SIMON
“What?” Abby blinked at him, mouth agape, and Simon tried for a conciliatory smile. He hadn’t meant to sound so obdurate, and he didn’t know how their conversation had driven downhill so quickly, but somehow they were here, both of them feeling aggressive, shoulders back, chins lifted, any memory of a kiss evaporated.
“I’m not willing to let this go,” he said, as gently as he could. “It affects my family, as well. It’s my history as much as yours.”
“How? It’s my grandfather—”
“And my grandmother.”
“You don’t even know if your grandmother knew this Matthew Lawson—”
“Actually, I do.”
She stared at him for a moment, looking even more flummoxed. Her face was flushed, her hazel eyes glittering, a strand of dark hair stuck to her cheek. She swiped it away with an impatient hand. “What are you talking about?”
“I rang my sister the other day, after I saw you. Eleanor, she’s a bit obsessed with our genealogy, although she’s done research on my father’s side rather than my mother’s. The Irish side.” He smiled, but Abby just stared at him, and so, resolutely, he continued. “I asked her to look through some boxes of photos and memorabilia, stuff that’s been kept in her loft since my grandmother died, when she took command of it all. It took some digging, but she found a photo. She sent it to me—I can show it to you.” He reached for his phone and swiped the screen, scrolling through his emails to find the relevant one. “Here.”
He handed her the phone, and Abby took it without a word. She gazed down at the photo that had mesmerized Simon when he’d first seen it—two men in 82nd Airborne uniforms, standing before the front door of a terraced house, shoulders back, a determined yet haunted look in their eyes.
“It was dated June 1944. Right before D-Day.” He paused. “The back of the photo had their names and the place where the photo was taken, in my grandmother’s handwriting—Lieutenant Tom Reese and Sergeant Matthew Lawson, Holmside Road.”
She stared at the photo for another moment—Tom so blond and assured, his small smile a little cocky despite the fear in his eyes, while Matthew was dark-haired and eyed, the expression on his face so serious, it had unsettled Simon a bit. The two men couldn’t have been more different, and it had made him wonder all the more how they were connected.
Finally Abby looked up. “Why didn’t you tell me?” It wasn’t quite an accusation, but almost, and Simon understood why, just as he’d known, on some level, why he hadn’t told her right away. Because he’d feared this very reaction, because he could feel their relationship already becoming complicated, and that scared him. Because part of him preferred Abby when she was quiet and reserved, and it was his choice whether to wake her up or not.
“I was planning to today,” he said. “And I just have.”
“You know what I mean.”
Were they arguing? Something prickled in Simon, something old and remembered. He hated arguments. He hated confro
ntation. Had dreaded it as a child, when it felt like an explosion that came out of nowhere, and he’d still loathed it later, when it had been more reasoned and understandable. The result was he’d done his best to avoid it whenever he could. Much easier simply to smile, offer a light laugh, defuse any tension by pretending it wasn’t there.
Yet all afternoon Abby had been sharp, unsheathing claws he hadn’t realized she’d had, making little digs that were becoming harder and harder to ignore even as he’d tried to.
“I suppose,” he said after a moment, “I didn’t want you to get skittish on me.”
“Skittish? I’m not a horse.”
They really were arguing. “I’m sorry. Wrong word.”
Abby looked down at the photo again and then thrust the phone back at Simon. “I mean what I said. This has to stop.”
He didn’t think she was just talking about his research. “Abby, I understand why you want to protect your father—”
“You really don’t.”
“Then tell me?”
She stared at him hard, and for a second he thought she’d say—what? He had no idea, but he knew there was something there, something hidden, something dark and painful that she needed to say but wouldn’t.
“All I’m asking, Simon, is for you to stop researching my family. I think that’s a reasonable request.”
“Matthew Lawson is not your family,” he returned quietly.
She jerked back a little at that, as if he’d hurt her. He hadn’t meant to, but he knew he wasn’t going to back down. For her sake as well as his. As well as history’s.
“I know you may find this hard to believe, but I’m saying this because I care about you. And I don’t think dropping this simply because your father said so is the right thing to do—”