her out to places she’d like, soft play places or McDonald’s on a Sunday afternoon because she had ballet on Saturday, and she wanted Sara to take her to that.” He’d sighed. “It was always something. I felt like I had to fit in around a busy schedule, someone else’s life, and I hated that. And, you know, there’s nothing more depressing than a half-empty McDonald’s with a bunch of single dads and their glum kids struggling to have a conversation over a greasy burger and some cold fries.” He gave himself a shake as if to rid himself of the memory. “I know I most likely sound like I’m complaining. Or doing the whole poor-me act. And, looking back, I wish I’d tried harder. Made it work somehow. Maybe if I’d had a nicer flat, or I’d insisted on having the whole weekend from the beginning… but I was trying to be reasonable, and to do what seemed like the best for Maggie, even if it didn’t feel like it was the best for me.” He’d looked up at her then, resolute, wretched. “So my time with Maggie started slipping. Missed weekends, because she was busy. A birthday party. A special outing. There always seemed to be some reason, and I was willing to accept it.”

  “That’s understandable,” Abby had murmured. She could see how it would happen, a gradual wearing away, the erosion of a relationship without the realization of the crumbling. Her relationship with her father had been transformed in an instant; Simon’s with his daughter had changed infinitesimally, yet irrevocably, over time. Yet, despite the differences, the result seemed to be the same—terrible, endless regret.

  “I took her on holiday when she was six,” he had resumed, “to one of those all-inclusive places in Spain, and frankly it was a disaster. I wish it hadn’t been—you don’t know how much I wish that!—but by then it felt like it was already too late for us. There were rules and routines I didn’t know well enough. I didn’t tuck her into bed the way she liked. I couldn’t do her hair in pigtails properly. There were a thousand moments like that.” He’d swallowed again, gripping his hands together tightly, knuckles bony and white. A deep breath, a careful exhalation. “So while you only have one moment, Abby, I have more than I can count. More than I can remember. And I know none of them are as significant as yours, not even close, but the result is I barely see or talk to my daughter now.” He looked away, his mouth tightening, his usually laughing eyes full of self-recrimination.

  Despite everything he’d already said, this had surprised her. Shocked her, in a prickly, uncomfortable way. “Why don’t you? I mean, barely is…” Bad. But she didn’t want to say it.

  “Oh, it’s not quite as cut and dried as that.” He had forced his lips stiffly upwards, all easy, affable charm gone now, something vulnerable and pulsatingly painful revealed. “You know, neither of us would say it quite so bluntly. And there’s nothing hostile between us, although sometimes I actually wish there was. At least that would mean there was something to work out, rather than just this—this weary indifference on Maggie’s part.” He’d sighed, a long, drawn-out sound of surrender. “Sara met someone when Maggie was seven. Pete. Very nice guy. Very solid. Very genuine.” He spoke flatly, without any bitterness, but Abby could tell it cost him. “And a great father figure, of course. The more he was involved in Maggie’s life, the less I needed to be. Not that anyone said that, or even implied it. But Sara and I had agreed that Maggie could make her own choices, that her happiness was paramount. And, time and time again, first just once in a while, then more often, she chose Pete. Which I understood—I really did. She wanted to go to Pete’s take-your-daughter-to-work day. Pete was the one who taught her to ride a bike.” His face had contorted, then evened out, expressionless. “I became this… this extraneous appendage, like some awkward uncle who won’t leave the party. And I let it happen.”

  And there was the poisonous root of the guilt—I let it happen. Just as she had. And sitting there on the bed with her knees tucked up to her chest and tears still dried on her cheeks, Abby had realized she and Simon weren’t that different, after all. What did it matter if it had been one moment or a million? The result was the same—a choice you hadn’t realized you were making, a consequence you could have never foreseen. And a life of crippling regret as you insisted you’d forgiven yourself even as you knew you never would.

  “It all sounds incredibly difficult,” she had said at last, hating how careful her voice sounded, but not knowing how else to respond.

  Simon had given a grimace of self-disgust. “Oh, who I am kidding? Here I am, painting myself to you like some absurd victim. It all just happened to me. That’s not true, Abby. That’s just not true.”

  She had blinked at the self-loathing in his voice, like an acid coating his words. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I didn’t just let it happen without realizing. I realized. I saw it unfold. And I allowed it, because frankly it felt like shit to be sidelined, and I’d rather just choose to fade out myself. When I came here to America, I didn’t even tell Maggie until I was on the plane. Three weeks of summer holidays, we could have done something together, but I knew she wouldn’t want to, and so I chose to check out. As I have been for years. That’s the truth. That’s the truth I can’t forgive myself for, and yet I keep doing it.” He had finished with a sound of self-disgust, a full stop to his recriminations.

  “So don’t,” Abby had said simply. Gently.

  He’d blinked at her. “Don’t…?”

  “You’d say the same to me, wouldn’t you? Don’t do it anymore. Stop feeling guilty. Stop blaming yourself. There’s no point in it, even if you have something to be guilty about. You can’t change the past, only the future, so choose a different path. All those lines worthy of a meme or to be on a mug. Come on, Simon. It doesn’t have to be this way, just because it has in the past.”

  A tiny smile had quirked the lines of his mouth. “I wasn’t expecting you to say all that.”

  “I don’t know if I was, either,” Abby had admitted. “But we’re not so different, you know. We’ve both let the past predict our future. We’ve let moments define us, whether it’s one or one hundred, and they don’t have to. We don’t have to let them. I finally get that, thanks to you. So you need to get it, too. You’ve helped me, Simon. Let me help you.”

  “Thank you,” he had said. He’d stared at her for a long moment, and then wordlessly he’d leaned across the expanse of floral-patterned bedspread and wrapped his hand around the back of her head, drawing her to him. Their lips had touched softly, as if in slow motion, a press, a promise. It wasn’t a passionate kiss; it felt like something more important than that.

  Abby drew away first. “You’re leaving in a few days.” She spoke matter-of-factly.

  “I know.”

  Neither of them had said anything for a few moments. Simon’s fingers were still threaded through her hair.

  “I’ve never told anyone what I’ve told you. I’ve never let myself,” he’d admitted.

  “I never have, either.”

  More silence that they breathed in, letting it relax them.

  “Let’s not talk about us now,” Abby had said finally. “If there even is an us—”

  “There is.”

  His quiet assurance had made her smile. “Really, we should be thinking about Matthew and Lily. Do you think you can find out wha
t happened to them?”

  “I can try.”

  Their food had arrived then, and they ate in surprisingly relaxed affability, considering all the revelations they’d had, all the emotional outpouring that had been going on. Afterwards, they watched a silly movie, Simon’s arm around her shoulders, her head nestled against him, and at eleven Abby had finally decided to go to bed. Simon had kissed her at the door like a gentleman. It felt like the best evening she could remember having in a long, long time.

  And now they were here, quiet and thoughtful, in a car speeding towards home, towards her father, towards Simon’s departure. Towards the beginning of the rest of their lives. Except Abby had no idea if those would be intertwined or not.

  The farmhouse looked tired and faded under a humid sky when Simon dropped her off. He’d offered to stay, but Abby knew she needed to talk to her father alone.

  “But I’ll see you?” Simon pressed, sounding both determined and anxious. “I don’t leave till Wednesday.”

  “You’ll see me,” Abby promised him, silently thinking, even if it is only to say goodbye.

  Inside, everything was quiet and empty-feeling. Abby put her bag by the front door and headed for the kitchen, starting in surprise when she saw her father slumped at the kitchen table, a photograph in his hand, Bailey at his feet, her tail thumping at Abby’s arrival.

  “Dad?”

  “Did you find out?” He sounded resigned, as resigned as Simon had, talking about his daughter.

  “Find out what?”

  “About my father. Tom Reese.”

  She realized she hadn’t given her grandfather much of a thought at all, once she’d discovered Matthew and Lily. “No, I didn’t. Not really, anyway. We found more out about Matthew Lawson, actually.” But she didn’t think her father cared much about that. “What is it, Dad?” she asked gently, with a courage and a compassion she knew she hadn’t possessed before. Seeing him looking so weary and defeated, she ached to put her arms around him, but she couldn’t remember the last time they’d hugged. “What are you trying to keep from me? Because, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter to me. I promise you it doesn’t.”

  “My father was a coward.” The words were barely audible, yet still distinct. “He told me all about it before he died. It had haunted him for years—ever since it happened, I think. Wrecked his life, in some ways.”

  Gingerly, Abby pulled out a chair next to her father and sat down. Bailey put her head on her knee. “Since what happened?” she asked.

  “Since he deserted.” David looked up at her bleakly, his face drawn into haggard lines of sorrowful acceptance. “He ran away from the battle. Ardennes, when the SS kept coming in waves. Not that that’s any excuse. He was shot as he was fleeing the scene, leaving his comrades to fall, and they did.” He drew a heavy breath. “Shot by his fellow soldier.”

  Abby’s mouth dropped open; she knew what—who—he was going to say before he did.

  “By Matthew Lawson.”

  “Matthaus Weiss,” she said softly, and David frowned.

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll explain later. Is that why he gave Grandad his medal?”

  “Part of it, maybe. My father was engaged to Sophie Mather—”

  “You knew—”

  “So you found that out, did you?” He didn’t sound sour, just accepting.

  “We guessed.”

  “They were engaged, right at the end of the war. My father loved her. Spoke about her beauty and her fire, how spunky she was.” David sighed heavily. “He went back to London to recuperate after he was wounded. The knowledge of what he’d done was eating him up. Day after day, he couldn’t think about anything else. Couldn’t eat, even. Sometimes he felt as if he couldn’t breathe, just thinking about that moment. That choice…” The pain in her father’s voice, the memory, made Abby certain he wasn’t just talking about his father, about Tom Reese’s regret, but something far closer to home. Closer to their own painfully fractured relationship. “Eventually, he couldn’t keep it to himself. He told Sophie, hoping she’d understand. Needing her to forgive him.”

  “But she didn’t,” Abby whispered. It was all starting to make sense, in a terrible way.

  “No, she didn’t. He told me she was furious with him. She’d lost her mother to a V-1 rocket, and she’d waited out the war, longing to do something herself, or so my father said. When he told her, she called him a coward. She threw her engagement ring in his face and said she never wanted to see him again.”

  After hearing so much about the tempestuous Sophie, Abby found she could picture the scene all too well. “And yet he gave her his Purple Heart—?”

  “As a keepsake, to remember him by. He hated having to let her go. I don’t think he blamed her, but she broke his heart. He never told another soul, not till his deathbed, when he told me, a confession he felt he had to make.”

  “Oh, Dad.” Abby rested her hand over her father’s gnarled one. It was the closest she could remember them being in years. “I’m so sorry.”

  David wiped his eyes, and then he shook his head. “Don’t be sorry about that. It was years ago. Lifetimes. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve always known that.”

  “Then…” Why did you fight so hard to keep me from knowing it? Considering her father’s state, Abby couldn’t make herself say the words.

  “It’s me I’m crying for,” David admitted in a choked voice. “Me and you. It’s my guilt, not my father’s, that’s eating me up, just as it did him. I’m as much of a coward as he was, and I haven’t been able to stand you knowing, even as I’ve been afraid you’ve known all along.”

  Shock blazed through her like a single, pure flame, right down to the tips of her toes, leaving her immobile, speechless. She’d never, ever expected her father to say something like that. She’d returned from Minneapolis hoping and praying she would be brave enough to say something, to begin to bridge this chasm between them that they’d both always pretended wasn’t there, but she’d never expected her father to be the first one to speak.

  “Dad…” She licked her lips, unable to say more. Even that was hard enough. She didn’t know how she felt, whether she was happy or sad, hurt or relieved. Everything was jumbled up, a tangle of emotions.

  David shook his head. “I did it all wrong, Abby, after they died. I went about it all wrong. I was a coward.”

  Tears stung her eyes, tears she hadn’t thought she’d had left. She’d cried so much last night, wept herself right out, and yet these were different. These weren’t tears of grief, they were ones of emotion, and even of hope. “You didn’t,” she whispered.

  “I did.” He sounded fierce now, a remnant of the gruff man she’d always known—and loved. “I did. I shut you out, I blamed you. I know I did.”

  Oh, but that was hard to take, even though she’d been expecting it. Had known it. “You had a right to,” she made herself say, even though each word felt like drawing a razor across her soul.

  “No, I didn’t, Abby. I never did.” David spoke staunchly. “You were seventeen.” He paused, struggling to rein in emotions he’d never showed her before. “I was in the barn.” He looked up at her with bleak, reddened eyes, their hands still clasped on the table. “I didn’t have anything all that important to do, just the usual work, and I knew about your trip to Milwaukee.”

  Abby shook her head, although she didn’t deny what he’d said. She’d known he was in the barn, or the orchard, somewhere, busy, always busy. Yet she’d never blamed him. Never even thought of doing it, not for a second. Yet, she realized in wonder, he’d been blaming himself, all these years.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. Her lips felt stiff, her tongue thick.

  “It wasn’t yours, either. I shouldn’t have acted the way I did, but it was—it was as if I didn’t know how to be. Like someone had taken my leg off, or half my heart. I just didn’t know how to be anymore, Abby.”

  Tears leaked from his eyes and trickled
down his craggy cheeks. He glanced down at the photo, and that was when Abby saw it wasn’t a picture of her grandfather, as she’d assumed, but of them—the four of them, a family, the last photo they’d had taken, the Easter before Luke and her mom had died. Everyone was smiling in it; Luke needed a haircut.

  “Oh, Dad.” She put her arms around him, breathed in the scent of him—apples and leather and old-fashioned aftershave. Her dad. Her dad.

  “Forgive me, sweetheart.” He hadn’t called her that in fifteen years. “Forgive me.”

  “Of course I do.” It was as easy as that, and yet Abby knew it wasn’t. You couldn’t simply sweep fifteen years of hard history under the carpet and then walk over it, all smooth and neat, normality restored. Life was messier and more complicated than that. They were. Still, this was a start, a second chance, something she’d never expected to have.

  David eased back, his mouth working its way into a smile before he wiped at his eyes, embarrassed, gruff again. Bailey trotted over to him and put her head on his knee, tail thumping on the floor. He rested one hand on the dog’s head as he looked at Abby. “I’m not sure why you digging into my father’s past brought out my own. Maybe I was scared you’d see a connection between us. Maybe I’m just used to having secrets.”