“I’m glad you decided to come with me.”
“I am, too.” Abby gave him a brief smile as he stowed her bag in the back and she slipped into the passenger seat.
“How did your dad take the news?” Simon asked as he climbed into the driver’s side and then started back down the drive, leaving the farmhouse behind. Under the pallid sky, it looked empty and old, the paint peeling off its weathered clapboard. Abby gave it a fleeting look before twisting back around in her seat.
“I don’t know. I left a note. Told him I walked Bailey.” Simon raised his eyebrows and she shrugged. “I didn’t want to get into it with him, to be honest, and I probably would have changed my mind.”
“And you didn’t want to do that?”
“No.” She took a quick, steadying breath. “We might not find anything out, and what we find out might not be important at all, but… I feel like I’ve been stagnating. I don’t want to, anymore. So this is my big moment of liberation.” She gave him a quick, teasing smile, trying to make light of the moment. “Kind of pathetic, isn’t it?”
“Not at all.” Simon reached over and touched her hand briefly, barely more than a brush. “Not at all,” he said again quietly.
They drove in silence down the country road Abby knew so well, the country road where Luke and her mother had lost their lives, although she hadn’t seen it happen. She didn’t want to think about it now. Then they were turning onto route 12, and then I-94 towards Minneapolis, cutting northwest across Wisconsin, leaving everything familiar behind.
“Tell me about this guy,” Abby said as
the fields flashed by and she relaxed back into her seat. Willow Tree Orchards was far behind her now.
“His name is literally Guy,” Simon answered with a laugh. “Guy Wessel. He was in the 508th with both Lawson and your grandfather, part of the 82nd Airborne.”
“Is that all you know?”
“I know Guy seemed quite close to Matthew Lawson. He spoke about him fondly, or at least it seemed so, in his Facebook message, and he’s happy for us to come and see him so he can tell us what he knows.”
“But he might not know anything. Or at least, not much.” Abby felt both a needling sense of disappointment and a flicker of relief. Maybe it would be easier, if they weren’t able to find anything out. Don’t worry, Dad, there’s nothing there.
Except, by her father’s own admission, there was.
“He might not,” Simon agreed. “And then that might be it. A dead end.”
“If so, it might be for the best.”
“It might.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“You’re going back soon, aren’t you?” Abby asked. It was early August, with the heat and humidity to prove it, the damp skies and stifling nights, the sudden thunderstorms. “You’ve already been here for nearly a month.”
“My ticket is for this Wednesday. I have to get back for exam results.”
Just a few days away. Had he even been going to tell her he was leaving so soon?
Abby didn’t reply as she looked out the window at the familiar scenery—fields and an occasional barn, weathered billboards advertising everything from Mars Cheese Castle to one of the country’s biggest dollar stores.
“What is it with Wisconsin and cheese?” Simon asked after a few minutes had passed, nodding towards a billboard with a photo of a rather tacky “cheese castle”, complete with a crenelated turret.
“Wisconsin is the number-one cheese-producing state in America,” Abby told him with a smile. “It produces a quarter of the country’s cheese.”
“Do you learn that in school?”
“We recite it along with the Pledge of Allegiance.” Abby laughed at the expression on Simon’s face. “I’m joking. It’s just something you know if you live here.”
“And yet your family produces apples.”
“Dairy farming is big business. Most of the farms are huge, with thousands of cows. And, in any case, my dad said his father wanted to go into crop production. His family were beef farmers in Minnesota, and he didn’t like it.” She paused. “Maybe that’s the reason he left Minnesota, and didn’t stay in touch. No big mystery.”
“But you never met them.”
“No, but they were older even for grandparents… surely lots of people don’t meet their grandparents?” She considered this for a moment before admitting, “But I suppose I always got the sense that there had been some sort of break.”